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INNOVATION RESOURCES

Road Refresher

Breakthrough:
An ingenious non-spill pet bowl that eliminates spills and reduces dog slobber by ninety percent!

Inventor:
Natalie Ellis, United Kingdom

Financial reward:
$3 million +

The Story:
Road Refresher

Inventor and entrepreneur Natalie Ellis endured a plethora of personal and product challenges as she navigated the product development maze to come out the other side with a multimillion dollar invention and a place at the White House.

Ingenious Idea

The Road Refresher is a non-spill pet travel bowl that can be left in a moving vehicle so your pet pooch has access to fresh water, without spilling any.

The innovation has a floating plate inside that allows one mouthful of water through at a time when the dog’s nose pushes it down. At all other times the water is sealed within the bowl, and even if a car brakes or turns suddenly the water goes nowhere. And Velcro bases or safety straps will attach it to any surface.

Birth of an Idea

Ellis used to take her dog out in her car and feed it water from the palm of her hand. But when she moved away from traffic lights the water would splash everywhere. One day the police pulled her up and warned her that she would be arrested for driving without due care and attention if she did it again. So it was off to the shops to look for a bowl that wouldn’t spill water. Finding nothing suitable Ellis put her brain into gear and came up with her own product.

At the time she was a single mum surviving on benefits and had no facilities to work out of other than her kitchen table. She constructed a prototype by cutting up and gluing pieces of plastic, Styrofoam and an assortment of other odds and ends together. It didn’t work first time, but she persevered until she hit upon a working model.

Health Scare

She created her own company to market and promote the product, and to try and secure distribution deals travelled to various trade shows. But during one such event in Germany she had a TIA – a mini-stroke. Recovery took about 10 months, and what helped her to get back on her feet was a determination to pursue her invention and not to go back to a life on benefits.

By now the Road Refresher had been patented and she entered the bowl into an inventor’s competition – “The Most Innovative and Inventive Woman in Britain.” She won three awards and valuable publicity as a number of television companies were also at the event, including the production team from 'Dragon’s Den'.

Sleighed by the Dragons

She was invited onto the show, but the dragons gave her a hard time. Not because of her product, which they loved, but because of her stated dream to crack the American market – one that incidentally spends more than $10 billion a year on pet products and accessories. They told her that if she went to America she would fail, and that it was the “graveyard of British businesses”.

She left the den with her ego in tatters and without securing any investment. But once she got over the experience she was more determined than ever before to plough ahead with her American dreams, feeling that if she stuck to their advice she would forever regret not trying.

American Dreams

Success in Britain and across Europe where the bowl has been taken up by numerous large retail pet chains (as well being sold direct from her website) gave her the funds to try and crack America.

She bought a container load of Road Refreshers and headed to Chicago where she set up a warehouse. Ellis wanted somewhere fairly central so she could easily distribute her product across the country.

Then she booked a trade show and started knocking on doors and bombarding pet stores and supermarkets. For about eight months it was a long hard slog but then the bowl was taken up by Amazon.com and it quickly became their fastest selling dog bowl, netting her more than $1 million in sales.

President’s Pooch

Ellis was also asked to be an approved supplier to the White House after being recommended by Paula Deen. The TV personality ordered a Road Refresher as she was tasked with finding new products for the First Dog Bo.

The Future

Her company Prestige Pet Products UK is expanding fast and Road Refresher is now a global product. The UK-based inventor is also planning to use her patented technology to create new lines of non-spilling products for other pets as well as for babies.

[NEXT STORY]Article by: Paul Arnold

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