About Us

Better-Organized.com was founded by Tom Goth of Scottsdale, Arizona in 1991 with a vision of designing and creating unique products to help consumers be happier and more effective in their daily lives.  At the time, Tom was working in sales at a manufacturing company with little upward potential due to a change in upper management. The office politics with the company's new president were so bad that Tom's best ideas had to be proposed under someone else's name in order for them to be given a chance to succeed.

Tom's adversity led to the desire to eventually own his own small business through which he could satisfy his drive to invent useful new products and operate within his own sense of integrity and values.  Tom began to start taking steps forward, even though he did not have any firm product ideas or detailed business plan in place.        

Even though money was tight at the time, and with two children in diapers, it was decided that Tom's wife should pare back to work only part time for a few years.  Starting on a shoe-string budget, Better-Organized.com was incorporated, a fax machine was purchased, business cards were made, and a mail box was rented.

Still, Better-Organized.com had no products to sell or services to offer. Having kids, being tight on money, and pitching in with the housework actually led Tom to some good ideas.  The first product concept was a custom 3-ring notebook with pocket-pages for organizing and shopping with grocery coupons. The initial production run was a success, and all of the initial units were sold from exposure in newspaper "new products" columns.  The product, however, did not survive into continued production because it was too costly to make and sell at a profit.

The second product idea, The BetterBasket, would eventually put Better-Organized.com "on the map." Tom's all-fabric laundry and general-purpose utility basket was a hit with consumers wherever it was sold and it was a winner in QVC's Quest for America's Best Products campaign.  Being selected from over 500 competing products from the state of Arizona was a strong validation of the design.

The vision of committing full-time to Better-Organized.com got put on hold in the mid-90's when, after the new president was let go, Tom was asked to become a top executive for his employer. Taking the opportunity to earn an increased salary and learn much more about business at the executive level seemed like the right decision at the time, so Better-Organized.com remained in operation as a part-time venture.

They say "time flies when you're having fun," but it also flies when you are helping to run a multi-million dollar company for someone else. After spending ten years of managing sales, customer service, and product development, the time had come to devote all energies to Better-Organized.com. The impetus to do so was a combination of desire to live a healthier lifestyle, spend less time on the road and more time with the family, and the excitement of launching a new family of organizational products, the FunDisplay product line.

In 2005 the decision was made to gear up for the full-time growth of Better-Organized.com. The first three new injection-molded Fun Display products were officially launched in July 2006, and more products are on the drawing board. Look for the Better-Organized.com website to gain more innovative products as the months go by. Also, Tom would like to hear of any new product needs you may have, or give you a bit of advice on an invention you are working on. You can contact him at tom@better-basket.com.

The History of The BetterBasket

Tom Goth, an enterprising and entrepreneurial husband and father of two, got fed up with the hassles of traditional, cracked plastic laundry baskets. It was time for action. Somebody had to do something!

