Senior business major Quinn Nadu has had a mind for entrepreneurship since he was in high school. He has since created and maintained his own business, Redemption Calls, manufacturing and selling duck and goose calls. The name Redemption Calls comes from a joke during a hunting trip. Nadu said that the day after a bad hunt, one of his hunting partners commented that the second day was their “redemption hunt,” and the name stuck.
An avid hunter, Nadu said that he had been making the calls for a few years before starting his business because people kept asking to buy them. “Once I saw there was a strong demand for my products,” Nadu said, “I decided to incorporate a business in Pennsylvania and begin to sell my products online and at local retailers.”
Nadu said early on in the process of building his business, he decided to start making the calls from scratch. He did this in order to avoid plagiarizing someone else’s design or concept. Making calls takes a lot of effort, as well as knowledge of basic engineering concepts, air acoustics, a good grasp of the kinds end effects of the materials being used and general design applications, so Redemption Calls is an interdisciplinary business. “It was trial and error when I started,” Nadu said, “but after a few years, I truly learned how to make world-class calls and knew much of what went into producing high-quality duck and goose calls.”
In the early stages of his business, Nadu made each call by hand on a wood lathe, but as time has worn on and his business has grown, he has switched most of his production to Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines, which automate machine tools to make production faster and more precise. He taught himself to create digital drafts of the parts he needed and converted them into programs the CNC could process. Nadu said this was an important step in expanding Redemption Calls, because it helped him produce calls on a larger scale.
According to Nadu, the entrepreneurship program at Elizabethtown College has done wonders in helping him gain the knowledge and experience needed to operate his own business. This experience works both ways. “Owning my own business really helps me understand the concepts taught in class each day, because, unlike most students, I go home and can apply these concepts into real life situations with financial risk involved, and this helps you learn how to do things correctly very quickly,” he said. Professors in and out of the business department have aided Nadu in his work. He said that many of his professors, among them Dr. Petru Sandu, Dr. Edward Chung and Dr. Sean Melvin have been great inspirations for his business, and Dr. Jefferey Long helped him learn to look at things from different perspectives.
After graduation, Nadu said he hopes to continue expanding his business to a point where it can be a full-time job. “I feel pretty confident that once I can dedicate a larger amount of time to it that I will be able to make that a reality,” he said. Nadu also has a strong interest in becoming a consultant, utilizing his general passion for business and his desire to help others achieve their goals. He said he has been afforded great experience in consulting through Etown already, so he hopes to build on that. His overall aim is to continue nurturing his interest in entrepreneurship and achieve his business goals.
For Nadu, Redemption Calls is a way to bring together his business skills and passion for hunting. He said he has always loved being outdoors since he learned to walk. Hunting is an extension of that, and, combined with his interest in business and entrepreneurship, brings balance to his life and helps him appreciate the Earth. “Hunting and my business have brought me the unique opportunity of really loving my job, and I am happy each and every day I can wake up and work,” he said. “I think it is so much easier to operate a business when it focuses around a field you have a strong passion in.”
