Profiles in Invention

Local inventors share their rugged journey from concept to market

Story by Sean Fitzgerald

WHEN MOST OF US THINK ABOUT INVENTORS, we rarely think about northeast Wisconsin.

There’s a tendency to think about semiconductor labs in Silicon Valley. Perhaps bio-medical breakthroughs in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. Maybe even – just a bit closer to home – new genome discoveries in Madison.

There’s a substantial number of inventors right here in northeast Wisconsin – many of whom are independent inventors, nonetheless – developing innovative ideas that could one day transform the economy of the region.
Innovation and invention can ultimately lead to new industry, new companies, new jobs, and new wealth for a local economy.

The inventor’s journey, however, is rarely a walk in the park. It’s often an arduous, time consuming, expensive and sometimes lonely expedition fraught with rejection and even ridicule. There’s an emotional cost, too, as inventors often struggle to move their idea forward alongside a paying fulltime job, family, and other responsibilities.

This month, we spoke to five inventors from northeast Wisconsin who shared their trials and successes along various stages of the invention process.

The Idea Fairy
WHERE EXACTLY DO NEW IDEAS for improving existing products come from?

Primarily, ideas for new inventions typically come from one’s field of work, where the same equipment and products are used on a daily basis.

That had been the case for Appleton painting contractor Tobey Andropolis, who was always thinking about more efficient and time-saving ways to apply liquid coatings to walls, ceilings and floors. In 2001, nearly 10 years into his career as a painting contractor, Andropolis woke up in the middle of the night with an idea that would apply more paint to a roller, requiring fewer trips back to the paint tray and a greater area covered with each stroke.

“I spent the next couple of hours building a prototype in my shop, a very rough prototype.”

Andropolis was fortunate enough to have some idea of the direction he should take. A member of the Wisconsin Inventors Network, he would later become a 5-year president of the organization geared toward helping inventors in the region gain a sense of direction and find the resources they need to navigate each phase of the invention process.

Outside of the workplace, Jack Nigl of Appleton devised his invention through the volunteer work he does with Northeast Wisconsin Service Dogs, where he’s helped train pups since 2000.

After retiring 11 years ago from a more than 30-year career driving truck for a local fuel transportation company, Jack Nigl became more involved training service dogs for a northeast Wisconsin organization that provided the dogs to area residents with disabilities. After years of recognizing the tool dog owners use to open doors to most commercial buildings was inadequate, Nigl set out to develop a device that could get the job done right.

The current tool – made of plastic and using a relatively wide-open handle – tends to slip down the handles of many doors, no matter even if it’s the best trained dogs. As a result, it can be a real challenge for someone in a wheelchair to remove the tool after entering through a door that’s been opened by a service dog, and sometimes the hook slips off completely.

Since the not-for-profit organization’s goal is to help those with disabilities lead more independent lives, Nigl believed a more efficient tool could carry that mission one step further.

Building a working model
IN NIGL’S CASE, he had an existing relationship with Fox Valley Technical College that went back to 2005. He’d worked with the college’s contract manufacturing services to help develop a wheelchair modification that would better suit both dog and owner. After FVTC’s Fab Lab launched in late 2007, he was referred there for assistance designing a service dog door-opening tool.

In April 2008, Nigl began working with industrial design specialist Herb Goetz at the Fab Lab. Goetz suggested a relatively simple design, taking a nearly 1-foot long rod of hot-rolled steel, bending it strategically to accommodate most exterior commercial doors, and coating it with a rubber surface to minimize any tendency to slip. The tool costs about $3 in materials to make, Nigl said.

This past January, with a nearly final design complete, Nigl and a team walked down College Avenue in downtown Appleton testing the device on dozens of doors. It worked on nearly every single occasion.

“To me, starting out last April and having something done in January was a very short period of time,” Nigl said.

In just over a year, the Fab Lab at FVTC has already emerged as a leading inventor resource in northeast Wisconsin. The high tech prototyping laboratory and its staff serve as a regional innovation hub and is part of a network of 30 other Fab Labs around the globe, including the lead Fab Lab at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Fab Lab at FVTC has already had varying degrees of contact with more than 100 inventors in the past 18 months, said Jim Janisse, development manager for the Fab Lab. Through a partnership with the school’s Venture Center to support entrepreneurial activity in the region, inventors are able to move seamlessly between the two departments to develop a product, develop a business plan, develop and improve a prototype, and access the necessary resources to take the product to market.

“Between the Fab Lab and the Venture Center, we try to become the clearing house for the inventor,” Janisse said, indicating it’s a unique model not yet replicated  in the global Fab Lab network.

