About Us

I'm Jack Tomczak. I invented the VacJak. I hope you buy one.

The VacJak was born out of chaos and necessity. Six years ago I bought a townhome for myself and my two kids. A townhome that I immediately began tearing apart in order to renovate. Big mistake. None of the projects were small and I started all of them at the same time. Renovating an entire home while parenting and working a day job turned out to be A LOT. 

Then I got my kids a dog.

Then my dad died and I spent a lot of time helping my mom with her house.

Every project took ten times longer than it should have because of the limited amount of time I had to do them. Working on my renovation became part of the obligation rotation of life with a lot of starting and stopping. I was taking little sips of the renovation projects in between work, cooking, helping with homework, going to the dog park, and throwing the ball around.

With three sets of tiny lungs living in my house I wanted to keep the dust to a minimum. My shop vac became another member of the family. He, um, it was always in the kitchen, the dining room, living room, or a bathroom. 

I found if I taped an outlet remote control to the attachment of the shop vac I didn't have to walk back to the canister to turn it off when I needed to. It was a Godsend. 

Then the tape ripped.

So I switched to zip ties. It worked better but zip ties stretch out and it wouldn't stay together for more than a few days.

I decided that the outlet remote control needed to be secured to the attachment or the hose with something rigid and more permanent. After many attempts to make something out of garage junk I figured out that the best option would be a plastic 3D printed housing that would slide snugly onto the attachment. But I did't have a 3D printer or know how to design something for a 3D printer.

I asked my Facebook friends if any of them could help and one of them foolishly said yes. Artist and friend Ken Madden offered his assistance and created the first VacJak off of a drawing I had done. It worked so well and was so helpful to me I figured it could be helpful to other people too.

The artist part of Ken kicked in and he designed the VacJak as you see it today.

After maxing out my credit cards to produce the electronic components I launched a project on Kickstarter for an infusion of cash and to get the word out about the VacJak. The Kickstarter campaign ran from September 15, 2025 to October 15, 2025 and was a success. If you ever want to find out who your friends are try launching a an idea on Kickstarter! I’’be forever grateful to the people that helped make the Kickstarter campaign a success. And forever vengeful toward the people who ignored my pleas. I’m kidding. But am I?

I learned many business, production, and people lessons along the way and getting to this point has not been cheap or easy. I’ve made many mistakes and I’m certain I will make more but I am proud of the fact that I imagined and created a physical product that will make a part of people’s lives easier.

Everybody has come up with a “there oughta be a thing that does this” idea. And it’s so much easier not to try to make that idea a reality. I’ve done it many times. I don’t know why this one was different but I had to make it real and I’m glad I did.

Now I just need every owner of the over 50 million wet/dry vacs the exist in the United States to buy a VacJak.