UF students create popular item in photography industry

The band.it, a product designed with the help of three UF students, is taking the photography world by storm, already receiving recognition from top-ranking members of the field.

The band.it, a soft elastomer band that wraps around a camera lens to make adjustments easier and protect the lens from scratches, reached its Kickstarter goal of $10,000 within 24 hours last Fall.

RDM Corp., which stands for Research, Design, Manufacture, owns the product and expanded into a physical production facility in Gainesville over the summer. The company looked for funding last fall, and now hopes to expand nationally.

“It’s really nice to be those kids in the garage that everyone thinks is crazy and see this amazing product become a reality,” said Domenic Aluise, 20, a UF electrical engineering sophomore and CEO of RDM.

The product started when the students were approached by Thomas Bender, a professional photographer of 30 years from Sarasota, Florida, who was concerned about damaged lenses. Forty designs later, the company created the band.it.

Bender’s first time using the product, at a baseball game, gave the company its start. Three photographers asked Bender about where they could purchase a band.it for themselves.

The company’s success from the Kickstarter campaign helped the students establish a production facility in Gainesville, just two miles north of UF, Cooper said.

“We made the investment in the warehouse because we knew that moving forward we would need a place dedicated to production that was meant for production and was not a modified room or anything,” Cooper said.

The RDM team, which includes Aluise, CJ Cooper, Elezar Tonev and University of South Florida sophomore Jacob Barrineau, shipped orders last April. All of the students had summer internships, so the business took a backseat after the orders were sent, Cooper, a UF industrial and systems engineering sophomore and COO of RDM, said.

The reaction from customers after the Kickstarter units were shipped out was overwhelmingly positive Cooper said. The 19-year-old said they’ve relied on the support of their hometown of Sarasota and the Warrington College of Business Administration.

Last spring, the sophomores competed in the annual Big Idea Business Plan Competition, hosted by Warrington, and finished in first place, receiving a $25,000 grand prize award.

Cooper said 175 teams entered the competition, but the band.it stood out because it was a fully-functioning product while many others were still in the prototype stage.

On Wednesday, the students will present at the PDN PhotoPlus Expo conference in New York City. The conference normally has around 20,000 attendees ranging from amateur photographers to professionals to enthusiasts and coming from more than 70 different countries around the world. Cooper said based on people’s response to their product, they may change their plans.

“The PhotoPlus Expo is one of the largest tradeshows for photography, specifically, in the country,” Cooper said. “We’ve rented a booth space … and essentially we’ll be selling bands to photographers trying to increase the exposure and make sales.”

While band.it’s market is chiefly focused on professional photographers, Cooper sees the potential of working with the Photojournalism Department at UF to work with students and everyday hobbyists.

“There’s so much that can be done,” Cooper said.

And UF’s Photojournalism Department head John Freeman agreed. Freeman said students in his photography classes often panic, thinking they broke a lens.

“It seems like it would protect a critical area that often is damaged, which is the end of the lens,” Freeman said.