Bread bags and Experience

Patent your ideas or it might cost you!

As part of my job for a major paper company, I designed plastic bags for bread. It occurred to me that another use for the bags might be to print them with a grid to look like the small windowpanes in greenhouses. They could stand on end in a garden and plants could be started in them much like miniature greenhouses.

After the plants were off to a good start, the little plastic “greenhouses” could be slipped up and off the growing plants and discarded or reused.

A few years later, after I had my own product development company, the idea resurfaced and we made hundreds and hundreds of such printed bags and tried to sell them to consumers through retail greenhouses.

It was such a simple, non-complicated product that we didn’t patent them. That proved to be a costly mistake because later on those wrappers became quite popular. Most plants you purchase in grocery stores today are wrapped in them.

That was the first lesson learned from this project – patent your idea or method no matter how simple and non-complicated it might seem.

Later on, while I was checking out potential products for some wholesale departments of large companies, I called upon Procter & Gamble, which had many products in supermarkets.

During our discussions, I was surprised to learn that their company had been thinking about the plant and nursery business as a way to increase their revenues.

I thought about this turn of events, saw it as an opportunity, and made a proposal to them in which I said that my company would develop a machine to take rolls of printed transparent film and make square bags, similar to bread bags stood on one end. We would then put some earth and a small plant in one end of the bag. There would be 12 such bags packaged in a corrugated tray that would then stack to make a beautiful store display.

P&G accepted the proposal and decided they would work with us. I immediately started looking for a company that was growing the plants and found one in Florida. After visiting with them, I arranged a joint venture with P&G to create a functioning machine to package plants. My company developed the machine. It was a simple adaptation of the bread-wrapping machine I was familiar with and had a rather simple additional plant-stuffing adaptation.

The company I had worked for previously, the one that had made the bread bags that had originally given me the idea, was chosen to make the film we eventually used for our plastic bags. Another lesson – don’t burn your bridges behind you. I have maintained many valuable connections from past jobs.

The product was marketed under the name of “Green Thumb,” a brand name created by P&G for these products.

Unfortunately, though, business for growing your own plants was not there at that time. It certainly is today, but back then people wanted to buy their plants unwrapped. There was no market for the product. And that is another lesson learned from this project – make sure there is a market for the product you want to invent.

My company, which was fairly new at the time, did gain valuable experience and, of course, consulting fees from developing the product. We also developed a relationship with a client that lasted for many years.

Article – Copyright 2000 Stanley I. Mason. Syndicated by ParadigmTSA

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