BACKGROUND

The founder and creator of Dumpster Dress, Paul Nichols, had already started a successful commercial real estate financing company, Paragon Prime Funding. Years later he went on to also start a multifamily property management company, Paragon Residential Management. Since their founding's, he has grown both of these companies to become one of the largest commercial real estate financing consultants and multifamily property management companies in the Capital Region of New York. But what does this have to do with dumpsters?

THE AHA MOMENT

THE AHA MOMENT

On a warm, early morning jog in the summer of 2014, Paul was completing his typical loop. He had jogged the same loop several times a week for years, but this morning something was different. While he was passing a local bakery, he noticed the dumpster area looked terrible.

He stopped jogging to inspect the scene and realized it was because of the dumpster enclosure. He noticed that the gates were broken and therefore wouldn't close all the way, the sides were cracked, and their was trash all over the place for everyone to see. It was a scene not unlike many of the apartment communities Paul's real estate companies saw everyday. On the property management side he saw how time after time dumpster enclosures kept breaking and also how difficult they were for managers. On the financing side he saw how expensive dumpster enclosures were to build and maintain. These experiences led to the aha moment when it all clicked and he knew there was a better way.

PROTOTYPING

PROTOTYPING

As soon as Paul got back home that morning he started sketching and writing down some ideas as to how he could make a dumpster that was more aesthetically pleasing than what was out there. He wanted to design a dumpster that looked clean, was easy to use, and could help save real estate owners and developers on new construction projects by eliminating the dumpster enclosure. In short, Paul was looking for a way to Dress a Dumpster so that it looked better than a typical dumpster and functioned better than a dumpster enclosure. Hence, Dumpster Dress was born.

The first sketches were rough, there wasn't anything like it out there so Paul had to create the concept from scratch. Eventually he settled on a design that would attach a series of panels onto a custom made dumpster. The panel and dumpster would come together to create an all-in-one interconnected system that looked like a typical dumpster enclosure. Paul filed for utility and design patents and then over the course of a year started to work with a select group of engineers to turn his dream into a reality. Throughout this process, a series of prototypes were developed to make sure the appearance and functionality were perfected. Paul and the engineers perfected the design and created two physical prototypes to test. After years of hard work Paul, and Dumpster Dress, were also awarded two patents for the design and utility of the product.

TESTING & LAUNCHING

TESTING & LAUNCHING

In 2019 Dumpster Dress hired their first employee and continued testing the design at properties that Paul owned. The design was a custom steel dumpster with a series of thick HDPE plastic panels adhered to the dumpster. The plastic panels were milled with a CNC machine to add the gate and block look. After a few months of these continued tests, it was found that the plastic was not as durable as initially thought given the results from the two original prototypes. On top of this the plastic was expensive increasing the price for the end user. In order to offer a better product at a more accessible price we went back to the drawing board.

During 2020 we brainstormed and tested new ways to make Dumpster Dress aesthetically pleasing. We didn't want to limit ourselves to only new construction projects, so in order to make Dumpster Dress accessible to existing businesses and buildings we knew we would have to reduce the overall price. We finally had another aha moment when we decided to get rid of the plastic panels and use a high performance industrial paint to achieve the designs we wanted. By using our custom patented dumpster and this new paint we knew we had the best possible product at a fair price for both new construction and existing customers. Prototyping and testing of this concept confirmed what we believe and the Dumpster Dress of today was officially born.