Still, Schuback knew one thing guarantees failure. So she set up a website to tell her story and talk about the product she was working on. With Weatherford, she contacted manufacturers; eventually, through a Schuback family connection, they found one in Philadelphia willing to make the bibs at an acceptable cost. (They were looking for a retail price of $12.) Then they experimented with different iterations. Schuback auditioned the prototypes herself. "I would put them on to wash my hair, put on my makeup, and eat," she says. One prototype was too thick, another too thin. "We tried one that fastened at the sides with Velcro, but that was hard in a wheelchair," says Schuback. "We tried one with three pockets to hold utensils, but that did not do a good job catching crumbs."
When they finally had a satisfactory product in hand, Schuback and Weatherford began striking deals with wholesalers to distribute items Schuback found useful, such as a beverage container that mounts to a wheelchair, a lamp switch enlarged for unsteady hands, and a device that holds playing cards. They also bought boxes of foam cylinders and affixed them to the handles of toothbrushes and utensils for easy gripping. A pocket on the back of Schuback's wheelchair still holds Independent Empowerment's dining travel kit, which includes an Invisibib, foam-handled utensils, and a nonskid placemat.
They promoted the site through Google ads. "But on the Web they were just going to sell one-sies, two-sies, and three-sies," says Donna, who helped with the bookkeeping. "Alison wanted to do more than that."
She wanted to do sales calls. She wanted to do trade fairs. "She was bashful at first," says Weatherford, now director of marketing and leasing at a retirement community in Irving, Texas. "But she was good. She could talk, and she could sell her product. Before a sales call, she would practice on a karaoke machine. Singing helped her vocals."
Over two years, Schuback and Weatherford made the rounds of more than 100 senior homes, rehab centers, and similar facilities. Sometimes they sold to individual residents, sometimes to the centers' procurement directors. But the orders were always small -- no more than 10 bibs at a time. Donna Schuback estimates Independent Empowerment did at most $20,000 in sales before it ran out of money. Much of that revenue came from a single order: 500 bibs purchased by The Vermont Country Store for catalog sales.
Rooting around in a desk drawer, Donna produces Alison's to-do list from that period. Some tasks are mundane: Develop a website; register with PayPal; identify relevant books to offer through Amazon. Others are ambitious. Had the Invisibib taken off, Alison had hoped to exploit its success with her own e-book, seminars, possibly a line of shoes and clothing. Donna reminds Alison of her plan to resell used medical equipment such as scooters and wheelchairs. "So many ideas," says Alison nostalgically.
As Alison and her mother reminisce about the business, Michael looks dejected. "This was something I should have paid attention to," he says, almost to himself. "I thought the product had way too limited a line. Before making the investment, they should have done more research into market identification. But I had to disassociate myself, because I was trying to make some money."
Alison glances fondly at her father. "It just wasn't meant to be that time," she says. "But now it is meant to be. Now everything is falling into place."
Everyday Edisons is a quirky entrepreneurial success story in its own right. The program demystifies product development by tracking inventors as their brainchildren mature to adulthood. It was conceived in 2005 by Louis Foreman, founder of a large product-development firm, and Michael Cable, a former Fox News journalist. "Our idea was to show that ordinary people do have extraordinary ideas," says Cable. "They just don't know what to do with them. They don't want to assume the risk for the ultimate reward."
Edisons, in other words, helps inventors enjoy some benefits of entrepreneurship without becoming entrepreneurs. Participants sign over their intellectual property to the show's producers, who lead them through ideation, sourcing, and manufacturing. If the final product makes it to market -- a culmination devoutly to be wished -- the inventor gets annual payments based on sales.
As many as 3,000 hopefuls turn up at a single Edisons casting call, clutching diagrams scrawled on cocktail napkins or prototypes cobbled together from duct tape and tongue depressors. On that April day, Alison and Michael shuffled from line to line in the Dallas Convention Center for more than 12 hours, waiting for their moment. "It was 11 p.m., and everyone was exhausted," recalls Cable. "Alison was fresh. Her makeup was done. Her hair looked good. She gave her presentation. And there wasn't a dry eye in the house."
Edisons staff members weren't the only ones moved. In the audience that evening was Bari Fagin, director of public relations at Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ:BBBY). Bed Bath had sold two Edisons products from previous seasons, and Fagin was scouting promising ideas for the company. She was intrigued by the Invisibib and thought she knew someone else who would be as well.
Len Feinstein, the co-chairman and co-founder of Bed Bath, is also one of the founders of the Head Injury Association, a not-for-profit with facilities in Commack, New York, on Long Island. About 300 survivors live at the HIA or attend its day programs, among them Feinstein's son, Barry, who was injured in a car crash more than 20 years ago. The organization is an alternative for families that don't want to park loved ones -- many in their teens and 20s -- in nursing homes or Alzheimer's units.
