EPISODE 13 - KEN SIEGEL

Welcome to the Impulse Spotlight where we meet with product development professionals and shine a light on the products they are most proud of.

In this episode we speak with the Director of Engineering at Trim-Lok Inc. a company that specializes in the manufacturing of rubber and plastic extrusion products. Trim-Lok's high-quality sealing and trimming solutions are used across various industries including automotive, marine, industrial, and recreational vehicles. 

Our guest today has amassed a wealth of experience working for various large and small corporations, including Lockheed, pfizer, mattel Toys, and Rainbird. He has earned a total of 12 patents and founded his own development company, 2N2 which specializes in industrial design, product design, and tooling design, creating everything from housewares to computer electronics. Beyond his professional achievements he is a dedicated family man. He's been happily married for 21 years and is a proud father to his 19 year old triplet boys. In his free time he enjoys woodworking, playing golf, and working out. 

Ken Siegel has been a driving force at Trim-Lok for the past 18 years but Ken has a lifetime of design and development experience holding down every role from inventor to executive. Today we begin by discussing a folding hanger and a specialized plastic handle, two products Ken personally developed and brought to market.

Ken recounts his diverse experiences working with a cat litter company as well as his time at Procter & Gamble where his strategic influence had a direct impact on the trajectory of their Tide products. He also shares an example of a custom extrusion project and how his team successfully overcame the obstacles they faced. Throughout every story or example Ken provides valuable insight into the importance of adaptability and resilience in product development, emphasizing how failure can serve as a powerful growth mechanism. Ken hopes to encourage aspiring product developers to stay persistent and never give up.

Show Notes:

Click here to learn more about Trim-Lok.

Podcast Transcript:

Hi Ken, Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Great to have you. So as I always start this out, I tell people I started impulse 25 years ago after working for a product development company that had, you know, all fast of product development under 1 roof, I tell them, you know, I say I got my master's degree working for that company. Tell us about how you got into product development .

Well, many years ago, well, my first job out of college was Lockheed, which I was developing machinery for in manufacturing , and when the plant shuttered, I had a chance to work in the private sector in a biomedical device company and did some good things on the manufacturing floor that got positive reviews with my management and they promoted me into product development of a next generation biomedical device and and that is what I like doing. I like developing the products. Whether it is assembly aids or what have you, you know, within that company and they put a lot of trust in me to develop a whole next generation device and basically my product development career was launched at that point.

Very cool. And so tell us about the product or products that you would like to start off discussing today.

When we can go through, I have developed many products from concept into the production. I could talk about some personal projects, a hangar that was I developed in 1988I could talk about a handle, very simple handle that was used in flexible packaging. We could start there with those 2. Those are my own personal products. But then I have many with industry.

Yeah, let us let us start with the hangar, tell tell us about that.

So, I was I had just moved to California and I was going to be going out for the evening and I actually had a it was like a shirt, a sweater, if you will, was hanging up in my closet and I went to pull the hangar out from the bottom, not not from the top or the collar and the hook. It was a wire hangar, the hook got snap, it was get snagged on the inside and I pulled I did not know that, so as I pulled the hangar out it it caught the thread and it and it left a hole in my in my shirt sweater, and I was not happy about that. I ended up not going out that night, I said the light bulb went off in my head, I sat down, I actually drew the design, which was a spring loaded folding hangar that could install or insert through the collar of your shirt and Yeah, I I just I started from that and did not did not go out that Friday night and design that and what followed was trying to figure out how to to get the prototype made. This was back in 1989 time frame, so I found a guy that was a machinist and he machined the very first version of it for me, I assembled it with a torsion spring, and the the hangar was born, the folding hangar was born for me in the way I designed it. Was the arms would fold. Not down, but in and then you just you would fold them in and then draw in, put it in the shirt and then let it spring out. And then over the years I patented the product, I sold the product through the Hammacher Schlemmer Skymall magazine, which was very interesting and great experience. I had a lot of interest with companies like Bed Bath and Beyond and linens and things and so on, but they never got me into their planograms , they had these planograms , and I could never get into the planogram. So but what was interesting was that I licensed this product. To a large hanging hangar manufacturer that sells to targets Kmart, Walmart and they bought my inventory over the years I had redesigned it, I had it molded in China and I had made some inventory. I have made improvements to the product to to go from 6 pieces down to 4 pieces. And that is the product that I ended up licensing to this hangar manufacturer and it was supposed to be sold to linens and things. Under a brand called Taylor Select and long story short, they went out of business lines and things went out of business and the product never made it and I never received royalties. I did receive a nice check for all of my inventory. I just never got my royalties, which would have been really nice, so.

