It was just one of those days.
Nothing seemed to be going right for Joshua Pace and business partner Justin Marty, who were scrambling to get their video submission together for Made in the U.S.A., an invention reality show.
“We worked all day and had to get it to the airport for the last mail pick up by 8 p.m.,” recalls Pace, who heard about the opportunity the day of the deadline. “I had ten minutes to get to the airport, when this freak snowstorm started, and I thought I was going to get in a car accident. I pulled in just as they were closing up and ran out have them hold the shipment for our submission.”
Pace and Marty were lobbying to have their invention, the Quad Zipper, be a contender on the U.S.A. Network’s reality show, which aired last fall. Their product zips and unzips parallel rows of zippers to alter clothes, turning a sleeping bag into a walking suit or a jacket into a blanket, for example.
The high blood pressure Pace experienced while putting their application together paid off only three days later when he and Marty received a Friday night phone call with the invitation to bring their zipper to Los Angeles.
Out of the thousands of applications, Pace and Marty were chosen as one of the top six teams and lasted three rounds on the TV show. The duo spent two and one-half weeks filming the show in Los Angeles, being followed by a camera crew as they went through rounds of challenges and judging.
Pace says filming the show was a great, although sometimes nerve-wracking, experience. “I learned the dark secrets of reality TV. We signed a waiver that allowed them to film us or record our voices whenever they wanted to—it actually made me a little paranoid,” he explains. “We were also coached to say certain things—they tried to antagonize us, and we didn’t give it to them for the longest time. When we started to, those comments aired, and it made us look bad.”
Upon graduating in 2000 with his BS in finance, Pace moved to California and worked for startup companies. He then moved to Salt Lake and created a video production business. He met Marty in 2002 and got involved in working on the Quad Zipper. Pace has also dabbled in screenwriting and is in the midst of developing and launching an online business.
Pace now plans to focus on his Internet business among his other entrepreneurial ventures. “I come from a family of lawyers and accountants, and it has taken my family a while to warm up to my entrepreneurship. But I’d just rather shoot for the stars and fail than wonder if I ever could have shot for the stars.”
