Home Fires Burning
Spark nationwide success for your product with some sales fuel from your local neighborhood stores.
Plenty of inventors start their companies without the experience
or financial resources they need to market their products. That can
make it hard to land major accounts. The best approach for many new
inventors is to start selling their products locally, where
hometown ties can be a big selling point, and then expand into
national distribution.
That's how Dale Carsel and Bob Schneider did it. In 1995,
the two partners got a job painting a large home in Beachwood,
Ohio. When they discovered the owner planned to decorate much of
the house with wallpaper, they suggested achieving the same effect
with faux finishing, the art of painting with a sponge, rag or
other applicator to make the painted space look as though it had
been decorated in another medium. To handle the job, Carsel, 49,
and Schneider, 47, made 6-by-6-inch pattern sponges that could
finish a room at one-third the cost of wallpapering.
Charles Zuchowski, 49, a building contractor and the owner of
the house, loved the look—and the tool. Together, the three
considered marketing the sponges under the name SpongePrince. After
getting rave reviews from a patent attorney and some local interior
decorators, they formed Wall Concepts Plus Inc. Their first
strategy? Focus on the local market.
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Since then, they've introduced the SpongePrince nationwide,
despite having no experience marketing a consumer product. Sales
have also been exceptional, rising more than 300 percent yearly
since the SpongePrince's introduction in 1996. This year, the
partners expect to sell more than 1 million units at $19.99
apiece.
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