Take us through the I mean, I know it is been a while, but take us through kind of the development of that. What did it look like from that concept that you made that night to actually get finished product?

Yeah, so it started with the machining. The very first 1 was machined out of ABS plastic. I then since I was I am an engineer mechanical engineer, I designed this for injection molding and I made some initial casted. Hangar arms. So I had to kind of it was like a very it was, you know, step by step sometimes. Well, in the development process you got to make mock ups so you got to, you know, figure out ways to do this on the cheap. And, you know, and test before you spend the money to make the mold and this and that. So I had done some castings of the arms, which is it was good for maybe 10 or 20, but it got me the point and.

So when you say casting When you say casting, you are talking about RT, V, silicon, RT, V molds.

I am sorry. Yeah, RT RT v molds. So where they pour the plastic in and let it let it set. I had sourced the wire hook at the time. It was a 6 part assembly and I had sourced the hook. I had these push nuts that I had sourced just through a catalog that you push on that holds the hook in place. I mean, I would if I could show you the, you know, the product, you know, picture and stuff like that, you understand? And but that is what it took is I had to do that, I had to test it. 1 of the problems with the hangar was the version, very first version was the hook axis was aligned to the center axis of the hangar body, and that did not work. Especially for and it is very important that did not work because the weight of the garment, whether it is a shirt, a sweater or what have, you would tend to want to pull the hangar arms forward. And it was not holding, so I shifted the center axis of the hook forward and kept the arms back back, and by doing that, it allowed the weight to rest on the the arms, but not affect not want to bring it forward. So it is kind of. That was a development that came with with testing, of course, with after the mock ups and so on, so that is 1 of the design pivots that I had to take once I understood that then it kind of took off from there, I added features. You can close the hangar arms together, I added a end of arm feature that you can snap them together and travel with it. I even had a version where the hook would fold down, but that was getting even more complicated , you know, so I did not actually designed it, I did not produce it that so with with those mockups, the RT V molds and so on, it allowed me then to to get to hire somebody to design the single Cavity, injection, mold. And with that, the hangar was born. And that was the version that was used to sell to Hammer Schlemmer sky mall. I employed a bunch of my friends to come over to my town home at the time in Redondo Beach, and we sat there all night assembling hangers. Which was my first shipment to Hammacher Schlemmer. I still remember that day and that night where I had to create a little jig to preload the tours in spring because I had a really good friend of mine, Jodie, who she was not very good with the spring. It is tough to have to Preload it, so we were assembling hangers all night long and then packaging them in a 3 pack and the the the pack packaging was a whole other aspect. I realized I went to the store and like a lot of these hangers were packaged in 2 or 3 s or 6 or what have you. And I had to design and that is where I spent some money, I spent more money, probably on the packaging side, then the product side, because I wanted the graphics of the product to basically showcase what the hangar did, how it functioned, so people when they looked at the package, they can understand this is a folding hangar and not just, you know, just a regular hangar, so it was a process, it was, you know, the whole thing from start to finish.

Very cool. So talking about packaging is probably a good segue to start talking about the handle that you had mentioned. You want to tell us about that?

