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INNOVATION RESOURCES

Wordlock

Breakthrough:
Combination locks that use letters instead of numbers. Todd Basche created an innovation in an industry that hadn’t seen much change for 150 years.

Inventor:
Todd Basche, United States

Financial reward:
$3 million +

The Story:
Wordlock

For many years numbers were Todd Basche’s number one enemy. The former Vice President of Software Applications at Apple just couldn’t remember number combinations. His innovation was born out of necessity, a snagged pair of swimming trunks, and a red face.

Embarrassing Moment

Basche had a small family pool in his backyard, and more often than not he forgot the number combination of the gate lock. Matters came to a head one hot and sunny day when the lock got the better of him. He tried climbing the fence instead, but slipped and tore his swimming trunks, unwittingly providing an entertaining show for his neighbors. And that’s when the light bulb appeared, and he came up with a stunningly simple solution for his memory lapses – use words instead of digits on combination locks. The modern combination lock was invented by Linus Yale Jr in 1862, but had remained virtually unchanged since then.

Research is Key

With all the random series of numbers we have to remember for bank cards, cell phones and computer passwords, Basche knew that words would be far easier to remember. He embarked on a period of research which involved finding out if the market would be big enough for his idea, and if so would people really want it? And he discussed it with friends and family.

The inventor conducted a Google and patent search assuming someone must have made a product like his before. “I found that the Chinese had made products like this back in 1100 AD and there are lots of Chinese locks that have symbols on them. So man has wanted to have word locks for many hundreds of years but technology has failed them.”

He also discovered 100 year-old patents, but the locks were large and unwieldy with 26 characters on each wheel. The letters just replaced the numbers. No one had gone the extra mile to make the locks spell out words. His patented lock has ten characters per wheel and he developed a computer algorithm that told him which letters should be positioned where to get the maximum number of words. There are 10,000 different options. The algorithm also filtered out many of the main curse words.

“We hand crafted prototypes by taking wheels to an engraver and having him engrave the correct letters in. We took the sample to schools and the kids said 'well that’s so much better.'”

Getting to Market

Basche also took his innovation to a number of top U.S. lock manufacturing companies but they couldn’t figure out its potential. So he decided to start his own company to make and distribute Wordlock himself. Then he spent the next year figuring out how to deal with all the challenges of manufacturing and bringing a product to market such as getting UPC codes, warehousing the items, taxes, and fees. “What you realize is that to do anything you have to do everything.”

During the first year the Santa Clara, California-based company was self-funded and based at the couple’s home. But then they experienced astronomical growth in 2008 and had to move to business premises and take on employees. By the end of the first quarter of that year Wordlock was in 900 stores, by the end of the second quarter they were in 1,200 stores.

There are a range of Worldlock products such as cable locks, bike locks, luggage locks, and utility locks which are sold in Target, Sears, Ace, and online stores such as amazon.com. Basche’s simple and brilliant invention has unlocked a massive revenue stream.

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