degrees in economics and sociology, by moving appliances. While on the job, he decided there had to be a way to make carrying heavy appliances a little less backbreaking.
Thomas experimented with straps going under the appliance to allow two movers to lift it while in an upright position. “This way, the larger shoulder and leg muscles lift the weight, decreasing strain on the lower back, hands, biceps, and forearms. Moving large objects becomes easier and safer. Plus, the hands are freed up to guide the appliance rather than hold it.”
The strap system worked. Thomas named it the Shoulder Dolly and used it at his job to lighten the load, making heavy appliances much more mover-friendly. His system even allows a 100-pound woman to lift a full-sized refrigerator. OK, put down the refrigerator. We get the idea.
When it was time for grad school, Thomas put his straps away to pursue a master’s degree in international economics down under. “I only lasted five months in Australia. I just couldn’t get this idea about developing the Shoulder Dolly out of my head. My dad thought I was crazy to come back to the U.S. and chase what he thought was a get-rich-quick idea. But I had to. And once he understood what I was doing with it, he became very supportive.”
At age 23 and carrying $40,000 in student loans, the inventor of the Shoulder Dolly was strapped for cash. “I needed investors, so I moved to where people with money live—Aspen, Colorado. I even slept in a tent the first summer I was there, before I could get established.”
Once again Thomas got a job doing what he knows best—moving appliances. He started to work for a high-end appliance retailer Contract Appliance Center in Glenwood Springs, about forty miles from Aspen. Naturally, he used his Shoulder Dolly prototype on every haul. Not only did the shop owners, Tom and JoAn Knipping, love the Shoulder Dolly, they became backers of Thomas and his invention. David Cook, editor of the Aspen News, also got interested and so did Craig Wilkening, an account executive with an appliance manufacturer. In 2001, they formed TDT Moving Systems, Inc. to launch Shoulder Dolly.
“I put in a lot of effort applying for a provisional patent. I did the description and drawings, and wrote it up as perfectly as I could. Once I got these investors interested, I hired a patent lawyer to apply for a utility patent.” That was the first hurdle Thomas has had to shoulder.
Next, he started participating in hardware trade shows—dozens of them— across the U.S. and Canada. People were impressed with his Heavy Duty Shoulder Dolly, but priced at $300 each, he couldn’t sell a large quantity of them. “No matter how marvelous and efficient they are, I had few repeat sales. Because the Shoulder Dolly is so strong and durable, they don’t wear out.”
Thomas realized he needed a Shoulder Dolly designed for a wider range of consumers at a lower price point. “In effect, I made a knockoff of my own product. I call it Light Duty.” This lighter-weight product is manufactured in China and sells for $59.99 through hardware retailers in North America.
The biggest and best exposure happened when Light Duty debuted on QVC shopping network. Thomas now plans to create and air infomercials, starting in small-city markets. He’ll test-market them before spending larger sums to run infomercials in larger metropolitan markets.
Early marketing, publicity, catalog, and website exposure have resulted in selling 20,000 units of Light Duty since it was introduced in 2003. “We have fifty distributors for the Light Duty version in just two-and-a-half years, plus it’s sold through Northern Tool and Harbor Light catalogs.”
TDT Moving Systems is now headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, where Thomas and his girlfriend Brenda Castine, who works full-time in the business, moved to be closer to his family. The growing company now seeks investors to go international. “We do have distributors in other countries and are looking to file patents in many of them.” It looks like Thomas Dent III has found the Shoulder Dolly to be not only an uplifting and moving experience, but also a weighty career.
EasyDown™
Easy Down, for Those Hard Up
for a Way Out
Did you know that fire departments’ ladders can only go up to six floors—and only from a side street—and only if the fire trucks get there in time?
After the tragedy of 9/11, it’s no surprise that a colleague of Herb Loeffler’s, Ivars Avots, recognized the need for a means of escape from tall buildings if the normal exits, such as stairs and elevators, aren’t available. Looking through newspaper articles about tragedies, however, he discovered that the need for an escape route isn’t a rare occurrence. People get trapped not only in 100-story buildings, but also in eight-story buildings. Ivars had a vague idea for a solution, but didn’t have the technical background to make it work. He needed an engineer’s brain and an inventor’s heart to take this leap with him. He found that in co-worker Herb Loeffler.
Both men worked for a Boston-based industrial research company before the company closed its doors. Herb, an MIT graduate in mechanical engineering who also has a degree in industrial design, now a 71-year-old, semiretired product designer, became the brains of the operation. The project was funded by the idea man and another colleague of the Boston firm.
Concluding that a market exists for an individual “descender” device that required only minimal skill to operate, they worked off a rappelling model that mountain climbers use. But while mountain climbers are trained to manage the speed of descent, the average person isn’t. Another issue: rope is heavy. One thousand feet of rope is strong enough to hold the weight of a single person, but weighs more than a person can lift. A thousand feet of cable has the same strength as 100 feet of rope. So they went with cable.
The next step was deciding what to put the cable on. Mountain climbers throw their ropes over the side of the cliff and use a device to slide down. That’s not practical for this use. Herb explains, “The cable needed to be on a reel with speed control—something that could sense the speed and apply the right amount of friction so the thing couldn’t run away with you. A panicky person with no training should be able to use it safely.”
As a product designer, Herb kept it simple. For the automatic model, he used a centrifugal clutch, as in snow blowers and chainsaws, to provide the speed control necessary. When the user goes faster, the clutch puts on the break harder. For the manual model, Herb added a handbrake for starting and stopping. A knob releases the cable. As you crank in one direction, it lowers you down; if you stop cranking, it stops moving. You aren’t actually cranking your own weight; you’re just releasing a clutch. Because you can crank only so fast, the handbrake provides speed control. The crank also allows you to get used to how the harness feels while dangling out of the window before letting go of the brake. Then you can go down gently. Easy does it. Hence the product name—EasyDown.
Just the thought of having to use a product like this one has me shaking. But I guess if I were trapped, I would learn to love my EasyDown.
The manual model comes in at a third of the cost and half of the weight of Herb’s automatic model. “The manual model is the device of choice from five to ten floors. Any higher and you’d want the automatic model . No one would want to crank that far in an emergency. And with its lower price, the manual model is where the market would go. But our biggest concern is that people don’t want to think about safety.”
It’s a serious concern—after all, we humans don’t like to think about our own deaths, much less prepare for them. But even if individuals don’t want to contemplate mortality, companies do. Herb sees a potential market with companies that sell safety equipment to firefighters or miners, for example.
The team applied for a patent two years ago and have had some action on it. They haven’t gone into production, but