Yeah, yeah, good segue. So I was working for a company called Portola Packaging up in the Bay area. I was a business development manager, engineering director, kind of a hybrid role and looking at new packaging. Programs that we that, you know, we can look at as a company and so on. And I was attending a show, a flexible packaging conference in Orlando, Florida. A gentleman stood up with a a cat litter bag, a 14 PA found cat litter stand up pouch, if you will. And he he had it had a die cut hole in there for the person's hand. So when you go to the store, you can pick it up using that die cut hole. And he stood up and he said, Hey, and he had a ripped, it was ripped, it was not it was not together and he said, Does anybody have a solution for this problem that I am having? And and he they ran and a cat litter manufacturing plant and distribution plant there in Florida. My light bulb went off again. I sat there in the conference. And instead of focusing I hope Porto is not listening instead of focusing on what I was there for for Portola packaging, I came up with a handle, I said the insight I said to myself, well, the inside of a bag is, I know what the inside is. It is it is low density polyethylene . And I said, you know, if I created a reinforcement to heat seal or ultrasonicly well into the bag on the inside, that would carry the weight of the weight distribution of the of the pouch and over that surface area and make make it much stronger and so. I was drawing this thing up on my plate on the plane flight. On the way home. I am sitting there just brainstorming . I got home. I incorporated 3D printing and made an S. Of course, it is not this low density polyethylene plastic. But I made a bunch of Elas. I wrote to this gentleman. I called him on the phone and I said, I have a solution to your problem. And that was literally days after, you know, maybe maybe a week, you know, 5 days or so after and I said, I have a solution to your problem, I then with my rapid prototypes, the 3D print. He we talked on the phone, I told him what it was, I sent on a sample, he had signed a confidentiality agreement, I made sure I always did that with people I was sending things to, that I invented or came up with. And I sent it to him and he is like he looked at it and he is like, when can I have it? When can you produce it? And I am like, I was not expecting that to happen right away and so I have to quickly. Make an injection mold, a single cavity injection mold. And again, spend money, but I tried to limit how much money I was spending. I like, you know, here we go, I am going to, you know, spend more money. And so I I invested in a single cavity mold, injection mold. I had a company local here in California, make the the product for me and on the cheap, I picked a company that could do it and not charge me a fortune and. I sold these handles for about 6 and a half cents a piece where I think I think I molded them for 2.8 cents or so, and then you have packaged them maybe a 100 to 250 in a box and send them and so on, and so I made a profit on that. The interesting thing is we had to figure out a way to heat seal them or ultrasonicly well them in the back. So he had he had asked me again all in this time frame, how are you going to do that? So I employed a gentleman with a on an automation company and we made and designed heat sealing apparatus to have a shuttle that would hold the bag, you would insert the handle through a pocket, it shuttles back in and then it then the operator hits the button, it presses down for about 6 s, heat seals, and then it shuts back out and then they replace and they keep they just go he bought that piece of equipment. I did not make some money on that as well. And I continue to make about 3 million handles a year with increasing volume from within 6 weeks of that. That conference I was I had a customer. And I was making money I with the money I was starting to make, I invested in a 4 cavity mold so I can drive my cost down and continue to make a profit it that money from that product alone paid for my wedding, so. Yeah, that is the story and I have even more I have a lot more stories about that product and. The interest that that received over the years.

Yeah, that is interesting. What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome in developing that?

I would say probably the the development of the the machine that the product was very simple, it is it is a low density polyethylene oval, simple as that an oval. So it was not that sophisticated . And and and that is the key here is that the products that are the most simple sometimes are the best products that make the most money. And so I tried to keep the product simple and the challenge was. Getting the the handle sealed into the pouch, the stand up pouch, where the where we can do them on a quick basis, so we we were at a point where it was maybe 10 bags a minute. And that was not fast enough for the company making the bags the Cedar Fresh Cat litter company. They they made Winn Dixie Cat litter, they made all this different cat litter. So that really was not quick enough. So with that product I was actually pursuing. Full full scale automation to be adapted to the pouch making machinery so that in the bag making machinery so that you can have a you know, they have those zippers in pouches where you can zip it together and seal the bag, it is the same approach. I created a piece of equipment. To well, we were designing a piece of equipment to adapt to the pouch making equipment so that the handle can be installed at that time frame in line versus after the pouch was already produced. And so with that would have would have upped the the speed tremendously. But I think that was the biggest challenge was to to get these in in a timely fashion to keep the cost down of assembly, the making of the product, the designing of the product and the the injection molding was was pretty, pretty simple.

Sure, sure did. Did the cat litter company have exclusive rights to that or were you able to kind of parley that into selling it to somebody else?

