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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
How is the idea for a new product line idea born? For Clearview 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.