Oprah inspires local firm

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Published: 5/13/2012

BY JON CHAVEZ
BLADE BUSINESS WRITER

Robert Thomson, left, sales manager, and James Baker, owner, of Hidden Television on Airport Highway in Toledo, pose in front of a hidden mirror television. The company assembles flat panel televisions into framed two-way mirrors that blend with a room's decor. THE BLADE/DAVE ZAPOTOSKY Enlarge | Photo Reprints

Few local businesses can say they owe their start to TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

In fact, it's proba! bly a sa fe bet that just one firm in the Toledo area can trace its roots directly back to the famous talk show host/TV mogul/entrepreneur.

"It was Oprah who came up with the idea of hidden television," said James Baker, owner-founder of Toledo-based Hidden Television.com.

"She was doing a show in 2006 and featuring examples of space-saving gadgets," Mr. Baker said. At the time, Mr. Baker was in the business of selling high-quality two-way mirrors for security, scientific, and other uses.

"Literally, her manager called me out of the blue," Mr. Baker said. "Her manager said, 'Oprah wants to know if you can put a flat-screen TV behind two-way glass for her in order to hide it,'" he added.

Mr. Baker said that after immediately responding "Yes," without actually having hidden a TV before -- "It was a challenge," he recalled -- the concept was a hit and soon his little Toledo firm started getting calls for "hidden televisions" like the one people had seen on Oprah's show.

Over the last six years, sales of hidden-television products have gone from nothing to 70 percent of Mr. Baker's overall sales. Fully assembled hidden televisions (including flat-screen TV, mirror, and frame) or custom components are sold through the business' showroom/workshop at 5232 Airport Hwy., or through a network of 425 licensed dealers who sell and install its products.

Travis McGee puts a flat-panel television into a frame with a two-way mirror at Hidden Television.com. There few restrictions on size. Most flat-screen TVs can be used, but the company prefers Samsung and Sharp brands and strongly recommends LED televisions because plasma TVs produce considerable heat. THE BLADE/DAVE ZAPOTOSKY Enlarge | Photo Reprints

The company, which has 10 employees and prefers to stay small to accommodate custom orders, has an international client list that includes corporations, hotels, politicians, the U.S. military, sports stars, rock stars, actors, designers, and otherwise wealthy individuals.

Its products have been featured repeatedly on the HGTV network shows House Crashers and Bath Crashers, DIY Networks' Man Caves and the Vanilla Ice Project, Discovery Channel's Construction Intervention, and ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

"It's such a unique product. It's taken years to get here, but now that it has it's gotten very popular," said Robert Thomson, Hidden Television.com's sales manag! er. "Whe n it hangs on the wall it has side skirts so it hides the TV. And when it's off, it's a mirror on the wall.

"Out of sight, out of mind. Criminals steal TVs, they don't steal mirrors," Mr. Thomson added.

The mirror doesn't have to be a mirror when the TV is off. A screen-saver on the television can make it an aquarium, a favorite photo, or a famous painting.

A typical 32-inch, hidden flat-screen television concealed behind mirrored glass encased in one of 110 decorative frames to match a room's decor costs about $3,300. The company can utilize most flat-screen TVs but prefers Samsung and Sharp brands. It recommends LED (light emitting diode) televisions, which produce very little heat, and discourages plasma TVs, which produce considerable heat.

There are few restrictions on size. The firm offers a 65-inch hidden television setup that costs $10,000, and it has installed 80-inch TVs for $12,000, including mirror and frame.

Location also is no restriction -- the company once installed a 50-inch wide TV in a bathroom -- with installers having placed hidden television sets in nearly all rooms of a house and in various types of furniture.

Not just any two-way mirror can be used. The company experimented with many types of two-way mirrors before settling on the specially designed dielectric mirror that is coated three times and uses nanotechnology to be optically color neutral, thereby allowing a maximum amount of light through but still allowing maximum reflection when the TV is turned off.