They do not have exclusive rights to it. I was using that as leverage to I started to market that all over the industry. I was in flexible packaging magazines. I basically created a whole company around that called 202 flexible solutions and. I was creating automation all of a sudden you started with a little simple product and the next thing I know, I am creating machinery to to install that. So it was also it was pretty much becoming a machinery company. At that point, you know, and I I had a Hewlett Packard for ink jet bags they were calling asking me, Okay, I want to put your handle in this in 2 of the handles in the ink chat bags so that we can hang the inch bags inside our printers so that I had interest from Hewlett Packard, I am like, Oh my God, I cannot believe this. I had interest from Proctor and Gamble. That was the huge, largest situation I could have imagined. They wanted me to present my hand handle or a version of it to their executive staff in Cincinnati. I believe I remember I think it Was Cincinnati that to their executives to for Tide, they would not mention at the time, but it came out later that it was for tied, it was kind of secretive and I got picked as a top 4 out of about 16 presenters. The version of handle that I created was a handle that had similar to my handle, but I extended the top and the bottom so that it supported the the the pouch because they were trying to put tide in a pouch rather than the bottle, and I extended it so that it had more support over the surface area of 1 side of the bag so that when you picked up the bag, you could pour it. And they loved it. They absolutely loved it. And I was sitting there counting the pennies that I would be making if I can get into the volume of the production, which was like I think the starting volume was 250 million and, you know, they tied as you know, they make this thing global and so. I tried to parlay that simple little low density polyethylene handle into many different things, and it did take off to a certain point, but unfortunately, the Cedar Fresh Cat Litter Company sold their whole brand to a private equity firm. And I struggled with the president of the private equity firm to keep the handle in place and I do not know if you know about, you know, about private equity companies, they like to strip things down and sell them off in pieces. We wanted to take my my 6 cent handle out. And and I said, no, no, no, you are going to destroy the brand, the brand, you know, the the brand that they created over the last 3 or 4 years and everybody loves the product and it was it is been growing in popularity. And she is like, well, it is too expensive, so I try to lower the price as best as possible. I got quotes for 24 cavity moles, 48 cab moles I want was trying to I said I will make the investment. Let us lower this thing down to as low as possible so that you can keep it in there. And and they did not go for that. So you kind of it kind of fizzled at that point, yeah.

Interesting. So back to the tide example, you know, if they went through that exercise they are trying to build pouches and all that. Well, why do we still see bottles of tide on the shelf instead of pouches?

Exactly. Okay. So it was during Chris it was getting towards Christmas time that year and I was picked as a top 4, then I was picked as a top 2 and I was like, I could not believe it. I just could not believe it. A simple little plastic piece and I am picked as a top 2 for Procter and Gamble to be put into it into a tide bag. It was it was I was blown away by that. What had happened was they they they did not analyze and I am not sure why, but they did not analyze the inf impact of converting all of their lines globally. From a bottle filling standpoint to a pouch filling standpoint, it is a different process. It is a different handling process for making pouches and heat and sealing those into bags. And then of course put it, you know, there was the pudding of the handle in place that had, you know, in line and all that stuff. They did not analyze this fully, which is. Crazy that Proctor and Gamble did not do this analysis upfront or or what have you, and it came down to the senior packaging engineer calling me and say saying he apologized after the holiday, and I am thinking I am going through the holi holiday saying, Oh my God, this is going to be amazing. And then the holiday ends, January comes around and they call me and say we say to this to me that they did not do their their their full homework and upper management does not want to spend the money to convert all of their plants globally from bottle filling to pouch filling in, you know, and it would have been a huge boost for them because when you when you fill bottles when you you injection blow blow mold bottles, you are shipping air and and they wanted to get away from that and and, you know, with these pouches you can stack them. 3 times as many pouches as you can get bottles, maybe more. So that is why they wanted to pursue that to lower cost. But I guess the investment of the capital to convert all of their plants was too too much for them. And it never took off. That is why you still see tide and all of their brands of liquid lager detergent in in bottles.

That is interesting. I mean, it I am sure it would have been a huge investment, but you got to imagine the payback was not that long, but I guess they know the numbers.

I you are you trust me, I I would not be working for Trim Lock, my current company today. If I was selling 250 million handles a year, I would be enjoying that, yes.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. So you mentioned trim lock. What is your current role? What are you doing these days?

