Tuscaloosa fundraising idea turns into a booming nationwide business

Greg Crowe was coaching high school basketball for American Christian Academy when he had an idea that has turned into a booming nationwide business.

High school coaches are often involved in fundraising efforts to help pay for their athletic programs. Crowe noticed the scorer's table at ACA and thought if he could put a television monitor in the table, he could sell ad space to help raise money. He and a partner created seven of the video boards, as he now calls them, and sold them as a direct fundraiser for his ACA basketball team.

The idea took off.

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Crowe, the founder and CEO of Boostr Digital Displays, grew up in the Tuscaloosa area. He attended high school at Holt High, but he graduated from Hillcrest in 1982. He has deep family roots in the area. His mother was the circuit court clerk for 30 years and his father was a schoolteacher.

"We are rooted here. I've been selling food for 30 years for Wood Fruitticher. I was in Christian music for about 18 years, playing and singing with the Blackwood Brothers. Thirteen years ago, I started this company," Crowe said.

The business name, Boostr Digital Displays, was coined because so many high school athletic fundraising efforts are centered on booster clubs. Crowe said they took the "e" out to create Boostr to make online searches a bit easier since so many already use the term "booster" for searches.

In addition to his regular jobs, Crowe coached basketball at ACA for 11 years, ending his tenure in 2018. Crowe was coaching at ACA with Matthew Renicks when the idea for the video tables was born.

"We built a little table with a TV in it to try to run some advertising and make some money for our program. We sold seven to 10 of the tables. Once teams started seeing them, we built more until we couldn't build them in his garage anymore. We moved to his warehouse. He owns Spanky's Portable Toilets and we started building there. Finally, we had to get a small warehouse on 15th Street," Crowe said.

Crowe said about three years ago, he bought out his last partner. Since that time, the business has exploded, growing 800% in the three years. The company went from employing six people to having 31 employees in two years.

The LEDs for the digital sign boards come from China and are assembled locally. The company orders a full shipping container of the LED displays every 45 days to handle the demand.

Boostr Signs celebrated the opening of the company's newest facility Tuesday in Coker. The 17,500-square-foot facility is at 14070 Boswell Road. Crowe already has plans to build a second building adjacent to the current one.

The Coker facility is used exclusively to build the indoor sign boards, but the company has another facility that handles the outdoor boards, like the video scoreboards seen at various high school football stadiums.

Crowe said they recently finished the installation of a new jumbo display at Sipsey Valley High's stadium. Their first basketball table was at ACA and their first football board was also at ACA.

Crowe said they have basketball tables at schools in all 50 states and the football boards are now in nine states. The company serves between 250 and 300 schools in Alabama alone. Churches are providing their newest growth market.

"We do about 90% of our business with schools, but over the last three years, the church market has really grown. We are starting to grow in the general contractors' market with hotels and ballparks. We've got a lot of big projects going on right now with that," Crowe said.

"This building cost us about $1.5 million," Crowe said of the new facility in Coker. The building sits on 5 acres just off U.S. Highway 82. The economic impact on the small Tuscaloosa County town is significant.

Kyle South , president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama, said, "This is a perfect example of the entrepreneurial spirit. Greg saw a need that grew into a major business. Whether it is in the city or out in the county doesn't matter because they employ people from all over our area. Everything has to start somewhere.

"This is a huge gain for a town the size of Coker. It's kind of (like) the rising tide lifts all boats. All the success we see in Northport and Tuscaloosa gets expanded into more rural areas, like Coker."

Reach Gary Cosby Jr. at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Tuscaloosa fundraising idea turns into a booming nationwide business