September 26, 2002
Hoping to clean up
By MICHAEL MILLER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6712, E-MailUPPER TOWNSHIP - Terry Henes could talk Frosty the Snowman into a Bermuda timeshare.
Or so his friends
say.
But for the better part of his 43 years, Henes has peddled other people's products, from cars to copy machines.
Now, the Strathmere resident is pitching his own creation.
Henes and his partner, Joseph Saraceni, founded the company
Creative Views, which launched its first product this year: EZ Clean, a combination spray bottle-paper towel holder that retails
for less than $10.
Henes recently promoted the bottle to a stranger at the bar in the Deauville Inn.
"So, I'm
at a car wash and what do you do? You tuck the paper towels under your arm and you clean," he said. "But I dropped the paper
towels into the water and they were ruined. So I grabbed another roll."
He dropped that roll, too.
"This way,
you don't have to wrestle with the paper towels and the bottle while you work," he said.
From the bemused reaction
of his friends at the bar, they had heard this same spiel before. But they were no less enthusiastic.
Henes grew up
peddling soft pretzels and newspapers as a child in North Philadelphia. His salesman's instincts were stamped in hot mustard
and newsprint.
"There's an old phrase in sales: the KISS Theory. Keep it simple, stupid," he said. "If you try to complicate
matters, you sometimes talk yourself out of a sale."
Henes hopes to market the bottle to janitorial and maintenance
supply companies, hotels, casinos and anyone else who uses paper towels.
But taking a product from concept to store
shelves has been frustrating and slow, he said.
"Nobody wants to give the little guy a chance," Henes said. "The government
makes no sense. They have a patent office, but right next door to the patent office there isn't an office that helps you get
your idea to the market. You have to do it all on your own."
Saraceni, a general contractor from Westown, Pa., invented
and patented the bottle in 1997. The patent is 13 pages long.
"My wife was cleaning the front door. She went to get
towels and the paper-towel holder was empty. I saw the spray bottle and it clicked," he said.
Saraceni made a wooden
prototype that later became the molded plastic bottle they are selling now.
Henes and Saraceni sold their wives on
the product. Then they took the bottles to friends and neighbors before going to a professional test-marketing firm.
"We
did focus groups," he said. "First, we had them clean windows the regular way. Then we had them use our product. You could
start to see people come around."
The two friends say their invention has been time-consuming and expensive. They fronted
their own money to design and produce the first 1,200 bottles at an Egg Harbor Township manufacturer.
"It's a side
job that you have to pay for," Saraceni said. "It costs a lot of money just to get where we are today."
The company
is entertaining other would-be inventors' ideas. And they have a few of their own that they were not quite ready to share.
Meanwhile,
they hope to take EZ Clean to a mass audience through TV marketing.
"It just makes so much sense. If there's a market
for it, the sky's the limit," Henes said. "Everyone cleans. Everyone uses paper towels."
And if Henes can get their
attention, they will know about EZ Clean as well.
To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:
MMiller@pressofac.com