So I am the director of Engineering for Trim Walk. And let me just step back. The first 20 + years I spent with product development , it was mostly for injection molding, it was not really for another manufacturing processes. It is mostly involving injection molding. Engineering , thermoplastics and so on for different companies, biomedical. I worked for Mattel toys I worked for Rainbird when I when I left to take this position at T Lock is to be the director of Engineering and Trim Lock is an extruder. They are a custom profile extruder. And so it is a different manufacturing process. I am aware and I was aware of extrusion and it is not a 3D manufacturing process. It is a 2D process, it with injection moldings, 3D extrusion is 2D. It is kind of like when you were a kid and you are playing with Plato, you put that little flower disk in there, you put the PDO in, you squeeze the handle and or pushed to handle down. And what comes out is an extruded Plato in the in the flower shape, right? Well, that is extrusion and Trim Lock does an industrial version of that and whether we do rubber and we do plastic. I was not I was not aware when I got there. I was like, This is not going to be , it is going to be plain, you know, plain Jane type of stuff, and a man I was wrong because when I got there, my creativity took took hold and I was solving problems and and creating solutions for customers, and it allowed me to use my creativity and and create these crazy extrusions where I could combine materials, create features. And and we took off T Lock took off. We were very in the beginning. We were very heavy catalog where like had a catalog, they have been in business for 53 years now. They had a they have always had a catalog and they had products that the owner created and was selling and when I got there they had very little custom products and then when I got there and I started getting into I can I can do this and I can do that can combine these materials and I pushed the boundaries of what Trem locks capabilities were and and we found out we being Trimark, they found out that, hey, we could do some really cool things and once we started learning and doing that. It my creativity just got stronger and stronger and we started creating all these products that that a lot of other people were not doing. And so our custom business took off like crazy. I would say now if you were to say what is your percentage, we are 80 to 90 % custom log sells itself. That is that is a that is a mature product line. Everything that we do and everything that my team works on is is is brand new R D stuff, you know, new stuff.

You mentioned when you first started talking about it having different materials, do you actually extrude different materials or they extruded it separately and then kind of assembled together? How does that work?

Yeah, so in extrusion, let us just take plastic, e.g., we we do plastic, and what we do is when you have multiple materials, you have each material is in its own extruder. So you have the main extruder, which would cover the largest section, we look at it as cross sectional area of the product. So we put the main the the largest extruder to to fill that section and then let us say you are creating a flap or something, you know, a feature that is a different material. Maybe maybe the main section is a more of a rigid material and the ceiling portion of it or the other feature is more flexible, softer material, softer plastic. So we have 1 extruder running the more rigid material. And we have a second extruder coming in at a 90 degree angle and that is feeding the flexible material into a what we call a stack de so the 1 part of the die is is is getting the rigid material, the other part of the.the other plate of the dye is receiving the flexible material, and they come together in the 1 die. And then you are extruding out through the front of it and then into the cooling bath down the line and there you are able to produce the part with multiple multiple features. We do not just do that is called co extrusion where you have 2 materials. We do trial extrusion. We do quad extrusion and if there is a name for it, we do pent pet, we do 5. We do not like to do 5 only because you are tying up that many extruders. And when you tie that many extruders, you can not run those extruders for other products. So we kind of cap it at 4. As long as we have long runs and we are making good money, we will use for extruders. I would say the majority of what we are doing is co extrusion and try extrusion.

Okay, so when when you are doing the co extrusion tracks and everything is still hot, so it bonds together when it meets and okay.

Yes, yes. So good question that the materials have to be thermally compatible. So if it is a polyolefin material like a polypropylene , what would polypropylene bonds well with is is other polypropylene or materials that are similar to polypropylene poly? So we have to keep that in mind. You have to use similar materials that have thermal profiles that match and so that they can bond. And so we do a lot of what is called T PV thermoplastic vulcanized. It is what what that is, it is it is a nice long term for. E PDM rubber and polypropylene that are mixed as a as a thermal plastic. It is using a little bit of rubber using a little bit of rubber with polypropylene , and that is called T P V. The other side of that is T P O, which is the same 2 components , E PDM and polyp but to is more rigid. So that is more polypropylene than rubber. T PV has more more rubber than polyp so. And and basically all surrounding those materials, we can and TPS, they are called thermoplastic elastomers. I mean, I can get into a lot of chemicals stuff, but these are all the materials that you can co extrude. We do ABS with T PS, we do rigid Pvcs with flexible Pvcs. We are doing now high tell which is a copolyester with P. V. C. There is so many different combinations that we can that we work on and it depends on the the customer, it depends on the application, it depends what what the app you know what what it is, it is it is doing in the application. On what materials that we use and the same thing for rubber, rubber is not very rigid, so you are limited to what you can do from a rigidity standpoint. You can get up to about 85 in the shore a hardness range, and you can get flexible up to semi semi rigid on rubber, but we co extrude rubber, we put metal through rubber, we do all kinds of stuff in rubber, yeah.

Cool. You were talking about mixing, I do not remember if it was T P or another soft material with like polypropylene and then doing the same thing, is it because of that mixture that you can then co extrude like a polypropylene with a T B,

Right. Yeah, it is. It is all thermal it is all the thermal profiles are matching so that allow it to to bond together. I could not take and chemically why they have to be right to I could not take a let us say. A P V C and bond it with a polypropylene . It will not it will not match, it will not work, it will never it will never bond together, right? So you have to use similar similar materials with similar thermal profiles that that make that work, yeah.

