On Wednesday December 3rd Flashpoint Development will be featured on the CBS Boston (WBZ-TV) news at 6pm and 11 pm.  The story will focus on several of our projects nearing market and the process that we utilize.  As many know, our non-confidential projects are often used as real in-class examples for Tucker’s graduate school classes at Northeastern’s School of Technological Entrepreneurship and I am sure they are going to dive into the use of these projects in the story.  Hopefully you all can watch, but if now we will attain a clip and feature it on our homepage when possible.  I’ll let you know the behind the scenes of the taping on Wednesday.  We are looking forward to meeting Mish Michaels.

As we all are dealing with the Thanksgiving leftovers I am reminded of two recent product launches by Ziplock and Reynolds focused on freezing leftovers. At first when I saw these ads I thought they were focused on saving money, given the questionable economy but now realize that it was really focused on Thanksgiving perhaps the most leftover meal of the year.

The new products suck the air out of the plastic storage bag (ziplock has become the product name similar to Bandaid). However, many of us remember a similar product that has been around for years that does the same thing from Food Saver. But why has food saver never broken into the mass market and who will win between these two new products and why? The short answer is retail price. The longer answer involves, technology, product features and price sensitivity.

Of course there is a way to do it without any products…

How To Vacuum Seal A Ziplock Bag - The best bloopers are a click away

While the option to go it alone without any help exists as demonstrated by the above video, below you will find one of the benchmark products of Food Saver. The below model is sold for $180 and can vacuum seal many different size bags. The price includes a variety of bag sizes that can be used, but the price is just too high for most consumers.

The proclaimed replacement for the Food Saver, the Reynolds Handi-Vac is being well reviewed by consumers across the internet. Although the price point is lower than the Food Saver by less than 10%, I do believe that the $10+ price tag will put off consumers, especially next to the Ziploc version which is considerably less.  The reason for the increased price: electric vacuum pump.

The Ziploc version features a non-battery powered pump and at $10.75 from Amazon also features a number of compatible bags (actual pump costs less than $2). Although the Amazon reviews are not flattering, I do believe that with its price point it will in. It will win in price because of the easy technology, the lack of battery requirements and the existing brand equity in plastic storage bags.

Although I am unsure of who will win in effectiveness, I am confident that the lower retail price point will attract more customers to the Ziploc version.  Of course there is always the DIY option.

A fellow inventor turned me onto Lucky Break Wishbone a company that produces plastic wishbones just like your turkey. Now everyone around the table, even vegetarians can take part in the tradition of the wishbone. While this product is appropriate because of Thanksgiving, it also provides an interesting product protection case, without patents.

Check out a quick video

First a little background. The idea for a plastic wishbone that mimicked the breaking of a turkey wish bone was conceived in 1999. In 2004, the Lucky Break Wishbone was in a market test with 10 retailers. In 2005 the website was launched and sales channels were opened up.  And this is where the story gets very interesting.

In June of 2005, Y+R the promotional firm for Sears expressed interested in supplying Lucky Break Wishbone’s as a promotional product around Thanksgiving.  On August 4th they had agreed on 1.3 million wishbones in the Sears blue color.  But in 9 days, on August 11th Y+R said that they were going offshore.  Sears did do the promotion in November with their off shore version.  Lucky Break filed a copyright infringement case.

Why a copyright, when everyone is talking always talking about patents?  Well from IPWatchdog “a copyright is provided to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including (1) literary works ; (2) musical works, including any accompanying words; (3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music; (4) pantomimes and choreographic works; (5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works ; (6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works ; (7) sound recordings; and (8) architectural works.”  While many focus on copyrighting protecting the language around the product, the design is actually a form of the pictorial, graphic and sculptural category.

The case took a very interesting turn when Sears argued that the copyright did not apply, the wishbone was from nature and therefore God’s art.  However, with the help of some bird bone experts, Lucky Break was able to prove that their design differed significantly from the actual turkey bone in order to re-create the breaking with plastic.  Furthermore, the Sears knock off had incorporated these differences within their bone with no proof of independent creation.

In July of 2008 Lucky Break was awarded $1.7 million.  And now the company is looking to rebound as sales throughout this long legal battle had cut in half.

My girlfriend had a complaint one morning recently. We were both leaving the house very early and it was still dark. We had a hard time locking the door from the outside and were laughing about our difficulties. She turned to me and said what about a flashlight attached to the actual key. The keychain lights would not have helped us, it would have required two hands and before coffee we were both struggling with even one.

That weekend we headed up to Portland, Maine for some away from the city time and while she was looking for holiday gifts, I was passively looking for her keylight as a holiday gift. Unfortunately I didn’t find anything, so I thought there might be an opportunity there.

I was skeptical that no one had done it before but I had all the materials to do a prototype. However, even before playing with my LEDs I did a quick search online, only to find many many exist. Sure, none had my design and I thought mine would be better but none of the existing products that were the same had made it to the mass market.

