ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Michael Downey has spent the past two years folding and packing boxes.

What You Need To Know

  • Skar Audio was started in 2012 by a student at UCF

  • The business has grown so much over the years that it now operates out of a 100,000-square-foot warehouse in St. Pete

  • Despite success, recent supply-chain issues and tariffs caused purchasing prices to skyrocket, though CEO Kevin Schlenker says that's now leveled out

“We do a lot of orders in a single day,” he said.

He said he packs hundreds of boxes with the newest audio systems — systems that he’s been passionate about for years.

“I’ve been involved in it most of my life, car audio, going to shows, all that stuff,” Downey said. “Car audio is definitely one of the more fun things.”

That’s why, in part, he keeps coming back to Skar Audio, a company that started in 2012 in Orlando by an undergraduate at UCF.

“I bought 100 speakers in college and sold them and kind of just used them for money here and there in college, and then after a year, I was like, ‘Okay, these are starting to sell faster,’ ” Skar Audio Chief Executive Officer Kevin Schlenker said.

Schlenker said he always wanted to be an entrepreneur but never could have imagined his business would be car speakers.

“I stopped going to school and spent another six months just driving around downtown Orlando every day, still having roommates in college and things like that,” Schlenker said.

He eventually dropped out of school, opened a small warehouse, and his speakers were flying off the shelves.

“Our first year in business, we did over a million in sales,” Schlenker said.

That isn’t a number to scoff at until you find out that number has kept growing.

“It’s like 1 million, 3 million, 5 million, and then in like 2017, it was 21 million,” he said.

Now Schlenker operates out of a warehouse in St. Petersburg that is huge.

“This warehouse is 100,000 square feet,” Schlenker said, as he walked through the building where he houses most of his products.

Even with all that success, Schlenker said running a business after 2020 has been difficult when it comes to finding staff, like Downey.

“It’s very, very hard to find people right now,” Schlenker said.

Not to mention supply-chain issues and tariffs have made shipping costs drastically rise.

According to Schlenker, a couple years ago, he could order five containers of his product for about $15,000, but with supply-chain issues, that shot up to $60,000.

“I think if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur and you have all these hurdles to deal with, it’s like, I wouldn’t even want to go into business,” Schlenker said.

But Schlenker said he’s been able to weather that storm and continue to grow personally, fine-tuning his website with code he writes and doing things like using Turo, a car rental app, to borrow cars to test speaker molds for mass production.

“There’s still so much for us to do,” Schlenker said. “Like, I’m more fired up than ever.”

Despite recent speed bumps with inflation and supply chain, he wants people to see that with hard work and dedication, it’s possible to find success — all it takes is an open mind and maybe a love for subwoofers.

Schlenker plans on opening up a couple of new warehouses to add even more products to sell, including one in Tampa.

Right now, he has about 50 full-time employees and said he hopes to add even more over the coming years.