Dave
Emmer was born in 1942 in Hungry during World War II and shortly
after moved to Austria with his family to escape the devistation
of war. It was at the age of eleven that Emmer and his family
moved from Austria to the United States.
Emmer and his family lived in New Jersey
for several years and in 1962 Emmer entered college at New
Jersey's State University of Rutgers where he pursued a bachelor's
degree in engineering. He continued his post graduate work
in science.
In 1968, Emmer moved to Sunnyvale, California
to work on the Polaris/Poseidon Nuclear Submarine project
as a test engineer with Westinghouse. In 1970, Emmer decided
to pursue his own entreprenureal ventures with several patents
he was awarded over the years.
In 1972, Emmer joined forces with a slow
motion video company, Video Logic, that developed a camera
to analyze high speed production equipment in slow motion.
After making the product successful, having sold to most companies
in the Fortune 500, and taking the company to an established
level, Emmer started looking for another challenge. In 1974
Emmer started a solar heating company which produced heaters
for pools. His design for panels won him recognition and once
again, he had started another very successful enterprise.
In 1981, Emmer started another company,
The Implant Center, which facilitates the process of ion implantation
on semiconductor chips. Starting with less than $3000.00,
the Implant Center became a multi-million dollar company by
its second year.
During the course of his career in engineering
and production, Emmer started to see a trend in American business:
speed. Too often, quality was sacrificed for speed as companies
tried to work as fast as possible. Emmer saw how mistakes
were being made in this quest for speed, and further that
the analogy could be extended to the American pace of life,
as well.
Emmer soon became bored with high technology
and tired of the pace of corporate life. He wanted to focus
on a new company, one that incorporated fitness and the outdoors.
Leveraging his engineering and physics background,
Dave created the concept and design of Skimmer. |
