Alex: Many entrepreneurs have an elevator pitch ready, it is a smart marketing move. But Julie Fishman’s elevator pitch works best in a green setting.
Julie: In an effort to make routine gardening test easier, I invented the gardener’s pouch. It’s a hands free pouch that’s designed to help you collect yard debris and clippings as you go into your garden. You simply dead head your flower, go up to your pouch, go up to a trash can or composter and empty the pouch. And basically re-zip and you’re ready to get back to work. It has pockets for carrying all kinds of tools and equipment with you and a holster for your clippers.
Alex: Julie Fishman’s business plan didn’t put her in the garden when she founded her company. Fishman and her sister started Triple Z bags to create a line of functional but fashionable bags. Then a friend’s request brought out Fishman’s inventive side.
Julie: We started out as a bag company and we got a little bit sidetrack into doing this garden pouch, it was just an amazing invention that I couldn’t walked away from, and eventually we like to develop it into a utilitarian fashionable bag company. The big surprise I think was realizing that it was good for agriculture as well as for consumers to use. And so we were trying to see all the set and there were opportunities in being able to take the product to those different markets and test it.
Alex: Fishman filed her research that her ideas can be produced profitably and have very little or no competition in the market place. But the work didn’t stop there.
Julie: The first thing we did is something that’s called the Provisional patent where you are protected for one year that you don’t have to file a full patent which is much more expensive and lengthy so you could at least give some protection to your idea. And that was something that I filed myself.
Alex: Fishman’s Gardeners’ pouch design debut in 2006 at the largest invention show in the United States and received a silver medal in the lawn and gardening category. She called on garden centers and distributors with her invention.
Julie: The first thing was going to the garden shops in my area and just saying would you put this on consignment and getting them to take it on. And then, going out and figuring out who the big distributors were for my region and started very local.
Alex: There are distributors for the gardener’s pouch across the nation now, and the product is being sold on a website to. Triple Z is moving from the garden into the riding arena designing a line of equestrian bags that combined fashion and function. I’m Alex Fees, reporting for SBTV.com, small business is our only business.
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