karacg
Babygirl is 4!
Member since 5/05 17076 total posts
Name:
Kara®
|
Article in Newsday...
Did anyone read about this?? I already sent an email to get on the waiting list, lol....I WANT THIS!!
The mother of invention, indeed
Unhinged by changing sheets, she designs a crib that swings open at one end
BY CARYN EVE MURRAY
Newsday Staff Writer
November 8, 2006
As a businesswoman, Mary Anne Amato has almost always known that success hinges on great ideas.
As a mom, Amato has learned that sometimes, success also can hinge on hinges.
A pair of them, in fact.
Placed strategically by Amato at the base of a child's crib frame, these hinges give Mom or Dad easy access to the mattress wedged tightly inside by letting the crib's footboard swing open like a door. That lets Mom or Dad slide the mattress out instead of trying to pop it out from above after undoing all the bumpers, mobiles and other toys in the way.
And that, said Amato, means changing sheets needn't descend any more into a session of grappling, cursing and breaking fingernails while you're also trying to comfort a crying infant at the bleary-eyed hours of 3 or 4 a.m.
The mother of two, Amato, 41, has gone to the mat more times than she'd like to remember, all in the heavyweight ring of crib-wrestling.
Now she holds high her championship trophy from those bouts - the Quick Change Crib - an invention, she said, that was the byproduct of motherly necessity.
It is her hard-won trophy for another reason: The Lido Beach management consultant recently received $20,000 in seed money along with ongoing technical business assistance as the grand prize winner in the Whirlpool brand Mother of Invention contest. Her bounty included a stint at a "business boot camp" with the other winners and Whirlpool execs late last month in the company's Michigan headquarters.
Amato's idea beat out those of 1,700 inventive moms nationwide, said Whirlpool spokeswoman Audrey Reed-Granger, the 2-year-old contest's originator.
"Her idea was so unique, it was unlike anything else out there in the marketplace," said Reed-Granger.
As the mother of daughters Anli, 7, and Tehya, 4, Amato knew the challenge of crib changes as well as any other parent. But she did not become Quick Change's birth mother overnight.
In fact, sheet-changing was not a major issue for Amato and her husband, attorney Vincent Derbino, when they adopted Anli from China as a 9-month-old, Amato said. Because she was an older child, the crib needed changing less frequently.
Then she gave birth to Tehya three years later, and, with a newborn in the house, mattress madness took hold.
"I said, 'There has to be a better way. This just doesn't seem reasonable.' And I started fiddling around with ways in which this could be better," Amato said.
Call it thinking outside the boxspring.
She envisioned a hinged footboard opening for easy access and asked her father-in-law, Frank Derbino, to build a prototype.
A year later - in October 2005 - the design received its patent and passed safety standards set by the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association. It also has childproof latches that secure the footboard when closed.
In the meantime, Amato, an industrial psychologist who does corporate research for her clients with business partner Johan Julin, started doing research on her own behalf - conducting consumer focus groups and looking into manufacturing and retail possibilities.
Now, with the likelihood the cribs will be produced for her by a company in China, she is hoping for a market rollout by March.
The new direction for this business professional won't be just a once-upon-a-mattress kind of thing, however. She and Julin already have a handle on their next effort.
Literally.
"The next product we are going to roll out," she said, "is a mattress with a handle on the end." That should make it easier for parents to roll it out, too.
http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-2know4964702nov08,0,7666778.story?coll=ny-features-print
|
