Clint Bunch finds passion creating unique products
Published in the March 16- 29, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Marty Cheek
Clint Bunch in front of his kitchen display that shows the Dropout Spice Rack.
Dropout Cabinet Fixtures is an outgrowth of one man’s passion to use space efficiently. It grew out of Clint Bunch’s kitchen and design construction business that he started 20 years ago. In time, he worked with customers with a wide range of needs and demands.
I was designing a new custom kitchen for (a woman who loved to cook) and she had a lot of spices,” he said. “So I told her I had an idea. I explained it to her and she said liked it so I designed it into her kitchen.”
That idea was the Dropout Spice Rack, a tall, 4-inch wide drawer that holds 36 bottles of spices and drops down to give the cook easy access without having to reach high into a top drawer or rummage through a drawer under the counter. And that woman, Betty Yee, became his partner.
“It utilizes all the space,” Bunch said. “It’s easy to get to and to put away. A good part of convenience is not just getting to stuff but putting it away.”
Bunch said his customers inspired him to create new approaches to fill the void.
“Time after time I have created, designed and built fixtures for these specific jobs,” he said.
Another space and time saving device he created is the countertop compost bin and a tip out garbage can that sits below the compost bin. The paring makes it easy and convenient to toss away compost and garbage.
“You never have to bend over (to throw garbage away under the sink),” he said. “It too was developed because the customer did not want a trash can under the sink. She hated that dance.”
Bunch, 53, has also developed an ironing center that is hidden and pulls from a cabinet. It includes a custom-built, full-size custom ironing board with space for the iron and products as well.
Bunch said he looks for one reaction when people view one of his finished products. “What I want to hear when they walk into one of my kitchens is ‘wow.’ Then they pull (the spice rack) out and the ‘wow’ goes through the roof.”
Growing up in Carson City, Nev., Bunch learned he suffered from dyslexia, making it difficult to read and spell, he said.
He’s always been an inventor and was capable of fixing just about anything, but had a hard time passing a spelling or reading test, he said. “I learned how to disguise it to where even my best friends didn’t know,” Bunch said. “It was laborious to read so I avoided it and found tricks around it.”
What he was good at was designing things. He won first prize and a $1,000 scholarship in a builders association contest and he won the Nevada State Gold Medal in Vocational Industrial Clubs of America contest where winners form each state go to nationals. He finished fourth.
Shortly after high school, he got a job working for a civil engineer. He tried community college to improve his education, but never finished. Instead, he started Sierra Pacific Manufacturing, a company that made spoilers for cars. His father was contractor but he always thought he’d be an architect or engineer. After working in the civil engineering field for about 8 years, he got into construction.
After he moved to Morgan Hill and married 30 years ago, he worked for other contractors before he began his custom kitchen contracting business and went to work trying to maximize space and make things in the kitchen convenient and easy to access.
When working on his own, one of the most rewarding things was coming up with an idea that he could actually implement.
“When you work for others they never see the things the way I see them,” he said. “But on my own, I could do what I wanted.”
Now he and Yee have a patent for the Dropout Spice Rack and are looking to market the hardware to developers and the countertop compost bin and tipout garbage bin to recreational vehicle dealers.
His final product — not part of a kitchen — is a keyboard cover that slides backward and under the desk instead of having the keyboard sit on a pull-out drawer that can often get in the way.
“Everything I build is stuff nobody else builds,” Bunch said. “If they did I would buy them, but they don’t so I do. I’m always thinking of efficiency of use.”