Very cool. Before we start wrapping up is can you like share an e.g. with us of like a fun challenge that you solved, you know, in the custom extrusion area?

Sure, I have many 1 in particular, which is a really I really like this 1 because it is it started from scratch, from complete scratch was what is called a fender flare and these fender fares are used along. Bus bus fenders, truck fenders, truck body fenders, you see, you do not you do not notice them because you are driving along the road and nobody's looking at the bus like I am looking at the bus like I look at that rubber part or, you know, whatever. But if you look at a bus driving down the road or maybe an R V or whatever, you will if you look at either the front or back fender, you will see this, this black rubber thing surrounding the fender and that is what is called a fender flare. These spender fares are traditionally made overseas. There are some companies that make them here, but they are made using an autoclave, a pressure vessel, they extrude raw rubber, it is extremely raw. And it is not cured yet, so it is extruded raw in shape, and it is coiled and that coil, then all the plates of this rock coiled rubber, if you will, that is in a shape, gets then rolled into a giant pressure vessel, they call it an autoclave and and then through heat and pressure, that rubber is cured and because it is cured in a coiled state. It sets the curve and that curve looks very nice, and then they cut it to length, and that curve then gets installed with you have to here is the thing you have to drill through the fender. To install this traditional Fender flare and it looks great, it looks great, but the assembly of it is what I focused on, not the look, it was the assembly of it because. What they have have to do is they have to drill multiple holes around the fender using a template they have to use stainless steel hardware and, you know, bolts and nuts and washers and so on. And that all costs money and there is it is a lot of time and labor to install to drill those holes and to hold it in place and all that kind of stuff and that is the way it was done. That is the way it is done. It is still being done that way and what I came up with and what we do trim lock, we do not do raw rubber extrusion and autoclaving . We do continuous extrusion. So when you put the rubber into the extruder into the very beginning of the line. At the very end of the line, there is there is microwave cure, there is a salt cure process. So the rubber goes in the extruder, it is extruded, it gets cured, it gets cooled. And at the end of the line you have a product, it is a completed product and it is all done in 101 process. The challenge was how do I create a continuous, extruded fender flare that can have the ability to go around the radius without kinking or buckling and looking funky? And so that was the challenge, but I was up for the challenge and I really, you know, I took our trim technology on how we install rubber trim with metal carriers onto the edge and and I and I adapted that everybody thought I was crazy and I adapted the Fender Flare, the profile of the Fender flair to our trim and I said, why do not we instead of drilling holes, we can use our Trim technology, adapt the fender extruded all in 1 time and rubber and then we can install all on the fender and everyone is like, No, you are crazy, it is going to buckle like crazy and honest of it. Well, sure enough, it did buckle And and it looked terrible in the beginning. But I solved that problem, I realized that the stress of when it goes around the radius has to go somewhere as you are trying to put this this beefy piece of rubber around the radius of the fender, the the stress that is creat created when you start bending the rubber, it has it goes somewhere, sometimes it was going towards the flap and getting it making a buckle and stuff like that, so I created and this was patented by the way I created a hinge, I created this unique flexible hinge that sits sits there before the trim, it gets to the trim, and as you bend the product around the radius, all the stresses get absorbed by the hinge.

Interesting.

It really is. And it took me by surprise to I mean, this was the concept and I was playing with it and I was trialing and I was testing in the lab and and I am like and I mocked it up again. Mock ups are your friend, they are they are awesome. And I figured out that that hinge was the key, it was the complete key to the whole product, and so what it also allowed me to do was it allowed me to coil the product just like the original Fender flare, it allowed me to coil it in a box, allowing the rubber to take a set. As it is further cooling in the box, so when they take it out of the box and they install it, it looks perfect and got a patent on that. Have many customers and we are selling that thing like crazy and that is the story of the fender flare. Many products we have, many I have other products that we have come up with or that I have come up with and innovation and that is that is my charter with Trim Lock is to innovate and come up with new things.

That is really cool, really interesting. So just a couple more questions and we will wrap up kind of shifting gears just a little bit. What are some of the trends like? I love asking this question because everybody comes at it from a different perspective. So from from your world of product development , what are some of the trends you see emerging.

