The History of ZIPBOX Media: An Ambitious Idea Grows Outside the Box

Paul Wright - Wednesday November 2nd 2011

ZipBox Media sprinted from concept to one-of-a-kind company

“Let’s do something no one else has done,” Paul Wright, III Vice President of ZipBox Media says.

After 20 years in the music industry, he had watched struggling artists now struggle even more to get their music online. He wanted to invent an easy, affordable way for artists to create their own websites where they could sell downloads of their music with a list of web features that no other company was offering.

Paul took his idea to web developer Joe Smith. Paul described all the features he wanted and asked Joe if it was possible. “Why are you asking?” Joe replied, not yet sold on the idea.

After taking a night to think it over, Joe was on board. Paul’s idea quickly grew into ZipBox Media, a powerful, one-stop website service. It allows everyone from songwriters to churches to small businesses easily build and maintain their own websites.

As Paul and Joe started creating ZipBox Media, they were soon joined by web developer LeBraun Premo and Andrew Turner, who were two of Joe's students at Belmont University. LeBraun brought his father, Ken Premo, whose business acumen provided not only a sounding board but put together a funding plan to complete and take ZipBox live. Paul assumed the lead role for sales and marketing, and Joe took the role of lead developer for art and code.

Despite the project’s complexity, development moved quickly. The only delay was to apply for patents – inventors can’t talk publicly about their product until they reach a certain point in the patent application process. ZipBox Media ended up with several patents, including a patent on ZBF files, a new type of file that contains the customer’s content.

The three partners launched ZipBox Media in 2007, less than a year after Paul proposed his idea to Joe - pretty zippy for a tech-heavy start-up product.

From the beginning, ZipBox Media offered a generous array of features, including a free, custom-designed template for each customer, and the ability to load almost unlimited content to the site. Customers can add text, photos and videos – even a thousand pages if they have that much to say.

Since its launch, ZipBox Media has continued to evolve.

Paul’s original idea focused on musicians and bands. Then customers came with other ideas, such as an author using a ZipBox Media website to sell ebooks and churches selling downloads of sermons. “We didn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves, so we expanded to include anything digital,” he says.

ZipBox Media customers pushed it even further, beyond digital products, selling things like embroidered clothing and even popcorn. Some people use ZipBox Media to create websites that don’t sell anything at all.

ZipBox Media also made dramatic changes in pricing. The original thought was $39.95 per month, comparable to other companies selling similar services. ZipBox, after testing the market, quickly decided to price their base product at $9.95 per month.

The ZipBox Media team continues to make improvements so its features are more powerful and easier to use. In 2010, ZipBox Media did a complete overhaul of the Easy Page Creator, which customers use to build their websites. Although it wasn’t broken, “We want to simplify it as much as possible,” Paul says.

Another major improvement is in the works for ZipBox Media. “If you think Zipbox Media is cool today, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Paul says. He is not at liberty to talk about the new features because ZipBox Media is currently in the process of acquiring patents.

But, he promised, “We will revolutionize what we have already revolutionized.”

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The History of ZIPBOX Media: An Ambitious Idea Grows Outside the Box

ZipBox Media sprinted from concept to one-of-a-kind company