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Really, Bright Ideas
What do a 64-year-old grandmother, a married couple with two small children, and a single mom with a bored daughter have in common?Really bright ideas.
But what sets these ordinary folks apart from others who’ve had that “Aha!” moment is that they’re turning their inspirations into cash.
About four years ago, Maria Pistiolis saw a way to solve a problem. Her daughter, Voula, was planning to fly with her three-month-old to see her in-laws in Boston. Maria, a seamstress who’d come to America from Greece more than 40 years earlier, wanted to make it easier for her daughter to carry the sleeping infant while wheeling a suitcase. Ten days later, she’d made an all-in-one diaper bag with a bassinet/changing table that did the job.
Voula—and the airplane passengers—adored the bag. Maria’s regular customers in her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, urged her to put it on the market. After much hand-wringing, Maria and her husband, Mike, took out a loan to pay a lawyer to file an application for a provisional patent, a big sacrifice for grandparents on a limited income. The Pistiolises then sent letters to companies that make diaper bags to gauge interest in Maria’s creation. None responded.
About a year later, Maria decided to improve the bag. That’s when she heard about Enventys, a Charlotte-based company that helps inventors— from start-ups to global Fortune 500 companies—develop products and ideas. To Maria and Mike’s surprise, the president of Enventys, Todd Stancombe, agreed to a meeting.
“I knew the inconvenience of dragging a baby carrier all over,” says Todd, father of three. But when he reviewed Maria’s patent application, he discovered a big problem. A provisional application like the one she submitted gives an inventor a year to fine-tune a product and file for a utility patent, which grants the exclusive right to make and sell the invention in the United States for 20 years. Maria’s deadline ran out at midnight that very day. If her application expired, she could lose her chance to get the bag manufactured and into the marketplace.
Todd explained the situation to the stunned couple and offered to help.
“I told them, ‘I don’t know why I trust you, but I trust you,’” Maria says in her Greek lilt, explaining why she turned over her brainchild. After the firm helped assemble materials for a patent application, an attorney sped to get it stamped before the midnight deadline. He made it.
Maria had no idea that Enventys is part owner of Bouncing Brain, a television company that was preparing to launch a show called Everyday Edisons for PBS. They were scouting the country for smart ideas they could turn into actual products on the market, and would document every stage of the process for broadcast. Maria was in.
But the bag needed tweaks. Enventys’s lead designer, Daniel Bizzell, created a laptop-friendly compartment and a space for the bassinet to slide in easily. They named it Korbie (Korb is German for “basket”). Since then, the show’s marketing team has placed it on amazon.com and in Belk Department Stores and created a Korbie website.
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