Rucksack rock

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/02/2018 (3094 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While the first week of February doesn’t exactly conjure up visions of family picnics and backyard barbecues, Doug Touchette isn’t letting Manitoba’s frigid conditions stop him from daydreaming about those lazy, hazy days of summer.

Touchette is the brains behind BooMBaggage, a St. Adolphe-based venture that converts vintage suitcases into eye-catching, plug-and-play speaker units. (Insert your own, carrying-a-tune joke here.)

A few months ago, Touchette put the finishing touches on his latest gadget — an is-that-what-I-think-it-is-contraption he’s dubbed the Boom-cooler.

“It’s a brand new Coleman cooler that I’ve installed waterproof speakers to the front of, while leaving plenty of room inside for ice and 15 long-neck bottles of beer,” he says, holding out his phone to show a reporter what one of the Bluetooth-compatible units looks like. “It’s battery-operated so you can take it with you camping, to the beach or whatever, and only weighs about 20 pounds, when fully-loaded. I built the first version of it for myself last August and I swear, for the rest of the summer there was almost no reason for me to ever get out of my lawn chair.”

Touchette, 54, grew up in a sound environment. His father, Emile Touchette, owned and operated Emile Electronics on St. Mary’s Road for decades. Touchette figures he was 11 or 12 when he began assisting his dad on the sales floor, and with weekend deliveries.

“During the 15 or so years I was there, VCRs and camcorders hit the market, microwave ovens became a thing, CDs replaced records… looking back, it seemed like we were having to learn something new, every other week,” he says.

Upon completing the University of Manitoba’s commerce program in 1989, Touchette left his father’s employ to go into commercial sales, first with Inland Audio Visual, and later with Winnipeg AV. He eventually founded his own security company, a firm that constructed and installed the first PC-based, digital CCTV recorders in Manitoba, he states proudly.

‘Have you ever seen that Monty Python skit where the fellow builds a castle in a swamp, then, after it sinks, builds another on top of that one, then another and another, until he finally gets one that stays up? That was kind of the way I felt, after failing the first couple times’ – Doug Touchette on the trial-and-error process that led to his creations

In April 2014, while he was on his laptop doing some research for an upcoming project, he tripped over a website advertising suitcase-stereo systems, fashioned by a pair of fellows in San Francisco.

A born tinkerer, the married father of three fetched an old, Samsonite suitcase that had been gathering dust in the back of a closet, as well as some worn speakers and wiring from a shelf in his garage. Grabbing his toolbox, he attempted to duplicate what he’d spotted online.

Given his vast, technological background, he nailed it the first time round, right? Wrong.

“Have you ever seen that Monty Python skit where the fellow builds a castle in a swamp, then, after it sinks, builds another on top of that one, then another and another, until he finally gets one that stays up?” Touchette asks, chuckling as he replays the comedic scene over in his head. “That was kind of the way I felt, after failing the first couple times. But as soon as I figured out what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong… let’s just say by my seventh or eighth suitcase, I knew I had a product that was sellable.”

After shopping at a mix of garage sales, antique shops and second-hand stores for vintage luggage he could work with, Touchette officially debuted his line of products at the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market in August 2014. Playing songs stored on his phone (all his pieces come with a connector jack you can plug a laptop, an MP3 player, an iPod or other gadgets into it) he quickly attracted the attention of everyone from “bikers to grandmas,” he says.

The problem was, any time there were gusty conditions, the reverberations emanating from his creations didn’t carry well, negating sales, he continues. That and the fact his neighbouring vendor, “the perogy lady,” wasn’t particularly fond of rock ‘n’ roll caused him to rethink his retail approach, and go hunting for a more permanent place to parade his speakers.

Talk about sound travelling: ever since the owner of City Haul at 173 Lilac St. agreed to grant Touchette the majority of his front window space to display BooMBaggage products to passersby, Touchette’s devices have been scooped up by shoppers from as far away as Vancouver Island, Calgary and Chicago.

“There’s a delicatessen in Toronto that bought one, to play music in the restaurant,” Touchette points out. “There was also a guy in town last year doing the lighting for a movie being shot here, who fell in love with one after seeing it at City Haul. He contacted me through my website (http://www.boombaggage.ca) saying people would go crazy for these things in Vancouver, where he lives. He bought a bunch off me, outright, and I now supply him with additional product, to sell in B.C.”

Although his business moniker carries the word baggage, Touchette doesn’t limit himself to valises or gripsacks, when it’s time to roll up his sleeves and get to work. To date, he’s also inserted speaker compartments into floor radios, shoeshine boxes, shipping crates and round top trunks. Even better: he’s currently fiddling around with a 1970s-era Easy-Bake Oven, noting he’s especially curious to see “how that all turns out.” (While the housing units he employs are obviously used, all the CSA-approved amplifier sections and power-supplies he outfits them with are new, and come with a one-year warranty against defects.)

“I also do custom orders for people who have an old piece of luggage that isn’t functional any longer, but they can’t bear to part with it, because of its sentimental value,” he says. “They might tell me how they plan to use it, in the backyard or at the cottage, but aside from that, they leave it up to me to lay things out, and decide what type of speakers to use. They go, ‘You’re the artist; you know what you’re doing.’”

About that; from time to time, Touchette hears from others who see his handiwork and remark, “That seems easy to do; I think I’ll just make one, myself.”

“What I tell them is when something is done well, it almost always looks simple. But trust me; there are 100 ways these things can go wrong, which I learned the hard way,” he says.

Touchette, who is self-employed as a marketing consultant, still considers BooMBaggage more of a pastime than “something I can retire on,” he says with a laugh.

That said, despite a successful career that has involved installing intricate audio systems in “countless” theatres and arenas, he refers to his sideline gig as the most fun thing he’s ever undertaken.

“I obviously love working with sound. I also enjoy the carpentry-side-of-things and the refinishing stages. Plus, as many as I can build, I sell. How often do you luck into a hobby that helps pay the bills?”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca