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November 2007 Newsletter (PDF)

This is our new building. We are all very excited to have this new facility to serve you better.

Alpine Innovations
275 North 950 East
Lehi, UT 84043

...Then suddenly he appeared about 40 yards away swimming directly at me – OH @#%&*! My gun was 20 feet away and I hadn’t even put a bullet in the barrel because I didn’t know if my plan would work either. But it was and I wasn’t ready, so I crawled over to my rifle and loaded it as the bear was approaching the sandy beach below my mini iceberg I was hiding behind. The swift current of the river swept him downstream and he ended up coming out of the water about 35 yards away. It was a perfect place for him to come out in order to use the wind to his advantage so he could stalk me with the wind in his face. As he swam closer to shore I pulled up my scope to get ready. Then the most unnerving thing happened, my scope was fogged up badly and frozen from sitting on the ice all that time. Without thinking for a second I reached for my Spudz lens cleaning cloth that was connected to my binoculars. This handy product saved the day. I cleaned the back end of scope and still couldn’t see anything, then I cleaned the front end and the scope was still foggy, but I could make out objects. This all took place in a second or two, than the giant beast arose out of the river. Probably the most amazing sight I have ever seen, he looked like a UPS truck coming out of the water. Then he shook and water flew 20 ft from him, he was definitely a giant and way to close for comfort. I found him in my scope, located his giant hump above his shoulder, aimed down 12 inches and let him have it with my 375 ultra with a 300 grain bullet. I dropped him in his tracks and shot him again just to make sure. The giant beast was down and my wildest game plan I have ever made worked...

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     While growing up on a small 5-acre farm in Utah, Darren Jones was a typical farm boy with big dreams of having a successful business someday. What he lacked in experience and business savvy, he made up for through his perseverance and strong determination.

     In order to keep Darren busy and out of trouble, his parents gave him after-school chores to tend to. While the chores kept him occupied, Darren still found it difficult to conform and think inside the box. In fact, he never knew the proverbial box existed. If so, he would have tried to make a better box. This is how he saw life in general.

     There are many instances of innovative thinking that led Darren to where he is now. For example, at the age of 14 he wanted to have his own telephone in his bedroom. His parents wouldnt allow it due to the cost and the fact that they felt he needed to be at least 16 years of age before he had a phone of his own. This didnt stop Darren. By focusing on the cost of adding a phone as the issue and not his age, Darren found his opportunity for innovation.

     After locating 30 feet of old speaker wire, Darren stealthily ran the telephone wire around the outside of this house, between bushes and through his window. He then found the 2 leads necessary to connect dial tone where the bell company provided service to his house.

     Once Darren had connected the telephone cable to his stereo, he then had a way to play background music while he talked on the phone. He also found a way to record conversations that could later be used to blackmail his older brother. It was several months before his Mom found out and this was only because she was weeding flowers outside his window that spring and happened to notice a wire leading into his bedroom window. This was just the beginning of Darrens desires to find a better way of doing things.

     After high school, Darren attended a community college and worked as a telephone technician for 11 years. Throughout this time, he had several ideas that never got off the ground, but he still continued trying to come up with solutions to problems that no one had thought of yet.

     Finally at the age of 26, Darren came up with his first promising idea. While fly fishing on the Provo River, he imagined a product that would protect your fingers and make the fly line last longer. Stripee was the name for his invention due to the fact that you easily strip your line across the cleaning pads.

     After attending his first trade show in Salt Lake City, Darren met several people who inspired him to continue improving his product. One such person was a man named Bruce Hollowich, who took an interest in Darren and introduced him to several leaders in the fly-fishing industry.

     Soon after this, 9/11 occurred and the fly-fishing market started to feel the effects of the economic down turn. In order to make enough money to support his family, Darren realized he needed a broader line of products and continued to work with telephones and to grow his small business, which he named Alpine Innovations LLC.

     Darren chose the name Alpine Innovations due to its location near the foothills of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains in Utah.

     Two years later, while attending a seminar for telephone systems, Darren had another enlightening idea. After eating his lunch, he noticed the accumulation of crumbs from his sandwich that had settled on the inside of his sunglasses.

     After purchasing a micro-fiber cloth from a Sunglass store in the lobby, he went back into the seminar and started to think of better ways to keep his lens cloth handy. About an hour into the seminar, Darren found his solution. He wanted to make a little pouch with a lens cloth attached inside so that the cloth would not fall out. Later that day, he persuaded his wife to help him sew a proto-type of his idea. After several revisions and improvements to the design, Darren had created a product that had greater potential than he realized. The name Spudz was cleverly chosen because the product resembles a small potato hanging from a cord.

     Since Alpine Innovations officially started in 2001, Darrens line of products has grown to include not only the Stripee and Spudz but also the Strip-X, Caddy Cloth, and Fore-Balls. What started out as several small ideas, grew into a company whose sales increased by over 70% from 2004 to 2005. Sales for the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2006 are currently at levels 200% higher than the entire year of 2005 combined.

     Alpine Innovations provides private label orders for businesses such as: Disney, Sony, Casio, Nikon, Leica, JVC, Cisco, Fuji, Canon, Cabelas, Bass Pro, Sportsmans Warehouse, Pearle Vision, Adobe and many others.

     Darrens current projects include manufacturing patented accessories for pharmaceutical companies and pursuing international sales in Europe and Asia. He is also developing new products, making improvements to his already existing product lines and entering international markets by utilizing international patent laws.