Lightle is credited with “a lot of the vision” that drove the business, Botts said. But then, the three of them worked hand-in-hand to hone that vision, he added.
“Dave was never short of ideas,” Botts said. “It took kind of the three of us to sift through them, digest them and kind of proceed with the ones we felt were most viable.”
Lightle died in China Aug. 28 at the age of 58. While his death was a shock, his friends knew that he had suffered two heart attacks, including one just 18 months prior.
“It was always there,” Knopp said. “From that standpoint, he had had two of them, and we knew there was likely another one coming eventually.”
With the Wright Family Foundation's blessing, the Dayton company continues to shepherd licensing of the Wright brothers trademark worldwide. They also oversee an online store — thewrightbrothersstore.com — offering American-made flight jackets, luggage, sunglasses, watches and more.
The young company has a track record: Shinola Wright brothers-branded watches and bicycles sold out quickly in the past two years. High-end Bremont watches are nearly sold out.
The online store gives the company its own brand of Wright brothers merchandise. It’s also a starting point for others to license the trademark for other products.
By far, licensing is the company’s bigger business, bigger than the web site or retail items sold in places like Carillon Park or Kitty Hawk, N.C.
”Licensing is our main business,” Botts said. “We have the global licensing rights for the Wright brothers.”
The list of the company’s continued endeavors is long. Branded bicycles made in Oregon are planned for 2017, as are pens with wood from Hawthorn trees at Hawthorn Hill, the Oakwood home Orville Wright lived in before his 1948 death.
Lightle died while the company was in the midst of an “investor ask,” Botts said. By August, he had three verbal commitments from prospective investors.
Those deals needed to be completed after Lightle’s death — and they were. “They all came through,” Botts said.
Lightle “was putting enough seeds in place for us to continue onward, and that was one of them,” Knopp said. “He had investors in place. He started the conversations.”
“It was almost like he was preparing for this day to come,” he added.
They declined to say precisely how much was raised in the investment round, but Botts put it at six figures. He said also the company is in the black, but as a “start-up company,” all revenues are put back into product development. He and Knopp are paying themselves, he said.
A new move by the business: The Dayton firm has signed a contract with a Venice Calif. production company to begin work toward a 3-D animated feature based on a screenplay Lightle wrote. The idea is to bring to the big screen an entertaining, fictionalized adventure involving real people, the Wright brothers, in a real place, Dayton, with animated characters.
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