The Exchanges

Q Okay, so you, you joined this group, and you're, you're part of this group for six or five or six years, and what were you doing for, for work, for a living?

A Well, so that, that became interesting and an important part of my life, and that is that when I grew up as a doctor's son, and you know, that's, you know, for the light bulb breaks, you hire somebody to screw it in, and so I I grew up with virtually no skills or thoughts of, uh, that I would have, uh, any aptitude for things like this, but the, the group there had to make a living. So a lot of the people came in were PhD, you know, all different walks of life, uh, join this community, and to, to make a living, we either got, generally got involved with some form of construction, or we got into the arts and pottery and And the likes. So I did a lot of the trades. I, I mean, I forget, I think the first thing I started off with was a record pair replayerman. That's when they had record players. And then I became a landscaper. I got a job for a builder as a carpenter's helper. And eventually the group's construction company needed a plumber. So I went to become the, the new plumber. It turned out I was good at this stuff.

AI assessment note: “So I did a lot of the trades. I, I mean, I forget, I think”

Q What was the challenge? Cause I mean, what were some of the challenges? I've seen the design, um, schemes of blueprints. What were the challenges you, you guys had in trying to create this thing?

A Well, I was, it had to include batteries. I didn't want anyone to buy this and have to go buy batteries. Well, I had to give them good batteries, because if I gave them cheap, non-alcoholic batteries, they would die in a month. And if they're going to have to buy batteries every month, it's not ultimately a good deal. So I had defined it that the batteries had to last three months. So we had to design a product, and it had to actually work using two minutes of Uh, brushing, I think, twice a day, and we ran all kinds of tests, not quite like P&G would, but we ran all kinds of tests to make sure that we got the battery life we needed. Then, even more important is we needed the torque. That when you brush your teeth, it's really working, and it's working great, so it had to satisfy that. And it took us a year before we got a product that I thought was well beyond the threshold of a far better product than any manual brush. And at first, we actually came up with a rounded head, and it worked very well. The problem was, after two weeks, it was splayed and real ugly. And I said, you can't do that. It's ugly. You know, nobody wants this. After two weeks, it's too ugly. And so, we decided to make it oscillate rather than rotate. So, the name Spin Brush actually came when it was still spinning. Uh, we never changed the name because it was a good name. But, um, Then I, I realized that I,…

AI assessment note: “The problem was, after two weeks, it was splayed and real ugly.”

Q And so what, you just throw them away?

A So what happened was the first 100,000 pieces, we, we had the water, when you brush your teeth, the water would run right through the toothbrush and out the bottom, which we thought would be fine. But what happened was over a month, using it for about a month, it would, electrolysis or whatever would cause, uh, it build up at the Connections, and it would stop working. It would break in a month. And we had 400,000 of them in our warehouse, and I had to make a decision. This is a consumable product, and this is potentially so big, and if I continue to sell this, it will die. And I went back to my partners in it, my investors, and I said, I'm gonna scrap these 400,000. We're all gonna put in another half a million dollars or something, um, and we're gonna redesign it, which we did. Working day and night with the factory online, on the phone, and in a week or two, we redesigned it so the water, it was all handled different, became waterproof, but the decision to throw those out was a hard decision, especially for a new company, and, um, if I didn't do it, it would have failed.

AI assessment note: “I said, I'm gonna scrap these 400,000... decision to throw those out”

Q Church and Dwight, yeah. But they, and they, they sold it, do you, do you know why they sold it?

A Well, what happened is they, three years into it, they were trying to buy Gillette, and Gillette owned Oral-B and Braun. And, um, the deal was being held up because the tooth, the oral B and, uh, the spin brush were a monopoly. It was well over 50% of all the, uh, toothbrushes. And so they, they decided they have to sell the spin brush off. So he, they called me and asked if I was interested in buying it back. And I said, I would, but I'm not willing to pay much money. I'll give you ten million dollars for the whole thing, but I'll close next week. Um, you know, everything else was, they were always waiting six months, you know, and then there would be due diligence. I said, I'll close next week. But they took, they went back to Church and Dwight, who they had been negotiating with, and they said, Osher's made a big offer, and you guys, and they forced them into closing the deal, you know, for about seventy-five million plus inventory, you know.