Well, 3D printing is definitely it is not even a trend anymore. It is like a it is like a commonplace thing, right? The the 3D printing is is is going ballistic, we are using we have our own 3D printer in house. We use it for. Developing fixtures for manufacturing , we use it for our mock ups for product development . We are using it for everything. So the materials of 3D printing, the speed of 3D printing, all the various processes of 3D printing that you can do, whether it is flexible materials, rigid materials. That trend is is is through the roof right now and I do not see any any stopping that. That is 1 of the biggest trends that I see in our business and is is the 3D printing it allows us to quickly. Basically overnight, see what we have designed and test and then we can pivot or change the design and do it again. And and it just makes for your development project process, you know, to speed up your development process dramatically. But I think that is 1 of the biggest trends at least in our industry. As far as from a product development standpoint, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I would agree. And you have been around 3D printing about as long as I have in like the speed is what is crazy anymore. I mean, you used to you have to be so slow just to maintain accuracy and just how fast these things are. Printing now with accuracy is pretty amazing.

The multi material, I mean, back in the 90 s, back in the early 90 s when I was in biomedical we would print these Slas, the very start of this with stereolithography, and we would print these Slas, the polyurethane material. And you if you dropped it by a accident from an inch off the table, it would shatter in a million pieces. They are like, my God, I just, you know, I just destroyed $300 in a matter of a second and because it is shattered nowadays you can throw these things against the wall. It is crazy, yeah.

Yeah, it is pretty awesome. So reflecting on all the challenges and successes and you know everything you have encountered developing products, what words of wisdom would you share with somebody wanting to make a significant impact in the product development industry?

Yeah, I thought about this question, you have to stay motivated and you can not let other people because it is like this, if whether you are an inventor or you are an engineer or whatever, people will always try to be a naysayer when you are developing a product and you got to stay motivated, you you have to use failure. As your growth mechanism, it is it is key because there is so much more that is learned from failure than anything else. And a lot of people they they get, you know, they they see failure and and they stop and you cannot stop. You have to use that as a way to pivot your design or whatever you are, you know, you are doing and and then get back on the course and that fender flare that I just talked about would have never been completed had I stopped when I put it around the radius and it did not work the way I was hoping. It was like, Oh, it is not this looks like this looks horrible. I will never sell this. And so it failed. So I am like, Okay. And then my boss, the owner of the company was like, Forget it, it is over. And I am like, no, no, I can make this work, just give me some time to figure out and analyze how to fix this and and that is where the the hinge idea came up and and that was a great e.g. of failure turning into a design solution and and then success. So I would say use failure to to grow and to and be flexible when you are designing because you are not going to design it in 1 shot and and have the greatest product in the world, it is it is going to take time.

I tell people that we get a lot of inventors that come to us and I tell them I have been doing this almost 30 years and never once have we gotten the design right on the first try.

Low tech and simple, I drew up the handle and I did not even draw it where the handle was symmetric and like I was sitting there, like stupid me, how did you not make this symmetric so that you could feed it, you know, any which way. But it was it was that experience of the handle not being symmetric, that I am like and they were telling me the operators, if they are feeding it sometimes they are feeding it in backwards and I am like. No. And then I then that was a failure, right? And I am like craft. I need to make this thing completely symmetric. So the operator does not have to think when they when they insert it, they will insert it upside down right side up. It does not matter, it is the same every which way. That was failure of the handle. Initially, the initial design. I converted the design to be more successful. So but that was the closest thing that I have had to a 1 and done, yeah.

Yeah, cool. Awesome. This has been great. I really appreciate you doing this. Is there anything else you would like to mention it mentioned in regards to any of the products you have talked about or product development in general?

No, I mean, I think we talked about everything. I mean, if there are inventors listening right now, I would say I am an inventor, I am an entrepreneur, I started my own development company, you know, in my career I have worked for many various companies and if if there is an inventor listening on this, I would say do not give up, stay motivated and use failure to succeed because that is what it takes. It really does and and you have to and it is everybody want wonders and they look at people and they see people that are successful and like, can I would love to have that, but what they do not realize. Maybe they do not realize is that that person went through probably years of pain and struggling and trial and error and failure to get to that point. It it is rare that you you have a 1 and done and you are you just take off so you have to stay motivated, you have to just keep at it. And it does take money and it does take time and the difference between people that are successful and people that are not with inventing is that the people are successful, they stay with it and they keep at it.

Yeah, that is awesome. I really appreciate you doing this.

Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. This is this is great.