A ‘sweet view’ with the owner of Sweetwater
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – When he’s not running the largest on-line retailer of musical instruments in the country, you will find Chuck Surack in the skies above it. Ten years ago, he decided he wanted to be a pilot. Within eight months, he had his certification and had purchased his first helicopter.
Today, Surack owns 8 of them as well as a chopper rental business. Several of his helicopters were recently featured in the blockbuster motion picture Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
But as sweet as the chopper business may be, it is merely a hobby compared to Sweetwater Sound Inc.
What started out in the back of a VW Bus 37 years ago, is now a booming business that employs more than 1,000 people. And it keeps getting bigger. “Our business grows 20-30 percent a year and a little mathematics says in less than 4 years you double in size,” said Chuck Surack the founder and owner of Sweetwater from inside his 340,000 square foot facility.
The facility may seem large, but if the math plays out, it may not be big enough in the coming years. “If anything I’m too conservative, I don’t build big enough, and sure enough within 4 years we doubled in size and I go, boy I wish I would have built it bigger. I can’t tell you how many times I say that. I wish I would have built it bigger,” said Surack.
There is plenty of room to expand. The company sits on 100 acres. A few of those acres are now slated for a 3000 seat amphitheater.
Construction started this year and should be done in time for Gearfest, the company’s annual instrument sales and music event that happens this year on June 17th and 18th. The amphitheater should rival in size the one at Headwaters park in Fort Wayne. But it didn’t start out that size. “At first I thought it would be a small. Let’s put a tent up, couple hundred thousand dollar kind of tent. And now it got over the million dollar number,” explained Surack.
Surack envisions concerts and events being held in the amphitheater, some of them at no cost. It will also serve as a meeting place for employees. “Our company has gotten so big today we don’t even have one place where all the employees can meet,” he said.
Employees like Jon Swain. Swain plays in a band on the weeknights and weekends, but during the day he is a guitar tech at Sweetwater. “Something like this should be in LA, not Fort Wayne, Indiana. So it’s pretty awesome to work here,” said Swain.
Every day he’ll put as many as 70 guitars through 55 tests to make sure they’re up to Sweetwater standards. 1 in 10 will get sent back to the manufacturer. Something as simple as a scratch may be all it takes to send it back. It is a standard of perfection, along with a bag of candy in every box, that Sweetwater believes sets it apart from other retailers. “It’s kind of cool to know that every single guitar that we do is going to come out of the box ready to play,” said Swain.
Play, is something his boss Chuck Surack knows about. When he’s not flying his helicopter or playing in one of his two bands, he’ll often be found working on his stable of exotic cars. Surack is an avid car collector, who describes his taste in cars as “eclectic.”
He has more time than average to do all those things. Generally Surack says he only needs 3 or 4 hours of sleep each night. That leaves him more time to tinker in the garage or to come up with the next great thing for his companies.
Hovering above Sweetwater’s complex, Surack doesn’t take much time to admire his accomplishments. Although with some goading he will admit that it is pretty “cool” that his original vision has grown to this extent. But the moment is short-lived and he pilots the helicopter off in a new direction. So much yet to do.