Wade Armstrong

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American Inventor: Episode 8 Recap

Posted Friday April 21, 2006 in Entrepreneurship

Finally, we’re down to the real products and we get the chance to see how the inventors really do when they’re under pressure. Our final twelve contestants have been divided into four three-contestant brackets, each decided by one judge. In each of the next four shows, we get to see one bracket develop their products and one inventor from that bracket be selected to go forward. This is a sound idea, and, based on other reality TV shows an hour-long episode should be enough time to both learn about our contestants (the show is, after all, about the inventor) and about the development of their products. Sadly, we see none of the latter and even the former doesn’t add on to what we’ve learned in previous episodes. Oh well, at least we got to see videos of real-world invention testing.

From the very first episode I’d felt that two of the strongest products were the Receiver’s Training Pole, a piece of football coaching equipment, and the Sackmaster 2000, a shovel designed to easily fill sandbags. Thursday’s bracket contained these two products, along with the clever In-Brella, an umbrella that folded up with the top becoming the inside so that it didn’t get you wet when you closed it up, and I knew from the beginning I’d be sad to see one of my two favorites go.

All three inventors received $50,000 and 30 days to improve their products. Two spent the money and got very little. The Receiver’s Training Pole, this week’s winner, had a “real” prototype made, but the problem was that the prototype lacked the cleverest idea from the original. The product itself is a vest that carries a pole that projects out in front of the receiver; when a ball is thrown at the receiver, this pole prevents the receiver from trying to catch the pass with his body and instead forces him to catch the ball with his hands. Of course, people dive to catch footballs and the inventor was clever enough to design a collapsing mount for the pole in his original version so that the pole wouldn’t get in the way; the “real” prototype lacked this feature and was also otherwise fragile. To test the product, they had to use the inventor’s original version and not the “real” prototype, hardly a good use of $50k.

The In-Brella ended up even worse — the prototype was bulky and didn’t even work properly; it basically just looked better than the inventor’s original version. This prototype was good enough to test with and prove the concept, but ultimately it seemed that the inventor did not progress because said prototype was simply too large to advance. When I started this recap project I said I would offer a tip to one losing inventor every episode, a tip that would have made them advance, and this is the inventor who gets my tip today. Yes, the prototype was large, but every year tons of companies sell large umbrellas, golf umbrellas, king-sized logo umbrellas, and the like; the market isn’t all tiny collapsible Totes-style umbrellas. Why wouldn’t those large-umbrella buyers want the In-Brella? The inventor needed to do a little research here and get some idea of how many of the larger-size umbrellas are purchased every year and why people select the larger umbrellas. The former would be hard-to-find, I’m sure, but I’m sure it exists, and the latter simply involves standing outside a few places that sell umbrellas and interviewing the people that come out. One of the judges asked this inventor how she felt about the In-Brella being so large; she answered that she could make it smaller with more time and money, but the best answer was probably “the market for umbrellas this size is some number of units and some millions of dollars per year, so yes it’s big and, if that bothers you, then you’re probably not in our target market, but plenty of people are.”

The Sackmaster’s inventor was chided for not using the designers to improve his product; he fired them instead, which seems like a good idea since these designers did so poorly with the other products, because the inventor had spent so much time designing and testing the product himself, and because he was a typical user. That said, he shouldn’t have spent $2500 on clothes and he really didn’t need to design fancy packaging for another $15,000 or so. With $30,000 still left from the show’s check, I don’t think losing at American Inventor is a problem for this guy. He tested his product in New Orleans and the disaster management crew he worked with seemed genuinely impressed. He can take that money and go back down to the Gulf states and spend a few months doing demos with a few more prototype Sackmasters, take some orders, and not make a single production model until he’s collected enough orders to know he can make a go of it. The Sackmaster is a hot enough product that he can just say “I’ve gotten so many orders, it’ll take us four months to get to you but you’ll have them in-hand before next hurricane season” — this is the classic entrepreneur’s pre-sale sale. Perhaps he can make a few dozen more Sackmasters, slap a label on ‘em, and get a few Home Depots to carry them on consignment — I bet the product will fly off the shelves and those Home Depots will pay up-front for the next batch. I can see this inventor hustling, so I’m not worried about him. Unlike the unfortunate design flop of the In-Brella, I bet you’ll find the Sackmaster in your Home Depot in a year, and without the million dollars from American Inventor.

(For those of you following along at home, Episode 7 was a best-of episode.)