e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[Cassandra]

Baggage handler to deal maker
JOHN GILLIE; The News Tribune

Sometimes, Bill Boyer has discovered, the truth can be just too improbable to believe.

The 38-year-old Boyer, who is single, recently met a woman who asked him what he did for a living. He told her truthfully that he was the chief executive officer of a Tacoma-based airborne entertainment system company, the owner of a Lakewood espresso bar and the proprietor of a day spa. And at night and on the weekends he's worked as a baggage handler for Alaska Airlines.

"She told me I was lying and walked off," he said. "From now on, I'm just saying I'm a baggage handler."

As he spoke, Boyer sat in the conference room of APS Inc., four stories above downtown Tacoma's Broadway Plaza. He is the company's chief executive officer.

How Boyer rose to that position is a story of how someone with well-focused ideas, energy and loyal associates can turn an ambitious dream into reality.

He's made a deal with 20th Century Fox to provide movies and television content, with a San Diego electronics company to design and produce his 2.4-pound entertainment player, and with Alaska Airlines to use his product on its transcontinental flights.

And now that he's broken the ice with one airline, Boyer says, his company expects to announce new deals with several more airlines in the next few weeks.

Boyer's story is indeed improbable.

It began two years ago as his employer, Alaska Airlines, started expanding its travel network to the East Coast from Seattle.

Alaska, which until then had concentrated its routes on the West Coast, had planes that could make the five- and six-hour flights to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami, but they weren't equipped to show movies.

Alaska employees wondered why the airline wasn't equipping its fleet with movie screens.

The answer came from Dave Palmer, the airline's managing director of marketing. Palmer told employees in a newsletter that the existing in-flight entertainment systems were ill-suited to Alaska. They were expensive (up to $5,000 a plane) and heavy (2,000 pounds of extra weight), and the ones that depended on satellite feeds didn't work in the Mexican and Canadian airspace that Alaska crossed on many of its flights.

With air traffic taking a nosedive after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the airline couldn't afford to install the systems.

Boyer, who had worked as a baggage handler for Alaska on weekends for 15 years, drew up a sketch of a self-contained player and showed it to Palmer. Boyer already had some credibility as an entrepreneur with the airline.

Two years before, Boyer had invented a plastic bumper that fitted onto the end of portable baggage conveyors used to load planes. That bumper protected the planes from damage from the belt.

Palmer said the player was a good idea, but he needed to work a deal with Hollywood for movies and other content.

Boyer wrote a dozen studios before Fox replied.

"They opened my eyes to a whole new set of concerns," he said. The studios were most concerned with protecting their copyrighted movies and shows from piracy.

He sought help from friends more familiar with electronics than he.

Ray Henson, a former Intel software engineer who patronized Boyer's Lakewood coffee bar, helped him devise security for the movies and TV shows and found a San Diego company that agreed to design and build the player.

The player, which can be propped up on the seat-back tray, contains a 20-gigabyte hard drive, a 10-hour battery and a 7-inch screen. A row of simple buttons allows users to select from 10 movies, three half-hour TV shows and 10 hours of digitized music.

The players feed their sound into disposable earphones that APS furnishes with each rental.

Alaska, which has exclusive rights to use the player for the first few months, will stock 48 players in each plane used in transcontinental flights. Coach passengers may rent the players in advance for $8 a flight or on the plane for $10 from the flight attendant. For first-class passengers the players will be free.

The player solved a number of problems for Alaska, which has a reputation of being a pioneer in using new technology.

"Offering our customers the latest high technology in-flight entertainment system in the industry is in keeping with our commitment to offer technology that makes flying more satisfying for our customers," said Alaska senior vice president Gregg Saretsky.

The whole stock of players weighs 115 pounds a plane compared with the ton of a built-in system. And passengers will have a choice of movies and other content, Boyer said.

"Last week, I flew to New York. The airline I flew had one movie I'd already seen on the trip there and the same movie coming back," said Boyer. "With our system, the passenger will have a choice."

The APS system also will include a card deck-sized credit card verification system for the flight attendant, eliminating the need for a passenger to handle cash.

That credit card system will also be equipped to handle other charges for beverages and other items the flight attendants sell.

Boyer first saw the credit card system at a coffee show more than a year ago. He bought the rights to use the system in the air and simplified its menus and shrunk its hardware.

A dozen airlines are interested in using the credit card system even if they don't buy the entertainment system. Tests of a credit card system show it increases beverage sales by 60 percent on a typical flight, he said.

The APS president sees several other uses for the entertainment module beyond air travel. Boyer has already talked to cruise lines about using the system, and passenger railroads, hospitals and the military are potential customers.

And APS and the airlines can sell advertising on the screens to companies looking for travelers heading to their cities.

He's even talked with the Seattle Seahawks and two other professional football teams about buying the modules. The company could download game films, playbooks and instructional materials on the modules for players' and coaches' review on the way to and from games and for the players to review in their homes and hotel rooms.

The rush of interest in APS products has put Boyer's baggage handler career on hold. He's officially on leave. Though he has raised $2.5 million from friends, relatives and other investors to move the company forward, Boyer still hasn't taken a paycheck from the company.

"I don't want to make the mistake that so many of the dot-coms made. We've kept our company lean. But I think maybe it's time that even the CEO gets a paycheck," he said.

John Gillie: 253-597-8663
[e-mail]

William J. Boyer Jr.

Title: President and CEO of APS Inc.

Born: Frankfurt, Germany

Age: 38

Education: University of Puget Sound, Western Washington University

Marital status: Single

Career: Alaska Airlines baggage handler since 1988, espresso shop and day spa owner

(Published 12:01AM, September 24th, 2003)

http://www.tribnet.com/business/story/3995052p-4016437c.html