The mothers'
inventions making millions
By FT.com / August 25, 2005 12:30 PM
What do J K Rowling and Aki Maita have in common? Both were
mothers struggling to make ends meet when they had ideas that
would amass fortunes worth millions.
Ms Rowling's idea, the Harry Potter books, would make her
one of the richest women in the world. In contrast Ms Maita,
inventor of the Tamagotchi toy, continued afterwards to work
in a salaried and relatively modest management role for her
Japanese employers, the Bandai toy company.
Despite these differences, both were able to enjoy the satisfaction
of seeing their ideas entertaining a generation of children
all over the world. Neither of these entrepreneurial women,
however, was able to draw on advice about how they should
go about getting their work in to the marketplace and both
faced a struggle to convince executives that their ideas would
sell.
Tamara Monosoff, a former White House staffer-turned- inventor,
noticed that there were thousands of women in the US facing
the same issues: how do you go about bringing an idea to market
when you're raising a family and may have little or no business
experience?
Her response was to establish Mom Inventors, Inc., a web-based
business that markets the ideas of mothers.
Most of the ideas are related to the everyday
issues faced in child rearing. The Mom Inventors website features
products such as a the Mini Bites Crustless Sandwich Cutter,
the Thumbkin for stopping thumb sucking, and Utterly Yours™, a pillow that holds the breast
in position for "hands free nursing".
Among the best sellers are the TP Saver, which prevents toddlers
from unrolling toilet paper, Shoe Clues - stickers that enable
children to distinguish left and right shoes - and Fridgefile,
a magnetic filing and message system.
A number of other popular buys on the site, however, are product
development seminars designed to help women bring their ideas
to market.
Responding to the demand Ms Monosoff has now written a book,
The Mom Inventors, Inc Handbook, which, as she points out,
is for anyone who seeks to be an inventor. It just happens
that all her examples are American mothers.
Among the featured inventions is something called the "Couponizer".
This is a system for organising the discount product coupons
you can cut out of newspapers and magazines.
As one of those people who doesn't have plastic loyalty or
"points" cards for supermarkets and petrol stations
and who has never in his entire life cut out a coupon for
anything, I couldn't think of anything more banal.
But a lot of thrifty people - mainly women - do cut out coupons
and know what a difference they can make to the weekly shopping
bill.
Amy Bergin, inventor of the Couponizer, was one of them. She
did some market research and found that Dollars 336bn in coupons
were distributed in the US in 2002. Of those, about 3.8bn
were redeemed, producing savings of Dollars 3bn, leaving Dollars
333bn of possible savings unclaimed.
One telling statistic she uncovered was that 79 per cent of
shoppers used coupons. In other words every year at regular
intervals millions of people in the US are reaching for their
scissors and cutting out coupons. It sounds like a national
past-time.
Ms Bergin's idea was to give some shape to this shopping habit
with a handy organiser that categorises coupons in product
ranges.
So instead of thumbing through a sheaf of coupons all the
time for the right one, you have your washing powder coupons
ready when you get to the supermarket detergents aisle.
Another mother wanted something a little bit older-looking
for her toddlers than a romper suit, so created one-piece
garments that looked like separates. So a child that looks
to be wearing shorts and a shirt, for example, is in fact
wearing a one-piece suit that does not part company at the
waist.
Ms Monosoff's book confirms something that has been suspected
for a while: that women who continue to look after their children
at home are just as creative and possibly more so, than those
who go back in to the workplace. But they do need an outlet
for their thinking.
Women inventors have been around for years but have always
struggled to get their ideas accepted. Historically many of
them used their husbands to put their inventions in front
of manufacturers.
Autumn Stanley's book, Mothers and Daughters of Invention,
suggests that the US Patents Office has grossly undercounted
the number of inventions by women because of the widespread
practice of men, particularly in the 19th and early 20th century,
of registering their wives' inventions in their own names."Many
women have been happy to let other people exploit their ideas
in the past," says Ms Monosoff, "Now they have the
chance to get their creations recognised as their own."
As far back as 1946, Marion O'Brien Donovan had the idea of
cutting up her plastic shower curtains to produce a leak-free
nappy cover for her baby.
The idea, which netted her Dollars 1m when she sold the manufacturing
rights, was the forerunner of the disposable nappy.In those
days the inventing work of women tended to be eclipsed by
men. Hedy Lamarr, one of the most glamorous actresses of the
1940s, was also the co-inventor of a radio-controlled torpedo
but her scientific work barely registered in a Hollywood star
system that only venerated women for their looks.
Overall the US has something like 82m mothers, three-quarters
of whom are working. "Some 64 per cent of these women,"
says Ms Monosoff, "would like to organise their work
around their families." A growing number are beginning
to realise their dreams. According to the US Small Business
Administration, the US now has 9.1m women entre- preneurs
employing 27.7m people and contributing Dollars 3.6 trillion
to the economy.
A big contributor to the rise in women entrepreneurs, says
Ms Monosoff, has been the Internet, allowing women to run
businesses from home and to organise their work more efficiently.
"It fits in well with mothers' schedules, allowing them
to work late at night when their kids are asleep," she
says.
Ms Monosoff's book is helping to enlarge the working options
of women. Too often in the past women have had little choice
between working full time when they can still pursue careers
or staying at home with their children when often their only
option has been scouring the situations vacant columns for
advertised part-time jobs that tend to be lowly paid.
Today, technology is creating new avenues in to a world that
is hungry for ideas. The future for women entrepreneurs it
seems has probably never been brighter.
The Mom Inventors, Inc Handbook, a step-by-step guide to creating
and selling hot products, is published in September by McGraw-Hill,
Dollars 16.95.
RICHARD DONKIN(C) Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2005.
'FT' and 'Financial Times' are trademarks of The Financial
Times.
Media Contact:
Nadia Jamshidi
408.859.6052
nadia@Utterlyyours.com
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