From Tampa Florida comes news of Tangela Walker-Craft, an ordinary woman with an idea – which became a worldwide sales sensation. A nursing mother, Walker-Craft could see the problems with feeding her baby away from home. And she had some ideas about what would work, what she’d buy if only it were sold in the local stores. But it wasn’t because it didn’t exist.
Maternity supply companies make dozens of good products, but they didn’t see the needs for another product. They focused on the needs of their core customer base. Manufacturers of travel products likewise offered dozens of innovative products aimed at making travel more comfortable and convenient, with lightweight and small items – everything from toothbrushes to pillows and blankets. But their business was planes, trains, cars, and travelers, not babies and mothers. So neither did they see the problems that Walker-Craft was facing. The product she wanted just didn’t exist.
Most people would have given up at that point, but Walker-Craft is tenacious. She filed a patent application for her invention, negotiated the labyrinthine patent process, and received her patent for the Go Pillow. It’s unique in that it is small and lightweight, cradles the baby comfortably, is worn around the arm, and incorporates a built in blanket for privacy. Receiving a patent wasn’t the end of her road by a long shot.
The Go Pillow was so unique and useful that she received coverage from television stations which drove sales. But she needed sustained marketing and broader distribution. Finding the right manufacturer and distrubutor for the product she signed a licensing agreement, and today the Go Pillow is sold worldwide including on amazon.com.
Not everyone has the creativity, energy, dedication, and just maybe the good luck of Walker-Craft. Many have great ideas, but an idea without a manufacturer is just vapor. An idea without intellectual property protection may well end up as “someone else’s” great idea. A manufacturer without new ideas is stuck with a static or declining market. That’s what Idea Paradise is about: putting together the need with the solution with the product with the market, to deliver fresh new ideas to consumers.
Read her story at http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/bn9/2017/8/27/lakeland_woman_s_inv.html