My job interview with Jason was on a Sunday morning at the Egg Plantation in Newhall in February 2012. Jason brought Rena and I brought my wife and son. We chatted a bit but the place was hopping and it was hard to hear. After the meal we drove over to the SchiitHole. I'll call it the proto-SchiitHole at that point. Rena had already attacked the place with a shop vac and a broom. There were six of the hundred dollar garage racks you can buy at Lowe's. Jason is really good at laying things out- it may take off, it may go nowhere, no guarantee on hours. Jason offered and I accepted. We drove over to his place afterwards and my son and I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning, bagging, and packing Valhallas. Rena was there watching me and doing sound checks- listening to the same 90 seconds of music over and over again. That was my first day.
The following week I moved everything from the house over to the SchiitHole. Rena worked with me for a little over a month. Rena and my wife went off to a convention in March and that ended her day-to-day with Schiit as her own business had taken off. Jesse was there about half the time. There were other people who worked there but I never saw them. Eddie and Tony only worked at night and I packed orders during the day. I didn't meet them until a couple of weeks later.
Today, we have a 8000 square foot space that is bulging at the seams. Jason and Mike do all the hard brainy work with help from Dave. Tony is still the tech guru. Amy handles order processing and shipping, Laura handles customer service and our distributors, and Maurice packs boxes and puts up with my crap. Bill, Chris, and Olivia do all the sound checks, build Fullas, and handle upgrades. Eddie and Miles build units at night (their choice). Jesse is in charge of quality, handles basic repairs, and builds Ragnaroks. Nick handles all of the tech support bumps and bruises. 12 people have good paying work because of Jason and Mike.
It goes much further than that. The guys who assemble our boards work out of a big warehouse space in Simi Valley. They have this giant room full of people and assembly tables. We are currently their number one customer. There are probably a good two dozen or more people at that location getting work because of Schiit. We get pallets of metal delivered almost every day. We have two places that do our metal, one in Chatsworth and the other is in Pomona. Again, more people employed. Then there is our transformer company in Willets, CA, the guys at the local FedEx depot, it goes on and on. I like to tell people that one of the core philosophies for how we do things is that we want to contribute to our local community by keeping our friends and neighbors employed.
And I get to run the show. Buying parts, coordinating schedules, negotiating with shipping companies, dealing with backorders, production problems, employee issues, running forklifts in to fire sprinklers, etc is not sexy. If I didn't do it, all of the other stuff wouldn't happen. Even with all the frustrations it is very fulfilling.
