October 2006 Safe at Home Be it tornado, hurricane or man-made hazard, Remagen has rooms to grow By Allison Gorman
Staying in the box: Remagen's answer to hazards both natural and otherwise.
To gauge RemagenSafeRooms’ market potential, first disregard its profitability. Since the Monteagle business began selling above-ground modular shelters in 1999, it has moved about 200 units—not enough to recoup investment costs, says owner Jim Waller.
Consider instead some different numbers: A year ago, 2.5 million Houston residents ran from Hurricane Rita right into highway gridlock. Seven people died from the storm, which ultimately veered off its collision course with the city. More than 90 died trying to evacuate.
Waller, an engineer, began marketing SafeRooms in the wake of a disastrous 1999 tornado season. He spent $75,000 modifying his design for a gun safe to create a tornado-proof space that could be anchored to a slab, installed indoors for quick access, and finished out as a functioning room or closet. Advised by wind science engineers at Texas Tech University, he and 11 other manufacturers formed the National Storm Shelter Association and wrote an industry standard.
While Remagen was marketing tornado shelters with modest success, a series of punishing hurricane seasons combined with the figurative cloud of terrorism to form a perfect storm of national anxiety, creating commercial venues Waller hadn’t anticipated. Now his biggest problem is deciding where to aim his company’s limited advertising dollars.
Much of that money funds Remagen’s Web site, through which do-it-yourselfers can order room kits shipped from a McMinnville manufacturing site. And Waller has enlisted several direct dealers hoping to land multi-unit sales with developers in the Midwest, where homebuyers may well invest in peace of mind.
But Remagen’s new focus is inland areas subject to voluntary hurricane evacuations. Waller re-engineered his product to create a hurricane shelter, which, according to NSSA president Ernie Kiesling, offers advantages beyond individual safety. “There are tremendous economic benefits if people can avoid the cost, the trauma of evacuation.” Texas and Florida control hefty mitigation funds that could finance incentive grants for residents who purchase shelters; meanwhile, NSSA is drafting new standards it expects will become national code, adoptable by local governments. For industry pioneers like Remagen, “the potential is enormous,” Kiesling says.
Still untapped is the market for protection against what Kiesling calls “multiple hazards”—man-made threats. After the 2001 anthrax scare, Waller says, the question he fielded most was whether SafeRooms defend against biological weapons. (They can, with simple modification.) “That was what drove people’s interest at the time. It’s a fear-driven industry.”
If that’s true, consider one more number: nearly 300 million Americans thrust into a post-9/11 world armed with plastic sheeting and duct tape. The potential—again—is enormous.
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