Take a moment, turn off your music and listen. Can you hear that? Background noise.
It’s everywhere. Maybe there’s a dog barking next door or a chopper hovering somewhere overhead. Maybe your upstairs neighbors just bowled a strike down the indoor bowling alley they’ve ostensibly built in their living room. Whatever it is, it’s loud. Not burst-your-eardrums loud, but loud enough to irritate and even cause health problems.
Commercial Acoustics wants to quiet the world around us by working with contractors to install soundproofing materials in new buildings, while retrofitting older buildings with aftermarket solutions. The Tampa-based company offers products and services, from sound-blocking materials to consultations.
“If you have a noise issue, there are a lot of companies and consultant firms out there, but most don’t do all of the acoustic options,” Walker Peek, Commercial Acoustics co-founder and CEO, said. Companies typically focus on a specific aspect like acoustic panels or sound blocking, Peek said, but he wants to cover it all. “We sell panels for sound absorption or sound blocking for theaters and apartments, and sound masking for open offices.” Commercial Acoustics calls this multifaceted approach its “A, B, C2.” That is: absorption, blocking, cover and consulting.
“There was a lot of studying that went into figuring out how exactly sound travels and how to stop it."
After earning his undergraduate degree in engineering from the University of Florida, Peek spent a few years working as a structural engineer for Craig Technologies, a defense contractor based out of the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The sound of rocket launches must’ve sparked something in his brain because in 2013, while pursuing a graduate degree in industrial engineering from Columbia University, the idea to launch Commercial Acoustics was born.
“One day, I was finishing up the curriculum and my wife complained about me making too much noise,” Peek recalled. “That's when I realized this was a problem that a lot of people have. The genesis of the company was finding that problem and applying some of our own engineering techniques and backgrounds to solve it.”
Rather than just providing aftermarket solutions, Peek and his co-founder, who has since departed the company, decided to also target architects and general contractors to place sound-blocking materials in buildings. Peek said the methods that many construction companies use are “archaic,” so they set out to educate and upgrade them.
“There was a lot of studying that went into figuring out how exactly sound travels and how to stop it,” he said.
Commercial Acoustics now sells soundproofing materials at a cost of about $1 per square foot and acoustical absorption panels for $100 each.
Its flagship product, the Wall Blokker, is designed to be installed behind drywall and to stop sound transfer through the wall.
“It’s heavy but also flexible,” Peek said. “That allows it to absorb some of the vibration noise.” Made out of a recycled material from the automotive industry — the same material used to keep cars quiet on the inside — Wall Blokker’s sound dampening is equivalent to adding three layers of dry wall, according to Peek.
Commercial Acoustics employs 19 full-time employees. Initially bootstrapped, the company raised $500,000 from a local family trust a few years after its launch. The company’s revenue is above $2 million, according to Peek. Its competitors include Acoustical Solutions, The Soundproofing Company and NetWell Noise Control, among many others.
It isn’t always easy to convince potential customers about the value of dampening environmental noise or the technical aspects behind sound management. Educating clients has proved challenging.
“If you have an echo issue, you actually don't want to soundproof anything” Peek said. “So, we have to show clients what the actual issue is and their list of options to solve it. It's a very technical field.”
However, Peek is optimistic about his company’s trajectory, stating that Commercial Acoustics has sold products in 40 countries and all 50 states.
