Inventors share their wealth
Sisters who
took an idea to market want to help others do the
same
07/13/2003
By CHERYL HALL
/ The Dallas Morning News
PLANO – Barbara
Russell Pitts and Mary Russell Sarao made their indelible
mark in business with barely visible gridlines on
poster board.
Since licensing their
Ghostline concept to Carolina Pad and Paper Co., based
in Charlotte, N.C., six years ago, the sisters have
raked in $2.5 million in royalties – while working
from their homes in Plano.
"We call it our
mailbox money," says Ms. Pitts.
"Every three months,"
Ms. Sarao chimes in, "we go to the mailbox and
get more money."
But their success took
bloodhound persistence.
"There's this conspiracy
of silence," says Ms. Pitts. "No one wants
to give away the secrets of product development."
That's why Ms. Pitts,
a 61-year-old one-time office administrator, and Ms.
Sarao, a 56-year-old former teacher, decided "to
spill the beans to the millions of inventors who need
to know this information" on a free Internet
site, www.asktheinventors.com.
"We feel Ghostline
was a gift from God," adds Ms. Sarao, who literally
dreamed up the faintly lined craft board one night
after helping her daughter with a school project.
"Now it's time to spread the blessings."
The Web site offers
free step-by-step guidance on getting a patent and
one-on-one consultations for those trying to wind
their way out of inventor's hell.
That's familiar territory
for the two women who spent three years navigating
their simple idea onto the shelves of major supermarket,
drug and discount chains throughout the United States
and Canada.
"We felt like we
were driving to California without a roadmap,"
says Ms. Pitts, president of Texas Inventors Association,
a nonprofit help group that meets monthly at the Davis
Library in Plano.
They each spend at least
25 hours a week answering questions from around the
globe – everything from how to find licensed
agents who help inventors get patents to unearthing
potential manufacturers.
Their workweeks are
already brimming as they conjure ideas for their company,
Second Sight Enterprises Inc., and consult with major
manufacturers who now pay rapt attention to what the
sisters have to say.
"When we started,
we'd call companies and say, 'My sister and I have
invented this wonderful product...' Bad, bad idea,"
laughs Ms. Sarao. "Now we're 'professional product
designers.' We never call ourselves inventors."
"Inventors are
wild, frizzy-haired scientific weirdos who nobody
wants to deal with," Ms. Pitts says. "It's
all a matter of semantics."
A ghost of an
idea
The Sisters Russell
fairytale started late one night in 1994 when Ms.
Sarao's daughter announced that she had a project
due the next day that required two poster boards –
which, of course, the ninth-grader didn't have.
After a dash to Tom
Thumb, Ms. Sarao tried to speed the process by drawing
faint pencil guidelines with a yardstick – fuming
all the while. "I'm mad at her for waiting until
the last minute," Ms. Sarao says, "and I'm
mad because this is such a tedious hassle."
She went to bed grousing
that there had to be a better way. She woke up at
3 a.m. with the answer: a ghosted grid that you can
see close up but that's nearly invisible once the
project is completed.
Ms. Sarao called her
sister as early as she dared saying she'd dreamed
up a product they had to make. "Bless her heart,
Barb didn't even ask what it was."
"We think so much
alike, we're really like twins born five years apart,"
explains Ms. Pitts. "I knew if this idea had
her that excited, it had to be something really good."
First they needed to
know if it really was a new idea.
A thorough search of
stores turned up nothing. So they set about finding
ink that would work and a printer who'd put up with
their experiments.
"We'd tell ourselves
daily, 'Someday this is going to be in Wal-Mart, Kmart,
Target and Eckerd,' " recalls Ms. Sarao. "We
absolutely believed it."
Three months later,
armed with a prototype (but naively before they'd
filed for a patent), they began calling, writing and
faxing paper-products companies.
"We did everything
but dance on their tables. We would have done that
if they'd let us," says Ms. Pitts, still amazed
that they didn't forfeit their idea along the way.
They nearly did.
Three patent attorneys
said they'd never get legal protection because lines
on paper had been around for centuries.
"We managed to
sneak through with 'invisible lines on paper,' "
Ms. Pitts says merrily.
The U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office sent word on June 25, 1996, that
their patent would be issued within a few months.
The sisters sent a "press release" via Fed
Ex, not to the media but to paperboard makers announcing
that their product was available for licensing.
A number of big-league
players, including Carolina Pad and The Mead Corp.
in Dayton, immediately pounced.
"We had such fun
because a bidding war broke out," says Ms. Sarao.
"We'd had such
a difficult time with so many doors slammed in our
faces," adds Ms. Pitts. "Now they were coming
to us."
A copycat hurdle
But another company
decided to help itself to the Ghostline idea, gratis.
"Our low point
was finding out that we'd been ripped off," says
Ms. Pitts, recalling her devastation when she spotted
the copycat at a Dallas trade show. "It's not
an infringement; it's just a rip-off until the day
the patent is issued. And ours hadn't been."
"We thought all
was lost," says Ms. Sarao, "because what
chance did we have against a big company?"
Under normal circumstances,
none. But as part of its proposed licensing agreement,
Carolina Pad offered to sue the infringing company
as soon as their patent was in place. And it did.
So the interloper now
sends the sisters royalties every three months, too.
Ms. Sarao flipped out
the first time she saw actual product at a local drugstore
in the spring of 1997. Since then, nearly $50 million
in Ghostline products have been sold.
The sisters' share is
5 percent.
Carolina Pad president
Clay Presley couldn't be happier with the deal. "We
probably have more distribution with our Ghostline
products than any of our other lines. That's a real
tribute to the product's usefulness and to these great
ladies' persistence."
For the first couple
of years, the sisters sat back and collected their
mailbox money before they got back into the inventive
mode.
They have a half-dozen
products in the works, including one that will be
introduced at a trade show in Chicago this month.
Sandtastic Creations
(a kit being manufactured by Activa Products Inc.
in Marshall, Texas) allows vacationers to mold sand
souvenirs using water and a "magic powder"
adhesive.
A patent-agent friend
found the glue that would work, so the sisters cut
him in for a third of the royalties even though he
didn't expect to be compensated.
Ms. Sarao's 24-year-old
daughter Valerie – the tardy poster board girl
– came up with a patent-pending (and still secret)
three-ring binder that Avery Dennison Corp. in California
is seriously considering. She'll get a third of any
royalties.
In addition to helping
people online, the sisters recently started directly
helping others get their inventions licensed. Unlike
many invention promotion companies, they don't charge
an upfront fee. They will, however, take a 35 percent
share of any royalties that they bring about.
If the sisters don't
have appropriate contacts for a product, they refer
the inventor to licensing agents and promotion companies
with legitimate reputations.
Unethical predators,
they warn, abound.
Many invention promotion
companies spend megabucks advertising that they will
get products patented and licensed and make the inventors
millionaires, but they rarely deliver on their claims,
the sisters say.
"The United Inventors
Association in New York is working hard to cut down
on scams," says Ms. Pitts. "But it's like
stamping on cockroaches. You stamp on one, and there's
10 more right behind it."
Bob Schmidt, co-inventor
of CubeDoor, an attachable, rolling door for office
cubicles, attended a recent Texas Inventors Association
meeting where he learned from the sisters that his
company took the hard route by manufacturing the product
instead of licensing it.
Mr. Schmidt and his
partner will follow the sisters' lead with their second
office product. "Invent, license and then collect
your money at the mailbox. I love that concept."
Cheryl Hall
Cheryl Hall is a columnist for The Dallas
Morning News.
E-mail: [email protected]
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