Rodney J. Moore

Seeing is Believing: Tennessee-Based Glasses Supplier Goes Hollywood For Super Bowl Ads in 3-D

By Rodney J. Moore

Among all of the logos and art-work adorning the 3-D glasses distributed nationwide by Pepsi for this year’s Super Bowl commercials was a small name in perhaps 6 pt. type: American Paper Optics. Most folks didn’t notice it. But John Jerit, CEO of American Paper Optics says it’s the kind of exposure that money can’t buy. His 40-employee company based near Memphis, Tennessee, didn’t pay for space on those glasses donned to watch dancing lizards and Monsters vs. Aliens leap off the screen. His company made the 3-D glasses. All 130 million pairs.
It wasn’t always dream orders like this. American Paper Optics traces back to much humbler origins. In 1990 Jerit was working for a company that made fireworks and he was in charge of a 3-D glasses line extension for watching fireworks. Seeing that there was a broader market beyond fireworks glasses, Jerit bought out his partner and launched American Paper Optics.
“We still sell fireworks glasses, and they were our bread and butter for probably the first five or six years of our business, but other things have come along and are much bigger now.” His first big contract came in April 1991 for Corona Beer—one million glasses for the solar eclipse in Mexico and Hawaii.
Later that summer, New Line Studios released Freddy’s Dead: Nightmare on Elm Street 6 in 3-D. New Line split the glasses contract between American Paper Optics and their main competitor, Day Shades, a West Coast operation in Denver. Each company produced six million glasses. Jerit got the contract on the strength of his Corona Beer success and he just happened to be the sole supplier on the East Coast.
“That kind of gave me seed money and just a few months later, we landed our first big job for the traditional red and blue-type glasses and that was what put us on the map,” Jerit says.
American Paper Optics quickly became known for their quality products and on-time deliveries. That led to even bigger contracts with Hollywood.
After acquiring Day Shades in 1999, Jerit now has only one minor competitor in the U.S. Occasionally, he’ll lose a contract to a company in China, but even Chinese companies don’t provide much competition. In fact, Jerit says he sends more of his glasses to China than China sends to the U.S.: “Our product quality is so much better in terms of the optics. I ship a lot of glasses to China because they are going into books, toys, and games that are manufactured in China.”
Perhaps Jerit saw into a crystal ball when he began acquiring several new technologies such as ColorCode (the kind used for making the Super Bowl ads) in 2004. “We’re not inventors but we’re good at taking the inventor’s stuff and saying, ‘We think this is good. Let us sell a few. It’s going to take some time, but we’ll make you some money,’” Jerit says, acknowledging that not everything works.
Jerit’s Super Bowl-sized order came thanks to some real life 3-D, otherwise known as foresight, plus patience, and a little faith. For the past four years, hedging on the future, he has been paying the patent holder in Denmark to be the exclusive supplier of the technology (ColorCode) used in seeing both the Super Bowl commercials and the NBC episode of Chuck in 3-D the following night. “If there are going to be ColorCode glasses in North America or South America, we’re going to be the ones making them,” says Jerit. “We haven’t sold that many of those glasses. I’ve actually been losing money on it.”
Not any more. Last year, on the strength of all those Super Bowl glasses, sales reached more than three times 2005 sales of $8 million. Still, despite being the world’s largest manufacturer of paper 3-D eyewear, Jerit isn’t wearing rose-colored glasses.
“We’ve got to treat every order like it’s the last order we’re ever going to get,” Jerit says. That, as much as anything else, is why the future looks good for American Paper Optics.


How To Deliver On Time
A hallmark of most small businesses is meeting deadlines and on time delivery of what’s promised. Here are John Jerit’s secrets are for coming through in the clutch.
1. Get approvals as quickly as possible. In print, design proofs are vital.
2. Keep inventory in stock. Avoid production problems by keeping materials on hand.
3. Find and work with reliable vendors. Trust only those who can deliver on time.
4. Start the job early. Don’t wait until the last minute.
Jerit says that while he normally avoids distribution headaches by making the buyer handle distribution, occasionally he’s had to coordinate shipping on his own. “We had to drop-ship to every Walgreen’s store in the country for a Regis & Kelly live Halloween 3-D broadcast in 2007,” Jerit says. “ABC did ask me to handle it and it went smoother than I expected because it was 6,000 stores. We decided to ship the furthest point first, which was California and then places like Memphis last. We probably saved them $80,000 just in shipping. In that case, we got UPS Logistics involved and they helped us.”