He had taken over the family laundry duties, after the birth of the family's second child and was going nuts trying to keep up with the avalanche of dirty laundry, clean laundry, missing laundry, cracked plastics baskets, and unending trips up and down their stairs of the two-story townhouse in Scottsdale, Arizona.
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After several weeks of sketching and thinking, Goth came up with a winning design -- a rectangular fabric basket with permanent partitions and four strap handles---and began searching for someone to manufacture a prototype.
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After being told by several sewing companies that it couldn't be done, he finally found the perfect mesh fabric, the sturdiest fabric edge binding, strong strap handle material, and someone who could bring the design into production.
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After getting the first production run of three-compartment BetterBaskets, Goth began showing them, and selling them, to friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. He sold them across the aisle on airplane flights and to rental car counter attendants.
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The excitement generated by the BetterBasket, and the repeat orders, made him believe that there was a real need for the product. Goth incorporated a small company named Better-Organized.com. How could the world be made aware of the BetterBasket, from a home office on a shoestring budget? How do you create a new market from scratch?
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Goth was fortunate that his wife was an excellent artist. She made several pen and ink drawings of the BetterBasket. A press release was composed and sent out to the largest 100 newspapers in the US, along with the drawings, based upon information obtained from the public library.
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Within a few weeks, six or seven newspapers ran features on the BetterBasket in their new product sections. The phone in the master bedroom began to ring off the hook some days, often beginning at about 5:30 am Phoenix time.
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The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram did their own month-long test of the BetterBasket and published a very favorable article. Then they released the article to the world on a wire service. Their article, or portions of it, began to pop up all over America. Helena, Montana, then Syracuse, New York. Then Knoxville, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, San Jose, Salt lake City, and others. In all, about 30 newspapers picked up the newswire story from Ft. Worth.
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In the midst of all the activity, Better-Organized.com got set up to take order payment via Visa and MasterCard. Professional packaging was developed. A two-compartment basket version was launched, by customer demand, and it now sells as well as the original three-compartment basket. Several product design and material improvements were implemented. The BetterBasket had arrived as a successful, commercial product.
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The BetterBasket was chosen by QVC as one of the top new products from the state of Arizona during their "Quest for America's Best" campaign. The BetterBasket was one of twenty products chosen from the 529 competing entries to be showcased in a special live broadcast from the Rawhide theme park in northern Scottsdale. The initial television exposure for the BetterBasket was a huge success! A total sellout. The BetterBasket was one of the top three products of the show!
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Tom Goth was invited to be a guest host on the QVC home shopping channel many times. Bit by bit, he became more comfortable demonstrating his invention under the glare of the TV lights. Thousands and thousands of BetterBaskets were sold on QVC, further validating the utility and elegance of the BetterBasket concept and design.
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The Better Basket is now being promoted on the internet, via this web site, and is available on a limited basis through selected catalogs and retailers. Every day, someone new is buying the Better Basket. They always enjoy the product beyond expectation, and get more for gifts or have someone ask them how to get one for themselves. And so it goes for a great product, built with great quality, with something to offer anyone who tries it.

​The History of the FunDisplay Product Family

The events that led to the invention of the Fun Display product line span over a time frame of many years. When Tom was just out of high school, he went on several educational trips to Central America to study Mayan ruins and culture. While traveling the mountains of Honduras and Guatemala, he had the pleasure of enjoying incredibly good soups in the many villages he visited.  Years later, those memories spurred a desire to learn the art of soup-making for self enjoyment and to share with his family.          

The cooking of great soups led to buying many bottles of fine spices.  The proliferation of spice bottles led Tom to search for a suitable organizational system that would display his spices in an attractive fashion and available for creative use while cooking. A search of both the internet and the local retail stores revealed many available systems and designs, but there were none that met his needs and expectations. It was time to go to Home Depot, get out the wood-working tools, and make some prototypes. A working model of The Straight Step Shelf was created, and it worked beyond expectation. The first person outside the household that saw the prototype asked where we had gotten it, indicating the design was really worthwhile!

There are many products for organizing spice bottles in the marketplace, so there was a question if another good design was needed by consumers. However, Tom had been greatly irritating his wife with his perpetual mess of vitamin and supplement bottles strewn about the kitchen counter. While Tom believed that good nutritional was important and worthwhile, his wife was certain that a mess of vitamin bottles on the counter-top was tacky and unattractive.  An all-out effort was then begun to design the most attractive and efficient family of displays for common household products.    

From that problem and household conflict was born the idea of creating The Fun Display family of storage displays for items including vitamins, supplements, medicines, and spices. Once the first product designs were complete, customers also began using the storage displays for baby food, dog food cans, and displaying mementos, photos and collectibles. There will be many more product designs added to the Fun Display family over the coming months and years. We hope that you enjoy them.

The Genesis of a New Product Idea

How is the idea for a new product line idea born? For Better-Organized.com founder Tom Goth's products it generally starts by him performing an everyday task or trying to learn to do something new.  If the experience is easy, pleasing, and effective, there is likely to be no further thoughts on the subject. However, if the experience is unpleasing, frustrating or mildly painful it becomes apparent to Tom that something needs to change.

​By far, the least expensive method to find a solution to the problem at hand is to ask friends for advice, find a good system or product at a retail store, or spend some time doing research on the internet. If all of these efforts fail, then it may be time to design a new invention from scratch. Sometimes the efforts to design something new and useful end up with failure. Other times the efforts pay off in a prototype design that the inventor loves and uses, but does not go beyond the prototype stage.

In a few rare cases, the new design excites not only the inventor but almost everybody that sees the new concept.  When that happens, the inventor/entrepreneur pours a massive amount of mental energy and a large amount of monetary assets into proving out all of the design details and surmounting the technical hurdles for commercial production. With a lot of hard work, persistence, and some luck the new product idea may become a commercial success.