If I was to pursue this product it would be about distribution and sales, which is fine if that is the type of company I would like to build. As you might have guessed it has now become a page in my idea notebook that will get very little attention in the near future.

This past SNL episode featured an inventor pitching her product, Clear-Rite an adult retainer that is unnoticeable.

The inventor had developed a prototype, a package and was practicing her infomercial. Of course, like many invention pieces on TV this is meant for entertainment which means that they are going to make fun of this inventor despite her progress. She did super-glue her prototype in her mouth and was practicing her infomercial in front of a mirror, but does that make her crazy like SNL depicted? I don’t think so and the continued mockery of invention by TV is somewhat disturbing for a professional inventor. I have to admit I laughed.

I found this article last night by Dharmesh Shah on his blog, onstartups.com about early releasing.  While the article is focused on software, a quick work replacement (software = products) reveals that the two development paths are actually quite a like.  There is always a race to market, even if you don’t know it and going back to the drawing board for a better product does not mean you will win.  The article certainly motivated me, I hope you have the same feeling.
Wimps Wait. Revolutionaries Release Early

This past Friday Jay Leno featured six inventions from the Yankee Invention Expo and the InventBay Expo. In this segment, Pitch to America, The inventor introduces the idea, does a quick demo and the audience crowd guesses sold or not sold. As I have been told in the past, this is an entertainment piece and is not very friendly towards inventors often framing them as crazy.  However, I do believe that there is a lot to learn about each of the products that sold, the pitches of products that didn’t sell and getting on the show.

First I was psyched to see the Stay Dry Face Shield on the show.  I saw this at the Yankee Invention Expo and thought it might be a great product.  I have been staying away from medical devices (for myself) because of the complications that never seem to end but this one did catch my eye.  Of course the inventor didn’t have a great marketing story and without that it is hard to buy into.  Questions I had like, how many people have face plastic surgery a year? were sidestepped instead of a statistic (that should be growing).  Anyway I am happy to see that they sold and have even more respect for the Yankee Invention Expo for making the selling connection.  Only one other product sold, the Pop Blocks and honestly I didn’t exactly get it.

Of the ones that didn’t sell, (four) three had problem issues and the security purse had a major solution issue.  Regardless the majority were struggling to rationalize their idea, instead of picking a problem that is an issue.  Anyway it was an interesting TV segment, and even those that didn’t sell I am sure are enjoying the publicity.

Wedding Daze with Jason Biggs and Isla Fisher had a few interesting product development scenes with Matt Malloy Isla’s father as a Jewish inventor. Specifically the Jewlahoop and Jewnacorn. As the movie goes, Matt Malloy had an idea after walking into a toy store, why if there was a line of stuffed animals for Jewish children. After being asked what Jason thought, he replied, “Its very specific … in a good way”.  Perhaps with some work on the audio recording, the idea might work in real life too.

He does admit that the Jewlahoop does not really work…

While some may think the idea is silly, others do not like those who operate MazelBear a Jewish stuffed animal company featuring teddy bears and toad. These cleverly named toys like “Mazel Toad and Hisha Bearach” are being sold for $40.

I am happy to announce that I have volunteered to become the recording secretary at the Inventors Association of New England. Sure it isn’t the fanciest title, but I think it will help the group, the newsletter and ease the burden on some of the existing contributors. This may be somewhat of a cop out because I already do write about the monthly meetings on this blog but there will be some major differences. In this blog I get to talk about reflections, thoughts, and expand on points made during the talk. My meeting summary as the recording secretary will stick to the facts and try to incorporate every valuable piece of information for the group. All in all I am pretty excited to start helping the group in a more official capacity and am looking forward to my first stint as recording secretary November 10th.

I haven’t talked too much about Inventors Digest lately, but a recent article really hit the spot.  Inventors Digest is a pretty good magazine focused on invention stories, patent law and other invention developments.  In the new issue there is a new article on holiday gifts for inventors which was interesting.   After reading I remembered that I had just gotten myself a great inventor gift that was not mentioned, a digital caliper.  Basically it is a very precise ruler that is great for small items with a digital readout in inches and millimeters.  Here it is measuring the diameter of my pen cap.

Why do I need such a fancy ruler?  Well we do a lot of modeling around existing items.  For example if you want to incorporate a bottle cap into your design you need to know the exact dimensions.  Sometimes you can get lucky and find a spec sheet on the bottle cap and work off that, but not always.  I managed to get by because everyone else had one of these.  All designers, engineers and manufacturers have this tool to help them precisely measure the bottle cap, (remember bottle cap is just an example).

Unfortunately purchasing this item was not as easy as it should have been and if you are interested I thought I would just share.  I found it on the Home Depot website and it said that the calipers were in stock at my local store, but they weren’t.  So I bought it online for about $45 and you should do the same instead of walking around Home Depot in circles.