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InventVermont Supports Move from Idea to Market
Burlington Free Press
Business Monday
Published: October 31, 2005
By Adele Holoch
Correspondent
Photo by Glenn Russell, Free Press
Tom Ference of Essex Junction, president of InventVermont, is a registered patent agent and engineering consultant.
From unique cookbook holders to high-end snow sleds, they're full of good ideas. And once a month, they gather to network and learn how to translate a flash of inspiration into a marketable product or business.
Through a nonprofit organization called InventVermont, nearly 50 Vermont inventors are finding the support and solidarity they need to navigate the rigorous process of taking an idea to market.
Tom Ference, president of InventVermont, became involved with the organization after a start-up company he and a friend launched failed.
"We ended up raising over $2 million, and needed over $20 million to go forward, and that was just at the time of the dot-bomb," said Ference, a former IBM employee who holds a physics degree from the University of Connecticut and a master's and a Ph.D. from MIT. He heard about InventVermont, a support group for inventors launched in 2002, and decided to get involved.
For Ference, who is now a registered patent agent and an engineering consultant, InventVermont has become a place to share ideas, services and support. The organization offers monthly lectures, opportunities to network, and confidential help sessions where inventors can share their ideas and receive feedback from their peers.
"I've gotten to meet a lot of people who are similar entrepreneurial people, and to see that they're going through similar struggles," Ference said. "Then there's the networking. I've been able to provide my patent agent services to people I meet through the organization, and I've met people that can provide me with services."
Numerous challenges
Such emotional and practical support can be valuable for inventors who almost inevitably face significant hurdles in bringing their ideas from concept to completion.
"The challenges for inventors are numerous," Ference said.
To successfully patent an idea, manufacture prototypes, develop a business plan, complete a market analysis, design a product and market it, "you have to be a jack of all trades. You either have to do all the things yourself or find people to help you do them," he said. "You need so many things, and for one person to have them all, it's very hard."
InventVermont is not the only resource for inventors in the state. The Inventors Network of Vermont, located in Springfield, was launched 10 years ago by Dave Dionne and a group of his friends.
"Springfield used to be known as the cradle of invention because of the machine tool industry. A lot of great ideas came out of this area. In the last generation, we've fallen on hard times," said Dionne, who helped launch the organization in hope of finding someone with an idea "that could take root here and be the seed of the industry." The group meets once a month. As at InventVermont, the group's meetings feature a speaker and give inventors an opportunity to network and share ideas and experiences with one another.
An inventor himself, Dionne once came up with a three-piece dinette set that could ship in one box to customers who would then put the pieces together.
"I made thousands and thousands of them, but I didn't do my market research, and the market would only pay X number of dollars, so I had to sell it at market price," he said. After three years of losses, "I said, 'I figured out how we're going to lose less money. We'll just ship empty boxes with a dollar bill inside each one.'"
Dionne's own experiences have given him fodder for valuable advice for other inventors.
"Some of us have been to the mill and have had patents and can give advice to people just coming along," he said. "I always recommend they spend some money on market research."
Sticking with it
The Vermont Department of Economic Development also works to provide resources and services to inventors and entrepreneurs.
"I think that the majority of economic development departments with various states understand fundamentally how important entrepreneurial activity is to creating jobs," said Ken Horseman, the department's director of communications.
The department is a co-sponsor of the annual Vermont Investors Forum, an invitation-only event that allows entrepreneurs to present their work to investors. It also works closely with academic institutions to research technology transfer, or the proc-
ess of taking an idea from concept to commercialization, and provides entrepreneurs with information on the Small Business Innovation Research program, a competitive, federally funded grant program.
The department also has a staff member working to connect Vermont entrepreneurs with resources that will help to make the difficult path of development a little easier.
"I think the biggest challenge is for entrepreneurs to really be able to have the stick-to-itiveness to really hang in there, the drive to see it through. It takes a huge amount of effort to launch any new product or concept. It's an all-or-nothing endeavor, and not everyone's cut out to be an entrepreneur," Horseman said.
Nevertheless, Horseman had three words of advice for potential inventors and entrepreneurs: "Go for it."
Leonard Duffy did. An architect and artist, Duffy says he's been an inventor "in one way or another, all my life." Together with his son, Brennan Duffy, he took something he had created for his own household use "out of a coat hanger and a very simple idea" -- a cookbook holder -- and developed it. The process was no easy task.
"The inventing part is easy, and it's the selling and marketing part that's much more involved and difficult," said Duffy, who added that InventVermont has been a useful resource.
"There's a great network of people that all have similar kinds of problems that we share solutions for from time to time, and there's also a lot of connections to worlds beyond Vermont, where people can take their inventions and, hopefully, sell them," he said.
Duffy and his son took their cookbook holder to QVC, where it became a top seller on the channel's Decade of Discovery show, selling more than 2,000 in six minutes.
"I think it is a very high-risk venture to be an inventor, but if you can afford to take the risk, it's also a lot of fun and interesting, and if nothing else, you get to meet a lot of great people along the way," Duffy said.
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