Sherburne Native Invents Temporary Wall System, Launches Kickstarter Campaign

Jim Hoefler, formerly of Sherburne and a graduate of SECS (’73), has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise capital that will help him bring his latest invention – XoomRooms (pronounced “ZoomRooms”) – to market. XoomRooms is a portable, temporary wall and storage system Hoefler has been working on for the last three years. Kickstarter is a social media site that allows inventors, entrepreneurs, and community activists an opportunity to raise capital for their ventures on the web. You can view Jim’s XoomRooms web site and see a link to his Kickstarter campaign here: http://XoomRooms.com

“Kickstarter is a little bit like the television show ‘Shark Tank’” Hoefler explains, “except you make your pitch on the web, anyone can contribute in any amount desired, and the contribution is a donation rather than an investment.”

The campaign will run for 30 days, from January 20 to February 19, 2015. Jim, son of Sherburne native and current resident Katie Hoefler, started working on XoomRooms in 2012 after helping his daughters create a temporary bedroom to sublet in their Washington, DC, apartment. The temporary walls he created worked fine, and his daughters successfully sublet the bedroom he created for them, but the walls were difficult to assemble and were not able to be reused when his daughters moved. 

So Hoefler set out to create a wall system that would be easy to set up and durable enough to be reused in other locations.  "There was nothing on the market that could make creating temporary spaces like this in your home possible” he recalls, “and while my walls served their purpose, I wanted to create something that any Do-It-Yourselfer could use. XoomRooms seems to fit the bill perfectly!” 

Several XoomRooms prototypes are already up and working well in Sherburne, and in his current home town of Carlisle, PA.  “Now it’s time to scale up production capacity so I can bring the product to the masses,” Jim says. “That’s what the Kickstarter campaign is all about."

“Take a look and see what I’ve been up to,” Hoefler says.  “Even if you don’t contribute, if you like what you see, it’s really important that you share the Kickstarter link with all your friends!”