People’s Choice

As a college student, Jeff Gawronski invented a shelf that attaches to a dormitory bunk bed. He also learned that even the best ideas don’t come with a direct path straight to retail stores.

After graduating he worked as a pharmaceutical rep, but Gawronski kept thinking about his invention. So he quit his job, whipped his shelf into production and soon had 10,000 units shipped from China. At that point, his choice became having the shelves stacked in his garage or hitting the road to sell them. Soon he was making calls on college bookstores from “South Dakota to Maine to Georgia.”

He later purchased a website that featured college dorm supplies and eventually moved 80,000 units of his invention, but Gawronski couldn’t shake the belief that there had to be an easier way for inventors to get their products in front of audiences.

Last fall he launched Yak AboutIt.com, a website that exclusively features products from fledgling inventors and entrepreneurs. To be included, an inventor need only send an e-mail detailing his or her product; acceptance rate is about 95 percent, Gawronski says. The site pits two products in a competition, allowing consumers to comment and even ask questions of the inventors. The top seller receives the “Most Yakable” award.

The products are available for purchase through the website, but Gawronski hopes that’s only the beginning: He wants visitors to his site to blog or chat about the products elsewhere, such as on social media sites. He hopes inventors will use YakAboutIt sales results and the Most Yakable Award as marketing tools to reach other sites, media or retailers.

“We sell the items, but we want everyone to sell them,” he says. “Most retailers would want to be the only one selling it. But we’re selling it to show big-box and online retailers that these inventions are retail-ready. The end goal is for other retailers to add the new and useful products they see on YakAboutIt to their product mix.”

Success stories
Brad Johnson is readying Bring TIM for retail through YakAboutIt.com. A former Most Yakable winner, Bring TIM is a cost calculator for time spent in meetings: Enter the average hourly rate of participating employees, multiply that by the number of participants and watch the costs rise as the meeting drags on. Johnson learned about YakAboutIt before his shipment of clocks arrived and is using the site as part of his initial rollout.

“It’s one of those things where you don’t know what you don’t know,” he says. “I chose early on to get sales traction going so that I can approach retailers. If a retailer approaches me, I’ll gladly talk to them, but I didn’t want to play that card before I felt I was ready.”

Anthony LaPolla tried a more traditional route with the DrillBrush Power Scrubber, which attaches to a cordless drill and can be used to scrub everything from car tires to carpets. He invented the scrubber to use in his carwash, soon made the rounds of car shows and sold the product on eBay. Those methods “worked very well to gather buyer response [but] weren’t reaching distributors,” he says.

After a stint on YakAboutIt, LaPolla found that his own website sales increased. “I think it really makes a difference in attracting the attention of the big buyers,” he says. “Independent inventors face an uphill battle. Since my feature date, I have fielded potential licensing and sales opportunities. I’m excited to see where these contacts lead.”

YakAboutIt doesn’t charge inventors to feature the products, nor does it take any “cut” from future success. It relies solely on its own sales of the product.

“I don’t want to say that we’re not-for-profit, because we are,” Gawronski says. “But there is a deeper point to YakAboutIt — to really be that place that cannot just get these inventions noticed, but be a long-term place where people come to find new products.”