YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
Necessity may be the mother of invention, as Plato famously stated, but for the most part, actual mothers (in fact, women in general) are not.
A 2019 study of worldwide patentholders by the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office shows only 12.7% of inventors named on patents are women – and that’s roughly double the proportion of a decade before.
But in a list by the publication 24/7 Wall St., women are credited with such inventions as the circular saw, the computer algorithm, the dishwasher, the medical syringe, wireless transmission technology, the microelectrode – and even central heating.
A self-proclaimed “sports mom of invention,” Springfield resident Melissa DuVall said she created her product, the Ponchairo, out of necessity.
“It was my own selfish, personal necessity – maybe a little out of laziness,” she said.
DuVall said she would go to her child’s ballgame on a sunny day, but sometimes the game would go into extra innings, clouds would roll in and the sun would set, leaving her shivering.
She was reluctant to leave the game or trek back to her car to get a blanket on these occasions, and she recalled telling her friend, “I need a blanket that stays with my chair.”
That offhand remark bloomed into an invention.
“That’s the idea that hatched,” she said.
DuVall went online to see if a chair/blanket combo already existed, and she didn’t find anything.
“For a long time, I just sat on the idea,” she said.
But then she spoke to a colleague, and he told her sometimes God plants seeds to be cultivated. If DuVall wouldn’t see the idea through, he would plant those seeds elsewhere, he told her.
That’s when DuVall decided to see what she could do to bring her idea to fruition.
She began working with an intellectual property specialist from New Jersey-based Global Intellectual Property Agency LLC on obtaining first a provisional and then a full patent.
“All of that took years,” she said.
After obtaining a provisional patent, she began saving her work bonuses – she is a national account director for Sobi North America – to pay for the full patent process while testing prototypes and doing market research.
The Ponchairo is a pouch containing a poncho that can be attached to any chair. It has a shortened back so that it doesn’t get bunched up beneath the wearer, and the pouch can also hold other items, like a wallet or phone. While DuVall created it with sporting events in mind, she said she has heard of people using it while camping or hunting or while mudding in jeeps, and she has also heard it is used by some people in wheelchairs.
When asked if she had caught the invention bug and was pursuing other ideas, she said she was not.
“I think my heart is so invested in this right now, I would almost feel like I was cheating if I tried to turn my attention elsewhere,” she said. “It would be patent adultery! I can’t do that.”
It took some time to get Ponchairo off the ground. The idea first came to DuVall at her son’s baseball game in 2015, and now he’s in college. He and her two adult daughters all help with aspects of the business, including shipping, social media and technology services.
DuVall began selling the Ponchairo online in November, and revenue figures are not yet available, she said. The product is manufactured in Mountain Home, Arkansas.
The invention bug
Arianna Russell, of Ozark, is the inventor of the Bandit Case, a snap-together phone case that is water resistant and includes a slot for credit cards.
Just as DuVall envisioned a blanket while shivering through a ball game, Russell was in a hot tub on July 4, 2009, when she realized how helpful it would be to have her phone near at hand. Exactly three years to the day later, she launched her business, Bodacious Cases LLC. The mostly online and trade show-based business, which manufactured products in St. Louis and later in Nixa, closed in 2018.
Russell received quite a bit of national attention for her product – so much so that after ABC World News covered her story in 2012, her company’s website crashed multiple times.
“We lost over $100,000 in sales,” she said.
These days, Russell is no longer producing phone cases, but she is using her inventing expertise to advise others who have products in mind and would like to get them on the shelf.
Her AR (Arianna Russell) Product Academy Course is slated to go live this summer with online instruction and four options for move-at-your-own-pace coursework, offered at a pay-what-you-can pricing plan.
She also does individual consulting, with a one-hour session priced at $149, a five-hour session priced at $500, or an ongoing mastermind group, including a monthly online question-and-answer session, for $30 a month.
Russell said the most important quality of an inventor is perseverance.
“I would say be persistent,” she said. “Without being persistent and a go-getter, then you’re not going to be taken as seriously as you could; you’re not going to be able to find the people that truly believe in you.”
Russell said she worked with a Kansas City engineer, and she met with him several times early in the process. A couple months in, Russell said he told her, “I didn’t think you were going to do it.”
Russell said the people she spoke to about her invention, including designers, engineers and manufacturing plant owners, were mostly men, and some of them told her directly she would be wasting their time. If the idea was feasible, they said, one of the existing manufacturers would have done it already. Her attorney, Sativa Boatman-Sloan, was a huge mentor, she said, offering legal advice throughout the process.
According to Russell, it’s common for women not to be taken seriously as inventors.
“If you’re the only female in the room, that’s OK,” she said.
DuVall said she got support from the legal team she worked with on the patent, but she did encounter some naysayers along the way.
“When I first had the idea, women immediately got it,” she said. “Men, on the other hand, were more hesitant and laughed about it.”
Amy Blansit, of Springfield, is the inventor of Solely Jolie, a silicon palette used to clean off makeup brushes between applications.
Blansit’s husband had been diagnosed with colon cancer, and she was in the habit of wearing a silicon “hope” bracelet in support of his journey. One day in 2012, she said she rubbed a brush she thought was clean against the bracelet and noticed a ton of makeup coming off.
“I became educated on how dirty the makeup process is and how lazy we are with it,” she said.
“We never think of how much transmission is happening when we put it on our eyes and our face.”
She began ordering hunks of rubber, silicon and plastic to try to find one that had natural adhesive properties. She also began investigating existing trademarks for applicator cleaners.
Blansit said her husband, Drew Lewis, passed away from his disease in 2013, but he was her first and greatest supporter in the process. Even so, like Russell and DuVall, she encountered a few barriers from other men she talked to, especially manufacturers.
“My biggest thing was trying to explain repeatedly to men why it was needed,” she said.
Like Russell, she often found she was the only woman in the room or on a phone call.
Solely Jolie palettes are manufactured in China. Blansit said U.S. manufacturing is geared toward vehicles, not specialty items like silicon rubber products.
“China just has the infrastructure,” she said.
She noted the manufacturing professionals she works with in China are all women.
Her product line also includes a sanitizer spray that is made locally in Nixa at Aire-Master of America Inc. Her goal is to get connected with the right manufacturer to allow her to produce the same quality products here in the U.S.
She noted she has worked with Zulily, The Grommet, Urban Outfitters and other retailers to market her products, with the pandemic bringing some of those sales to a standstill.
Blansit said prior to the pandemic, she was continuing to work on marketing, packing and distribution options, and was selling 1,000 units per year nationally through The Grommet.
“With startup and cost of goods, sales were netting $5,000-$7,000 – very small potatoes as we try to break into the cosmetics industry.”
She added she has been using this time to add product and work on distribution systems.
“With COVID, so many people have been let go that none of my contacts exist anymore,” she said. “I’ve now got to reestablish those relationships.”
One factor on Blansit’s side is the fact that even during a financial crisis, the beauty industry stays steady.
“You can go into Walgreens, and for four or five dollars you can buy a piece of makeup that’s going to at least make you feel good, even when life is unraveling,” she said.
Moseley’s Discount Office Products was purchased; Side Chick opened in Branson; and the Springfield franchise store of NoBaked Cookie Dough changed ownership.