With hidden television sales generating the lion's share of revenues, Mr. Baker adopted Hidden Television.com, -- the name of his Web site -- as his unofficial but more visible corporate name.

But in reality, the 33-year-old Mr. Baker has five businesses that sell a variety of two-way mirror-related or security-related products all operating under the moniker Reflective Security LLC, a name that echoes the unorthodox route that the Ann Arbor native took to get into business.

Whi le at the University of Michigan, Mr. Baker earned a degree in industrial engineering but privately had a fascination with technology used for espionage.

"My grandfather was in the CIA, so I was always interested in spy gadgets," he said. "I was into spy cameras, two-way mirrors, those sort of things."

While in college, he started a successful dot-com business that hosted Web sites and bought and sold domain names.

But his companies' fortunes were tightly linked to the Yahoo! Web portal, and when competitor Google.com launched, "Overnight I practically went out of business," Mr. Baker said.

So, stuck in his parents' basement, having lost his start-up company, Mr. Baker said he turned back to his hobby -- spy gadgets.

He began selling two-way mirror glass online -- and getting odd requests from customers asking if it could be cut specifically for certain uses or adapted for specific purposes.

"I was not understanding the market at all, but I was having customers come to me asking, 'Why aren't you doing this?'" Mr. Baker said.

Through Internet sales he gained customers, expanded into other glass products, and in 2006 moved to Toledo to take advantage of the city's larger selection of less expensive industrial space, settling into a former muffler shop. And then Mr. Baker got the call from Oprah.

Eventually, he began using two-way glass to create a line of teleprompters and selling high-quality mirrored glass mostly for scientific purposes.

Customer-driven ideas

As usual, customers with specific needs have provided the innovation for new products.

One customer requested highly polished mirror glass -- which reflects laser beams -- to attach to a golf putter. "He wanted to put a laser in a golf putter so he could see accurately where the ball should go," Mr. Thomson said.

Another wanted to use two-way glass to put a TV in a table, and now a table TV sits in the company's showroom. One customer wanted lights behind the gl! ass to c reate a brilliant effect for a trade show, and that led to a line of decorative trade-show displays.

But the most unusual request was a few years when Hidden Television.com received a custom order, through a third party, for mirrored two-way bulletproof glass for use in a vehicle. After supplying the bulletproof glass and receiving payment, the company never got any feedback.

Later, Mr. Baker learned that the buyer was actually a Pentagon contractor, and the mirrored bulletproof glass was sent to Afghanistan for use on Army Humvees deployed there to protect American troops from enemy snipers. The reflective-mirrored surface makes it hard for the enemy to look directly at the glass, and while the occupants of the vehicle cannot be seen from the outside, they can see everything.

"It occurred to me that we're actually selling a product that helps protects our troops and it all developed from a hobby interest of mine," he said.

Still evolving

Since then, the company has started marketing bulletproof mirrored glass for all kinds of commercial purposes. A large initial buyer has been payday check-cashing companies.

"It's still an evolution. We're still discovering the market for this," Mr. Baker said. "It's something we've just started to offer and we don't know what the market for this can be."

Also reflecting his passion for spy gadgets, Mr. Baker recently started a new company that sells a line of bedroom, office, and living-room furniture featuring hidden drawers to hide valuables. The new company is called -- what else? -- Hidden Drawer.com. "It's kind of like a spy gadget," Mr. Baker said of the furniture.

And while the local businessman/entrepreneur isn't sure what his next company will be, he's pretty sure where the idea will come from: a customer.

"We're ultimately an optical mirror company, but we get a lot of our ideas from customer orders," Mr. Baker said. "I always hate to tell a customer 'No' right off the bat. Instead I like ! to liste n and see if what they're asking is possible."

Just last month, a performance artist from Europe called asking if the company could build her a large box made of two-way glass that lights up from the inside, revealing the artist to the public. The box would have to be portable.

"Hmmm," Mr. Thomson said upon taking the order. "I wonder what we could do with that?"

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

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