The life of an inventor

As Thomas Edison once said "Genius - 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration"

 We get complemented frequently for our very creative and innovative products. While this is always delightful to hear we are constantly reminded that the path to invention is not an easy one. It is often fraught with setbacks, expensive molds, patents (we have 3), trademarks (we have 4) lawyer fees, and worst of all products that don't work initially and send us back to the drawing board. We've spent many hours at work and over meals at home thrashing out ideas and perfecting them.

Most of the ideas spring from frustrations we have in our daily lives that stop us in our tracks and makes us think "hey, how come no one has ever invented this before?" We have a Steve Jobs quote on our idea board in the office "Simple is more difficult than complex" and we try to adhere to this dictum but sometimes the process just seems daunting and onerous. 

We're currently working on our latest invention. We gave it a surreptitious unveiling at the Housewares Show a few weeks ago to some of our best customers and were blown away by the response. Now we're frantically finishing up labeling, production, adding small tweaks, getting samples for key customers and deciding on colors and then the big decision - how much should we produce. More tough decisions lie ahead like where will we put inventory as we are bursting at the seams since the tote+able merger. We want to get it out to market as soon as possible but also need to make sure everything is done with the level of perfection we demand. 

Each time we launch a new product, and we've launched one per year since we started this in 2012, there are always new hurdles to jump but the excitement pushes us on. We're thankful for some terrific partners, customers and rep groups but most of all the group who show up to work here every day. They hear most of the ups and downs of invention and are some of our biggest cheerleaders, they're also some of the first to test the products. 

So the next time you see one of our products in a store or even better still actually use one of them, just take some time to think about the work that went into bringing it to market and cheer us on to keep going and to keep inventing! We love it and we hope you love our products as much as we do! We can't wait to share our latest and greatest with you. Stay tuned....