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Finding Your Best Customers
Inventor Story: Debbee Barker
Debbee Barker was looking for a way to help keep her daughter’s rooms more organized and less cluttered. She realized that a large part of the mess was caused by laundry left unfolded or folded improperly and started thinking of ways to make folding and organizing clean clothes easier. The result was Barker’s invention of the FlipFOLD laundry organizer which allows anyone to quickly and uniformly fold clothes.
The FlipFOLD is a simple three sectioned folding device that folds shirts exactly the same way every time so they more easily fit into drawers or closet organizers. Also, the regularity of the fold prevents clothes from becoming wrinkled in a drawer. The product comes in a regular size as well as a junior size and has various colors to choose from. Using the product, even a child can quickly fold clothes nicely every time.
While this idea worked well for its original intended purpose, the real success for the FlipFOLD came when Barker used her experience as a retail buyer to see that her product would be perfect for retail stores that need to quickly fold large amounts of clothing for display and sale. While useful in the home, the FlipFOLD is ideal for businesses because folding by hand is very time consuming and can prevent salespeople from being effective at actually selling clothing. By buying this product to speed up the folding process businesses can save money. Now the FlipFOLD is used by large retail stores as well as professional sports teams and uniform companies.
The lesson here is to always be on the look out for the best uses or markets for your current idea. Too often inventors only think about using their product for the specific purpose it was invented for and can be missing out on even greater possibilities elsewhere. A product can fail in one arena and succeed in another and you need to know who will be your best customers. By looking beyond her daughters’ dressers Debbee Barker was able to turn her idea into a success.
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