Geek-chic Renaissance man Erik Bauer has what you might call a collection of dream jobs, a mash-up of video games and Dungeons & Dragons, pit bulls and hamburger patties.
As the general manager of
Mackenzie's Animal Sanctuary, Bauer is in Lake Odessa a day or two each week as the strategic leader for the largest no-kill animal shelter in the Midwest. The rest of the time, when he isn't traveling, he runs a trio of ventures out of a storefront in the Keeler Building in downtown Grand Rapids, including
GrandLAN Gaming Center, a video and board game destination now in its fourth year,
Gaming Paper, an award-winning maker of accessories for role-playing games, and the sales and marketing arm of
Hollymatic Corp., the Illinois-based manufacturer of food processing equipment that invented the hamburger patty machine.
"I feel like I have some of the coolest jobs in the world," says Bauer, 38. "The dog farm fills a passion and gives me a way to make a difference in the world. Gaming Paper and GrandLAN lets me do what I love. I can't wait to teach my kids how to do that stuff. And then with Hollymatic, what can I say, I'm a huge carnivore."
Bauer achieved a longtime dream earlier this month with a strong showing at Gen Con Indy 2010, the global RPG (role-playing games) convention, picking up two "ENnie" awards for Gaming Paper and giving acceptance speeches to a room filled with authors and game designers he had been following since he took up Dungeons & Dragons as a student at Grand Rapids Community College. He and a small group of friends have been playing the RPG regularly for the better part of two decades. As they've grown into careers and families, the sessions are less frequent, game time more valuable. Tired of wasting precious minutes while their Dungeon Master drew and redrew maps on a dry-erase board, he worked with his in-laws' wrapping paper company to print rolls of paper with one-inch squares (equal to five feet in the game) that could be drawn with detailed terrain for their campaigns and battles.
More practical than boards and more affordable than battle maps and tile sets, the rolls worked so well that he decided to mass produce them. After a friend that had worked for a decade at D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast told his friends about the innovation, a sixth of Gaming Paper's initial production run ended up in the hands of the trade's movers and shakers. Practically all of these gaming enthusiasts promoted the product within their social networks, with author Monte Cook alone triggering 800 web site visits within seconds of mentioning Gaming Paper in his Twitter stream.
In the 18 months since, Gaming Paper has added two new products at the request of fans, including Gaming Paper Singles, which launched this summer. Sales of all its products are growing steadily.
No dungeons for dogsSix years ago, Bauer was a successful sales associate at a growing technology firm. Under normal circumstances, he might not have been interested in taking over leadership of Mackenzie's Animal Sanctuary, then a 30-dog facility with a new and mostly empty main kennel building. However, he was becoming increasingly concerned about the way CyberNet Technologies was managed. He was ready for a change when his in-laws, the Azzar family, asked him if he would be interested in helping grow the non-profit organization they launched following the passage of their family pet in 1999. It was fortunate timing. CyberNet collapsed amidst a
spectacular scandal a month later.
"Mackenzie's was always run by people who loved dogs and wanted to do whatever they could to help," Bauer says, "but in a lot of organizations like that, the person who starts it has a certain comfort level and tries to slow down or stop growth when they reach that level."
When he came to Mackenzie's, it was adopting out only a few dozen dogs per year with roughly 60 single-dog runs open and available. Few outside of Lake Odessa had even heard of the organization. Bauer reasoned, and eventually proved, that every new dog on the 15-acre ranch would bring with it an exponentially greater number of volunteers, donors and potential adoptees.
"We get all the dogs from local animal shelters and there is a long isolation period during which we treat them for worms or anything else they might have," he says. "Every time we would get a group of dogs through that process, I told them to add another 10. The staff would curse me every time, but a few months later, they would see all the benefits."
Now at 90 dogs, Mackenzie's is inching toward Bauer's 100-dog general population goal. It will adopt out over 100 dogs this year, graduates of a thorough process designed to prevent animals from returning to the sanctuary or being sent to another shelter. It today boasts 150 volunteers and is now in the midst of its most ambitious fundraising promotion to date, the
Mackenzie's Foundation Home Raffle. Sponsored by Parkland Properties, the grand prize is Monroe North development Boardwalk Condominiums' Unit 237 or a $100,000 cash prize.
But dungeons for games, that's okayGrandLAN Gaming Center will celebrate its
fourth anniversary next month. Less than a year into his tenure at Mackenzie's, Bauer invested $30,000 into converting a former coffee house at 56 North Division into a computer-gaming destination. At the time, local computer game LAN parties were attracting an average of 200 gamers per event. In other cities, permanent gaming centers had launched and were doing well, leading Bauer and a friend to develop the business plan for GrandLAN.
"I had expected bored college students downtown to be my base, but it hasn't been," says Bauer, noting that Wi-Fi and laptops have changed downtime since his days as a student. "We've instead become a destination for people attracted to the camaraderie side of gaming. If you're playing by yourself and you get a head shot it's a much lesser experience than when you're in a group and you can call it out and everyone gives each other high-fives."
Non-computer RPG games, such as the aforementioned Dungeons & Dragons, have become an important part of the GrandLAN business, as have specialty board games and comic books. What boredom-based traffic they do receive comes from downtown hotels, primarily the children of convention goers.
"There is not a lot of entertainment downtown for that age group, or for any age group that is inexpensive. We fill a need."
A new passionBauer spends most of his hours in the meat processing business, including a small Hollymatic call center in a back office of GrandLAN. Bauer began working with Hollymatic partly to become more involved with the family businesses.
"At the end of the day, everything I do is for my family," he says. "I had to start learning some of these things for continuity purposes. Now it's a big part of my life, selling patty machines and grinders and meat saws. It's a whole new passion."
Daniel Schoonmaker is a writer in Grand Rapids. His work can be found at www.bydanielschoonmaker.com.Photos:Erik Bauer
GrandLAN Gaming Center (3)
Gaming Paper,
Photographs by
Brian Kelly -All Rights Reserved