Teens take flight with drones, launch business

A group of teenagers in Vermilion have turned their passion for drones into a booming business.

Their company, Drone Providers Inc., is composed of siblings Juliette Scheufler, 17, and Ricky Scheufler, 13, and their friend Ethan Harris, 13.

Juliette said the company’s roots spring from her parents, Richard and Alexandra Scheufler, both 38, and their company VIB Marketing Agency.

“A lot of their clients needed aerial and video photography done for a lot of their businesses,” Juliette said, adding the market’s demand for drone technology pushed them toward the use of drones.

Ricky appears to be the gearhead of the group as he explained how the company’s high-resolution cameras give them an edge over the competition.

Ethan, who operates the drones, seemed to have a pragmatic answer for his own involvement.

“They’re fun to fly,” he said.

Richard Scheufler said the drone company has its roots in a project he undertook while working toward a master’s degree in business administration at Case Western Reserve University.

“I was in an entrepreneurship class there, and we were paired up with different companies,” he said.

Richard Scheufler said his group was partnered with a large drone company.

At the end of the project, Drone Providers Inc. was established, he said.

The problem was many of the partners he had in the project were foreign students whose visas would not allow them to do the job, he said.

“It kind of fell apart from there, so we tried to turn lemons into lemonade,” Richard Scheufler said.

The company had a name and a client in Florida who was looking to sell property near the ocean who wanted a way to show the proximity.

Enter Ricky, who already had a drone, a smaller white one with the usual 4k resolution camera.

The company now has grown to using both the initial white drone and a much larger black one with a larger and more powerful 5.2k resolution camera.

Juliette is the manager and social media coordinator for the business as she is the only one old enough to receive a drone license from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Ethan and Ricky operate the hardware so long as Juliette is on site directing them.

Ricky and Juliette said the company works with real estate 3-D mapping and recently has done an inspection on a roof of a Chipotle in Mentor.

They also contracted to take footage of the Wakeman Firefighters Homecoming Festival, where they took footage of the parade, a boat race and built a mosaic out of over 300 photos of the event.

When asked what they want to do next with the company, Juliette gave a simple, yet emphatic, answer.

“Take it to the next level,” she said with a smile.

When pressed for details on this “next level,” Ricky chimed in saying they’d like to hire employees so they don’t have to fly the drones themselves.