BY MICHAEL JAMES
Every once in a while a rags-to-riches story comes along that both captures the collective imagination and reaffirms one?s faith in entrepreneurial enterprise.
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MCILVENNA |
The genesis of Sudbury?s Plug Safe Inc. is a case in point.
A year ago the company didn?t even exist. There was just a man ? struggling to support his wife and three kids ? with an idea and the determination to get his brainchild to market.
The product he had in mind was a simple, inexpensive system of electrical outlet covers designed to prevent young children from being seriously injured or even killed as a result of electrical shock.
President and chief executive officer of Plug Safe Inc. Ryan McIlvenna recalls how the whole thing came about.
?I first came up with the idea about seven years ago, when I was working on the oil rigs in Alberta,? McIlvenna
said.
A lot of things were going on in his life at the time, so the idea kind of got lost in the shuffle. Then one day, when he was at home looking after his stepson, Liam, a toddler just learning to walk, something happened that
prompted him to revisit the idea. The curious toddler had yanked a plug from a wall socket leaving an open
connector.
?If I hadn?t looked up from what I was doing, seen what Liam was up to and scooped him up out of harm?s way, he would have been electrocuted,? he said.
Concerned about the child?s safety, McIlvenna said he went to the hardware store looking for some kind of safety cover to put over the electrical outlets in his home. However, he couldn?t find what he was looking for.
That?s when he remembered the idea he first came up with while working on the oil rigs.
The problem was, he hadn?t the foggiest idea how to go about getting the thing made, let alone how to market it,
?I had to find someone to help translate the idea in my head into a commercially viable product,? he said.
As McIlvenna tells it, the Regional Business Centre referred him to a man by the name of Mike Gauthier, owner of a local product development company called Deviat.
Gauthier helped him work out a couple of kinks in the basic design, conducted a patent search and provided him with the necessary information to take things to the next stage. That was in July 2002.
McIlvenna got busy. He had much to do, not the least of which was raising the necessary start up capital to get the venture of the ground.
Rather than attempt to sell his idea to strangers, McIlvenna decided to approach friends and family about investing in his brainchild.
?To date, we?ve sunk about $170,000 into it (the venture),? he said, adding it will probably take an additional $400,000 before the operation is in full swing.
Knowing his next step would be to take some ?plug safe? samples (prototypes) to the National Trade Show in Toronto, McIlvenna hired Mike Faubert as his vice-president of sales and Joel Lavoie as vice-president of marketing.
Armed with prototypes in hand, the three men attended the trade show in February 2003 and struck pay dirt.
Home Hardware was interested in picking the product up.
According to Faubert, Plug Safe just got the green light from Home Hardware to start ramping up for production last week.
?They (Home Hardware) want to try them out first,? Faubert said, adding he expects they?ll be looking at 50,000 units to start.
Essentially, the deal is, Home Hardware only pays for what we send them, he said.
?We have to set up our manufacturing accordingly,? he said. ?It?s basically a supply and demand arrangement.?
The initial run will be manufactured in China.
?They have these huge new manufacturing plants there.? There is nothing in Canada that can compete, he said.
That said, there are still a good many things remaining to be done.
Next week, McIlvenna will be driving south to take some samples of the Plug Safe system to Underwriters Laboratory (UL) in Toronto to have them tested and certified.
?(Certification by) Underwriters Laboratory is similar to CSA approval,? he said, the difference being UL covers
world-wide approval.
?We?re looking at three to four weeks before we get approval,? he said, adding it will probably be another 60-80 days on top of that before the product is available on Home Hardware?s shelves.
That said, McIlvenna and Faubert are understandably pleased with the way things have turned out so far.
?Only about two per cent of (new) inventions make it to the marketplace,? McIlvenna said.
