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Avoid the Fault I made!
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By:
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afstrom
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Mood:
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Other
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Date:
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Aug 10, 2008
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AVOID THE FAULT I MADE WHICH RESULTED IN THE FAILURE OF THE VENNTURE
I have been working with image transfer since the fifties, when my first Swedish patent application was refused. However, in 1962 I made a second try, and in 1963, I forwarded an English translation to my Swedish patent Attorney's US representative. This application and one, forwarded the next year, resulted in the first patents of Image transfer sheets, US Patents No 3,344,012, approved in 1968, and No 3,607,525, approved in 1971.
In 1968, I participated in the International Inventors Expo, held in the New York Coliseum, and received a gold medal award. In 1971, the Lift-a-Print Transfer Sheets were introduced at the Canadian Toy Fair in Montreal, Canada, and in 1972, the first Lift-a-Picture transfer sheets were introduced at the Hobby Industry Association, HIA's, Annual trade show, held in Chicago.
I believe these were the very first transfer sheets ever. Although the first TV sponsored introduction in 1976 sold over 34,000 kits in the first 5 weeks, the venture failed. To explain the reasons, I would have to tell a 15 year long story from the very beginning. Perhaps I will do that later.
I had been severely hurt by the first failure, and swore to myself never to make any more inventions. In 1982, I retired from the International Civil Aviation Organization and settled down in Mexico, the country of my wife. To have something to do, I studied computer programming, but after a couple of years, I understood that I would not become a second Bill Gates, and instead, I took up my old hobby of image transfer. However, I did this more as a hobby, without any thoughts of making it a business.
While my first transfer sheets utilized adhesive for the transfer, in Mexico I tried out various plastisols and emulsions. After a while, I had developed a process, utilizing a Rohm & Haas acrylic emulsion and a plastisol produced by the British company Sericol. During a visit to London in 1984, I visited the company with a view of interesting them in the process I had developed, and licensing this invention, for which I had applied for a US patent. However, they were not interested in any products aimed at the consumer market.
The process worked very well for transfer of art reproductions, available in books. As a Rotarian of many years, I joined the local Rotary Club. At the monthly dinners with ladies, I auctioned art transfers to canvas, which I had framed. The income was donated to the Charity Fund of the Club.
Among the Members of the Club was a priest, Padre Porfirio, who invited me to teach housewives of his parish to make transfers. I started to give them weekly classes, and soon they and several of their children had become so skilled in the art, that they were invited to exhibit and sell their transfers at an outdoor luncheon of several Rotary Clubs of the district. The exhibited transfers were looked at by most of the participants in the lunch, and all were sold.
Due to the apparent success of my new transfer process, several of the Members of my Rotary Club advised me to sell transfer kits.Remembering what had happened to my first venture, I was not interested in again becoming an entrepreneur. Instead, I planned to license my new process. However, as several of the Members and also my friends were willing to invest in a venture, I finally accepted, and so, the Mexican corporation, Calcola de Mexico, S.A. de CV was formed.
I did also register a US Corporation, Lift-a-Picture, Inc. The aim of the company was to market and license my inventions and patents. To test whether there was still interest in transfer sheets, I participated in the HIA 1985 annual trade Show, held in Anaheim, CA. I found that there was sufficient interest to sell kits to wholesalers and craft shops. I even managed to find a good Manufacturer's Representative.
I invested quite a deal in purchase of Acrylic Emulsion B60A, which I obtained from the Mexican Rohm & Haas company and plastisol from Tintas Sanchez, S.A. de C.V., the distributors for the company I had visited in London 2 years earlier and from which I had obtained the Sericol plastisol during the 3 years I spent on developing the process. I designed kits, wrote Instructions, had the B60A emulsion bottled in 1 oz bottles and the plastisol in small jars. When the kits were ready, I exhibited them at local craft shows in San Diego, CA and Cleveland, OH, and finally, at the 1986 annual tradeshow of HIA, held in St. Louis, MI.
I had put in a large ad in the exhibition catalogue, and our booth was visited by many prominent persons in the craft business, among others the developer and manufacturer of the Decal-it transfer emulsion, and the head of the largest mail order sewing material company in the US. Our booth was having visitors all the time, interested in my transfer demonstrations. Everything looked as if I finally had succeeded
However, already in San Diego, the year before, I had found that there was something wrong, because the transfers were more difficult to carry out than those I had made earlier, during the development years. Notwithstanding, being a transfer specialists, I managed to make the demonstrations look easy. However, the difficulties in using the kits became more evident, as the participants in a class I was giving, did not all succeed in making the transfers I had scheduled. In short, I didn't sell many kits and didn't get any orders from any of the visitors to our booth, who had obtained kits and stated that they were planning large orders. What could be the reason?
Soon I found out. The plastisol I had bought from Tintas Sanchez, was not the Sericol plastisol I had bought from them earlier. At the time I received the plastisol I had ordered, they had just changed suppliers. Instead of receiving the Sericol plastisol, made in London, which I had bought from them during the years of development, I had received a plastisol manufactured by their new US supplier. I complained, asking why I hadn't been informed that instead of my order of Sericol plastisol, I had been provided with plastisol manufactured in USA. The representative of the company replied that there was no necessity to inform me, because "there was no difference between the two".
Well, the two plastisols may have been equal from a screen printing point of view, which is the major use of plastisols. But that was not what I was using it for. Obviously for use as an ingredient in transfer sheets, plastisols are not equal, and while those manufactured in Britain worked well, the US version didn't.
What did I do wrong? What can other entrepreneurs and inventors learn from the above story? In short, my main conclusion is the following: If the ingredients of the product you are to manufacture and to sell are produced by companies outside your control, before placing large orders, request samples of each and test these samples well, before placing the orders. If I would have done that, I would have found out that the plastisol that I was to obtain from Tintas Sanche didn't work and was not the one I had been working with. Therefore, instead of placing the order with them, I would have placed it with Sericol's new distributor, or directly with the British manufacturer.
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