Most people don’t know what a degree in Classics is. Those that do often presume that it equips you mainly to teach Greek and/or Latin. Unfortunately, I was not a great student of Greek or Latin and had no business teaching either. And you know the saying, “those that can’t teach, do logistics.”

We started Amplifier (doing business as Copernica, originally) back in January 2001. Jef Sewell and Joel Bush were our founders, Jud Harris was the first employee and I was the second, whatever that means. Our first office was an apartment at Post West Ave, behind the Office Depot at 5th and Lamar in Austin. Our first client was Two Birds Film, and we would ship the Two Birds DVDs and VHS tapes at the Post Office over at Guadalupe and 6th.

Steve Mattingly and Scott Flack helped us secure our next space – “Gibson” – a two story building adjacent to the railroad tracks at the bottom of Gibson St off South Lamar. (Prior, the building had been used for testing concrete, I think.)  Having a building with a dock – of sorts- and a proper, pallet-allowing set of double doors, we were ready to take our 3PL to the next level, and Despair, Inc moved their e-commerce fulfillment from a Dallas shop to us in September of 2001.