The invention concepts working through the pipeline at the Fab Lab represent new product ideas supporting a diverse array of consumer and business-to-business industries.

Menasha School District physical therapist Tina Main was in to visit the Fab Lab in late February to review some of the suggested modifications to her Story Tent, a fabric structure that encloses a two-foot square platform swing used in schools to help students with various disabilities refine their balance and motor skills.

Main had developed the idea while working on a project for a graduate course at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in the fall of 2007, hoping to bridge the gap between literacy and gross motor movement by tying in storytelling to the rehabilitative platform swing. Felt shape leaves, for example, can be affixed to the outside of the tent give students the feeling of swinging in a tree while Main reads to the student. But physically manifesting her vision into a tangible, safe and working tool was becoming a challenge.

“I had some difficulties making the design that was in my head,” Main said of the early stage of development.

A chance meeting at a race track during the summer of 2008 with then-outgoing FVTC President David Buettner lead her to seek the assistance of the Fab Lab. The Neenah resident took her prototype into the Fab Lab and identified a few of the drawbacks that she’d already recognized related to the safety and use of the Story Tent and swing.

“I had run into some problems with the design. I needed another perspective,” Main said.

Since the Fab Lab staff is “aware of the whole process from napkin sketches to product on the shelf,” as Janisse puts it, they’re able to provide that third-party perspective.

That outside perspective is what has become some of the most valuable input for another Neenah resident, Danny Blank, who along with his partner developed the “Range Caddy” to make teeing up a golf ball a more efficient, automated process when practicing out on the driving range or in the backyard.

The partners and a group of investors have been working with a functioning, metal prototype assembled in his partner’s workshop. The initial business model called for plans to contract the manufacturing of the Range Caddy, and work with investors at a Chicago-area sports marketing firm to get the product in the hands of retailers.

When they came to the Fab Lab in late 2008, Blank and his partner discovered more than just a pathway to marketability.
The first suggestion Blank received from experts at the Fab Lab was to consider crafting a design made from a durable, weather resistant plastic – as opposed to the metal used in the prototype – that would be easier and less costly to manufacture in a large-scale production. Next, the Fab Lab staff advised Blank and his partner that if the product were manufactured in a few different pieces that would be simple for the end consumer to assemble themselves, it could be packaged in a more compact, cube-like box that would fit nicely on retail store shelves.

“I was impressed with the whole process,” Blank said. “The plastics (manufactured components) was the real key for us on this,” he said, explaining that it would allow for a much more affordable product to the consumer.

The Fab Lab’s Goetz, who has a degree in product design, said many inventors think about the functionality of their product, but rarely begin to consider factors like the ease of manufacturing their product or the ease of packaging it for retail. Simple modifications to the invention’s design can allow it to be produced less expensively and marketed less painfully.

“These are all considerations a designer and an engineer have to take into account when evaluating these ideas,” Goetz said.

Protecting intellectual rights
IN AN INDUSTRY WHERE NEW PRODUCTS come out at a fast pace, Andropolis knew he needed to protect the intellectual rights to his newly developed paint roller, which he dubbed “Big Kahuna,” as soon as possible. And he knew the steps to take.

Andropolis started with a preliminary patent search to determine just how inventive his product really was to the marketplace. Did a similar patented product – or concept for such a product – already exist? If so, it would be waste of his time and finances to navigate the patent process.

For inventors who’ve already developed a prototype of their idea, Andropolis emphasized the patent search process can’t be overlooked as a critical next step.

“I would recommend – if they’ve gotten this deep into the process – to hire a professional patent researcher. Don’t think you can research it yourself on the Internet,” Andropolis said.

Once determining his invention was original enough for a patent of its own, Andropolis then hired a patent attorney to help him navigate the time-consuming and costly process to fully register with the U.S. Patent Office.

Appleton inventor Joe McDonald learned the sky is the limit on the amount of time and expense one can invest into protecting their intellectual property. McDonald, now retired after 30 years working in a Fox Cities tissue mill, developed what he’s called a “Fractionating Saveall.”

Most papermakers recover all whitewater solids, McDonald explained. The Fractioning Saveall separates them, making it easier to recover the long fiber used in the papermaking process. Tissue makers, McDonald said, are particularly vulnerable in this regard. And in an industry where there remain a number of issues with whitewater management, McDonald’s device provides tissue makers with a higher level of control in their processes.

It took 18 months for McDonald to get his patent issued to him, and thousands of dollars at his own expense to conduct the proper patent search and hire a patent attorney.

“It takes time and the costs can be high, but in an industry where machinery, quality and green technology are highly prized, I’m sure (the intellectual property protection expenses) will pay off,” McDonald said.

