Skip to content
Entertainment
Link copied to clipboard

4 area inventors and their fortunes, or mis-

The pitch is just the beginning. The stories of these four Philadelphia inventors show how the road to success, or failure, is a bumpy one.

Ted Fitz, 78, demonstrates his Heart-Lung Gym machine, designed to strengthen the chest wall and diaphragm through progressive resistance, at his Ardmore workshop. He says it improves athletes' performance and the symptoms of asthma, emphysema, and cystic fibrosis.
Ted Fitz, 78, demonstrates his Heart-Lung Gym machine, designed to strengthen the chest wall and diaphragm through progressive resistance, at his Ardmore workshop. He says it improves athletes' performance and the symptoms of asthma, emphysema, and cystic fibrosis.Read moreAKIRA SUWA / Staff Photographer

The pitch is just the beginning. The stories of these four Philadelphia inventors show how the road to success, or failure, is a bumpy one.

Worth its weight in gold

Barbara Bigford was sitting on the beach in Ocean City one breezy day in 1999. She was trying to read a romantic novel and keep two umbrellas from toppling.

Turning from the flapping pages of her book, she surveyed the expanse of sand. Inspiration struck: Why not anchor her umbrellas by filling bags with sand and tying them to the poles?

She couldn't wait to return home to Paoli, where she sewed some bags from lightweight material. At Home Depot, she found a plumbing collar to attach the bags to the umbrella poles.

A month later, she tried her invention on the beach at Stone Harbor. It worked.

"I was only solving a problem," Bigford says. "I never thought about marketing it or turning it into a business."

But so many asked about it and wanted something similar that Bigford immediately applied for a patent.

That was the easy part. A part-time dental hygienist and mother of three, Bigford was untutored in business. She attended trade shows, "the best university," where she learned about packaging, pricing, bar codes, and manufacturing.

What she couldn't be taught - tenacity and enthusiasm - she had in abundance. During one five-month stretch, she visited the managers of 120 Wal-Mart stores; all ordered her Beach Pockets. Other boosts: a nod from QVC, a mention on The View.

Bigford, 54, survived some setbacks - a distributor stiffed her for $43,000; a shipment of umbrellas in display cases got crushed. "I'd never be where I am today if I hadn't made mistakes," Bigford says. "Embrace them."

In 2008, the business quadrupled, and sales topped $1 million. Last fall, weary of 18-hour days, Bigford licensed the product to Bravo Sports, which projects sales of $10 million a year. (www.beachpockets.com)

No more messing around

Fernando Becattini's wife gave him a job: paint the laundry room. But first he wanted to deal with the clothes falling onto a floor covered with kibble and water from their two sloppy dogs.

He bought a plastic bin, carved an opening in one side, placed the dogs' bowls within. It kept food and water off the floor but left an oatmeallike residue.

More design improvements followed. The ultimate result: the Neater Feeder, a spillproof pet-feeding station.

Becattini, 47, of Malvern, has a business background. A Wharton finance major, he developed commercial real estate. Then, with his father, he built the Bagel Factory restaurant chain, which they sold in 2008. As a seasoned entrepreneur, he had an advantage: "I knew what I didn't know."

Initial research was promising: More than 70 percent of U.S households have either a dog or cat. Most important: There was no other product like the Neater Feeder.

With patents pending, Becattini and his father decided to make and sell the product themselves, rather than license it to a manufacturer. Investors ponied up $2 million, and the Neater Feeder was unveiled in April 2009.

With a big boost from QVC, it snagged a dozen industry awards. Agway picked it up, as well as a thousand independent pet stores. The company is close to making a profit.

"The idea phase is the first step of a 10,000-step process," Becattini says. (www.neaterfeeder.com)

Breathing life into an idea

Ted Fitz began lifting weights when he was 8 years old, encouraged by his mother, an exercise enthusiast. He was also born with asthma. When he was 17, he had a brainstorm: Why not apply the principles of weightlifting to breathing?

That led to the Heart-Lung Gym, designed to strengthen the chest wall and diaphragm through progressive resistance. "Bodybuilding for the lungs," Fitz calls it.

His invention is housed in a garage that Fitz converted into a lab/workshop. The apparatus resembles something a mad scientist might devise - an assemblage of tubes and cylinders, dials and gauges, electronic monitors and blinking lights. One part measures and strengthens exhalation; another, inhalation.

Fitz insists the Heart-Lung Gym improves athletes' performance and the symptoms of asthma, emphysema, and cystic fibrosis: "This is not a cure. It's a thing to build you up, to augment your physical ability, endurance, and vitality."

After developing a prototype in 1963, Fitz spent years perfecting it. Though he got the Heart-Lung Gym patented, pulmonary doctors and medical authorities were cool. "They rejected it without giving it a chance," says Fitz, 78.

Today, Fitz, of Ardmore, is broke. He has plowed all his earnings and savings into developing and promoting his invention. A bachelor, he keeps a roof over his head by giving therapeutic massages and cleaning houses.

"Ideas are as common as bugs at a picnic," Fitz says. "Money is the fuel. It buys time and opportunity." (www.lunggym.com)

Shouldering the pain

Tom Fetterman says his life began at age 8, the year he contracted polio. Before, he was skinny and shy; after, he was resolute and ambitious.

The disease crippled his legs but not his life. After graduating from the University of the Arts, he rehabbed houses in summer, traveled in winter.

But relying on crutches ravaged his shoulders. To mitigate the "crutch shock," he tried springs. He crafted crutch tips from slices of a rubber ball. Both experiments failed, but Fetterman learned.

"Defining the problem is four-fifths of the invention process," Fetterman says. "If you're good at defining the problem, the solution becomes self-evident."

Trial and error eventually led to success: a shock-absorbing crutch tip made from a puck of polyurethane gel.

Fetterman, 65, patented his Performance Crutch Tips in 1988. They were hailed by the Franklin Institute and featured in Popular Science magazine. Fetterman was granted a second patent for a nonslip tread piece and now runs a business from his home in Southampton, Bucks County, selling custom crutches and accessories. Among his customers: Bill Clinton, who used a pair of Fetterman's crutches while recovering from knee surgery in 1997.

His crutch tips have made him a millionaire, Fetterman says, but money was never his primary goal. "I'd like to take credit for making a contribution to humanity, but when I developed the crutch tip I was thinking only of myself. My shoulders were in constant pain."

His advice to inventors: "You have to champion your own idea. No one can explain or sing its virtues better." (www.fetterman-crutches.com)