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Strap Tamers

Breakthrough:
A simple and effective innovation to conceal troublesome bra straps that earned more than $2 million at retail in 2008.

Inventor:
Noel Goldman, United States

Financial reward:
$2 million+

The Story:
Strap Tamers

Noel Goldman lives in Florida, and no matter where she went she used to see exposed bra straps everywhere. The failure of women to keep their undergarments under drove her crazy. The breaking point came one morning in 2004 when her daughter ran out of the door on the way school with straps hanging out for the entire world to see. Goldman decided there and then that something had to be done. So with a pin, a clip, and a little ingenuity she started to make a product that would earn millions and change her life forever.

Goldman invented Strap Tamers, a product that keeps bras and straps perfectly aligned. It consists of a polycarbonate clip to hold the bra strap, and a stainless steel pin which is fastened to the inside shoulder seam of the garment. Each pack of six tamers retails for $9.00 and they can be left on clothing while being laundered.

Prototype

The first prototype was an intricately bent paperclip, which was followed by a jet clip and safety pin. Goldman now had a model that she was happy to take to a prototypist. It was crude, but enough to be able to communicate the idea. During this time the Internet became her best friend and she was amazed to find that no one else had come up with a hassle-free way of making bra straps disappear. Sure, plenty of patents had been filed over the years, but if they had been effective the problem would have disappeared. Goldman therefore thought that all she had to do was show a few companies her prototype and they would fall over themselves and buy bulk quantities of the tamers from her. They did not. She discovered that companies were only interested in her product if she was looking to license, plus they wanted all the production bugs fixed. So the next few months were spent looking for a manufacturer both domestically and overseas. None were interested.

Eventually she teamed up with a company that was only 12 miles away from her front door. Originally she had ruled them out, because their computer programs were not compatible with her CAD (Computer Aided Design). When she met with them they spotted a near-fatal flaw in her design. Other manufacturers had seen it, but did not point it out. They just passed on the idea, but the local company came up with a solution, and had enough faith in Goldman and Strap Tamers that they invested in new machinery to cope with manufacture.

Early Success

An important early triumph for Goldman came from placing prototype Strap Tamers in all of her daughter’s tank tops. She shared them with a friend and one day Goldman received a call from that friend’s mom asking where she could buy some of the clips. When told that they were prototypes, the mother said she’d pay anything to get her hands on them.

The first products were available at straptamers.com and through a distributor who sold to small boutiques and specialty stores. The response to Strap Tamers since has been nothing short of phenomenal as this is a product that women realize they can’t live without. The bra concealers are now available in most major department stores, and are carried in most Target stores and about a third of US Wal-Marts. They can also be found in stores in Canada, the Philippines, South Africa, and Europe. It took about 20 months to go from concept to market and in that time Goldman created a company, Eureka Road LLC which she has developed into an inventing house, producing products that have a real impact on society.

Goldman is now a much sought after mentor, advising others on how they can turn their ideas into products, and has also won a clutch of awards including the Women’s Executive Council of Orlando’s 2007Award for Outstanding Achievement in Business and a Finalist for the 2008 Enterprising Woman of the Year Award presented by Enterprising Women Magazine.

Winning the Battle of the Bra

A big turning point in the company’s fortunes came with a mom inventors spot on the Oprah Winfrey Show in February 2007. The following day she received more than 1,000 emails. As a result of further TV appearances and word of mouth, sales shot up by 667% in 2007. Within a year and half she had turned her company into a global enterprise, and with sales on the increase, despite the downturn in the economy, she is making giant strides toward her mission of “cleaning up the World, one bra strap at a time.”

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