Nigl’s door opening device was never created with the intent of making a profit. He plans to manufacture the tools himself, and give them away at no charge to those people who are placed with a service dog.

As a result, he hasn’t sought a patent, yet. The board of directors for Northeast Wisconsin Service Dogs, who Nigl claims as really owning the rights to the design of the tool, is deciding if it should proceed forward with what could be an expensive process to protect the intellectual property. The not-for-profit operates on a shoestring budget and doesn’t have any paid staff.

“At least we have right of domain on this, so we can demonstrate that we had the idea first,” Nigl said. “What a patent does for us is give us the right to take someone to court (if the intellectual property is copied and breached), but we don’t have the money to take someone to court anyway.”

Going to market
THE IDEA BEHIND TINA  MAIN’S STORY TENT is to create a play area that transforms a physical therapy apparatus into a learning experience. She said students like the security of being enclosed in the tent, and nearly every student gets excited when they see the tents set up on the platform swing in their school.

The Story Tent can be costly to manufacture and distribute, though. And since children would be using it in a school setting, the potential for product liability lawsuits can be overwhelming for a small, start-up entrepreneur to take on. 
Main decided the best approach to the market was to license her product to another company to manufacture, market and distribute. Main would be paid a royalty for each Story Tent sold.

“That’s fine with me. I don’t have the ability to start a company,” she said.

Abilitations catalog – distributed by Greenville-based School Specialty Inc. – seemed to be a natural fit for Main’s Story Tent. The catalog was already the source for many of the rehabilitative supplies and equipment Main ordered for her student therapy work in Menasha schools. She contacted the catalog through a program soliciting and encouraging customer ideas for new products, and the company accepted her idea in 2008. She’s been busy finalizing her work on a patent before wrapping up loose ends with the Abilitations catalog.

The road to market had been long and littered with obstacles for McDonald, who has endured the last four years attempting to get his screening device in front of executives from some of the nation’s leading paper companies. After 30 years in the industry himself, McDonald discovered it was a business that doesn’t easily adapt to change and clings to traditional processes, some of which may be inefficient.

While attending a pulp and paper industry technical conference last year in Green Bay, McDonald met Jeff Lindsay, director of solution development at Neenah-based Innovationedge. Lindsay, a former professor at the Institute of Paper Science & Technology and the developer of more than 100 patents while working as a researcher for Kimberly-Clark Corp., was familiar with the paper industry and familiar with the process and protocol to proliferate a new idea within its institution.

McDonald began working with the team at Innovationedge shortly afterwards, demonstrating the working full-scale unit he built in his garage and discussing his journey during the past four years.

“It was difficult for me on the front end because I don’t have the connections in the industry,” McDonald said. “But with IE’s help, I’ve moved much further along.”

Currently, Innovationedge is helping to work out the final details for McDonald to conduct a trial of his Fractionating Saveall in a tissue mill.

Back to Andropolis’s Big Kahuna roller for the painting contractor industry, which – after being developed nearly eight years ago – is changing its course for the market. His product was a semifinalist in the Governor’s 2004 Business Plan Competition, and ranked No. 7 on American Painting Contractor magazine’s Top Ten New Products of 2006.

Andropolis had initially built a business plan centered around outsourcing the manufacturing of his products. He had warehouse capacity established in Milwaukee and a team of professionals to help with each stage of scheduling, taking orders and delivery. He had arranged to release his product through the seven largest painting equipment distributorships in the country that supply more than 28,000 retail outlets nationwide.

But despite these successes, he’s struggled to secure the financing necessary to bring his business model to the next level.

After spending tens of thousands of dollars of his own money and investing years of his time, a quality control flaw in the early production run of 1,000 units set him back substantially. Andropolis was able to salvage some of the units, which he was able to package and market online at outlets like Amazon.com.

He’s since switched strategies, and is currently looking to license the Big Kahuna and other painting inventions he’s developed along the way to manufacturers of similar painting products.

“If one approach doesn’t work, you have to have the foresight to change the approach,” Andropolis said.

That level of fortitude is necessary to clear the hurdles that invariably block nearly every inventor’s path. Likewise, Joe McDonald indicated a strong self-confidence in the ability and need for his invention helped continue to drive his momentum, even after each paper industry executive he approached turned him down.

“From my personal perspective, when you’re right and you know you’re right, it’s easier to deal with adversity,” he said.
And along with that self-confidence, Andropolis said, invention requires a steady dose of patience and persistence.

“The concept-to-market process is long, it can be detailed, it’s time consuming, and it can be expensive,” Andropolis said. “It’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint.”