AI assessment note: “the deal was being held up because the tooth, the oral B and, uh, the spin brush were a monopoly”

Q part of this group, uh, and then you wind up moving back to Cincinnati, I think right around, uh, 1978, uh, which is also around the time of, of the energy crisis in the U.S., and I guess you had this, obviously you had this background in plumbing and construction, uh, so you actually started a business that made, I guess, like, like, what, energy-saving devices, like, for, for homes?

A Yeah, so I remember staying up all night, one night, and this was my beginning of a career as a semi-inventor, and inventing products, and, uh, coming up with a list of products. Hot water heater insulation jacket was one. We made special fans. A lot of people were getting kerosene heaters, and heating up one room to a 120 while the rest of the house was cold, so I made these fans that would hang in a doorway to bring the That heat from one room to the other, things like that, and it showed me that I could be an inventor. It, you know, it's hard to believe you can do that until you actually do it successfully and sell a product.

AI assessment note: “Hot water heater insulation jacket was one. We made special fans.”

Q and I read that you attend a trade show, and, and, um, you, because of your track record and your connections, I'm sure you already had some interest, and I think you initially had deals with Meyers, which is mainly in the upper, you know, Michigan area, and Albertsons. You know, with these sort of trial runs, how, how, how are you able to measure how well they were doing?

A Well, with Meyers, I happened to be, from my other businesses, friends with one of the owners of one of the Meyers, and, um, so he was, he agreed, because we were so new, and nobody knew we were, and it was hard to get appointments, and, and didn't know this, but, um, he agreed to do a test, a 24 pack test for us, in a bunch of stores, and we were five of us at the time, working for the company, and we all, and they didn't have any Meyers stores in Cleveland, So we all left, went, wonder, I went to Detroit, somebody went to Toledo, Columbus, setting them up, putting them out on the, as the test was supposed to be, and then going back each day, and that's when we found out that we'd put them out, and we were selling seven a day per store, which was just in a different realm of any other toothbrush in the world.

AI assessment note: “going back each day, and that's when we found out that we'd put them out”

Q middle-class kid, there's no way in hell you could, oh, you could get a lease in Boston to open a shop. You need to, like, sign a lease, a ten-year term. It would, the rent cost would be astronomical. Like, nobody, no, no, Mortal could afford to do that, but this was realistically possible. Clearly, in 1969, you opened a secondhand clothes shop in Boston. How did you do that?

A Yeah, you know, this was before the everything became so expensive in life. It almost would seem as if I'm a courageous person because I'm so willing to open businesses and this and that, and it really does come back to the value of starting my first business at five years old and having businesses successful. All through high school, and it became natural for one, and two is that by doing things, little things successfully, I had confidence. I, I never thought about How can I do this? As opposed to somebody who's got a wife and family, has been working at Procter & Gamble at a big company, and they see some opportunity, and they get mortgages they gotta worry about, and all of this. It was really natural. I'd go to flea markets, and I'd go all over New England, and I'd find these things for nothing, and be able to sell them for quite a bit.

AI assessment note: “this was before the everything became so expensive in life”

Q Did you, what, I mean, once you got bad, did you start good, and then get bad?

A At golf, yeah, nobody came. Very few people get good at golf, but, um, after, after being so-called retired for a year, maybe two, I don't remember, I, I had an, an idea, so I got together with guys that had done design work for me in Cleveland, And I had done a lot of, uh, great designs for products, and I had a list of a hundred ideas. The first one being the spin battery operated toothbrush. I, I knew we had made millions of these spinning lollipops, and that, uh, we became experts in small batteries, motors, and gears in China. And I, I said, well, I wonder if it's possible that I can make an electric toothbrush that would sell at Walmart for five dollars.

AI assessment note: “At golf, yeah, nobody came. Very few people get good at golf, but”