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Photos courtesy of Garrett Athman
Emily Neelon |
Many brothers wrestle, play sports together and prank each other. Senior Garrett Athman and his older brother Austin, however, built a photo booth together. The brothers co-founded Red Curtain Photo Booth, a photo booth available for event rental, and premiered it in February at Junior Parents Weekend.
An idea becomes a business
An involved engineer, musician and entrepreneur, Athman hopes to grow his business beyond graduation. Athman and his brother Austin, a musician and web-designer, first got their idea for their company at a wedding they were doing video productions and music for in their home state of Montana. The wedding reception had a photo booth, something the brothers had never seen at that kind of event before. Interested in the idea of creating a similar business that would provide the same service to clients, the brothers thought, “Why can’t we do that?”
Following extensive research on the industry, the Athman brothers decided to go forth with building their own booth that can be taken apart, put back together and rearranged for different events.In designing their multifaceted booth, the Athman brothers kept the customer in mind.
“We (didn’t want to) cut corners and did the real deal,” Athman said. “People can be at an event and they aren’t in front of a professional photographer. They are in complete control. There’s no one watching."
The Athman brothers began construction on the booth during the summer of 2013, and finished it just in time for their first official event this February, Junior Parents Weekend.
Megan Jung, assistant director of Student Activities, helped coordinate the use of Athman’s photo booth for Junior Parents Weekend.
“Everybody loved it,” Jung said. “They had a line of people waiting the entire time.”
After such a successful turnout, Jung hopes to use Athman’s photo booth for future events on campus.
“I’m all about allowing students to showcase their special talents,” Jung said.
Entrepreneur, musician, engineer
Throughout the process of building their business, the Athman brothers have been supported by family, friends and UP along the way. Among Athman’s biggest supporters is Villa Maria Hall Director Kurt Berning, who helped to foster his entrepreneurial passion when he was an RA in Villa.
“It was clear to me on day one that Garrett would be active as an entrepreneur his whole life,” Berning said. “I’m excited to see his photo booth company starting to take off.”
In addition to running a business, Athman has commitments to a variety of campus groups, including the engineering honors society Tau Beta Pi, University Singers, “Call Our Bluff” and working as the Pilot audio and lighting director. He recognizes the pressure he puts on himself to get things accomplished.
“I have a lot of interests and I enjoy them all so much that I haven’t been able to choose one,” Athman said. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing, but it takes a lot of self-motivation, almost out of necessity to get things completed.”
Managing his time has proven to be a difficult task.
“Since we’re basically just starting out with the business, it’s been tough,” Athman said. “I definitely have to focus on school, but at the same time I have an obligation to my brother and our clients that we continue to develop our company and push ourselves further.”
Although Athman is now business partners with his brother, the siblings didn’t always get along as kids. But, after spending more time together over the past few years, Athman now enjoys combining creative efforts with his sibling.
“We started to connect more and started to realize we had the same sort of ideas and interests in terms of music and audio and tech stuff,” Athman said. “Ever since then it’s been great. We’ve gotten really close."
Building the booth business
After the successful debut of their company and with more events booked in the upcoming months, Athman is optimistic about the future of Red Curtain Photo Booth. He was recently accepted into the E-Scholars entrepreneurial program at UP in the hopes of improving his business skills. He also hopes to grow his small business into a franchise.
“Maybe even refining our booth design and making something that isn’t out there yet (and) making something diverse and caters to many different needs and is unique enough to patent,” Athman said. “Maybe manufacturing and selling booths because there seems to be an industry there in itself. I don’t really have timeline but it would be cool to see it grow.”
If Red Curtain Photo Booth has grown by his graduation next spring, Athman is willing to put his engineering aspirations on hold and devote his time to building the business.
In the future, Athman hopes to become a professionally licensed civil engineer, but doesn’t foresee pursuing the profession long-term. With a passion for so many areas, he would love to combine his interests in music, engineering and entrepreneurship, perhaps going back to school and becoming an acoustic engineer in order to design treatments to control sound in public spaces.
“I can always be (an entrepreneur) on the side,” Athman said. “If something doesn’t work out, I’ll always have engineering to fall back on. But, if you were to ask me right now if I think I’ll be doing engineering in 10 years, I’d probably say that hopefully one of my entrepreneurial ideas...will have taken off.”
