Finding inspiration in tantrums and tennis balls

Two local inventors bring products to market in a recession

By Michael Orbach

Two-and-a-half-years ago, Corrie Wilder of Bellmore brought her daughter to a local gym where a strict rule required children to wear socks with rubberized grips. Her two-year-old daughter was wearing tights and a twirly skirt and had no interest in adding large white socks to her outfit. Needless to say, she had a fit.

“I looked around and said, ‘Please don’t do this here,’” Wilder recalled.

But if necessity is the mother of invention, there may be no greater necessity than quieting a screaming two-year-old. Later, Wilder, and fellow gym attendee Yelena Mogelefsky of Merrick created GRiPPiES, no-slip shapes that can be ironed on to any piece of clothing, and a line of no-slip tights.

Wilder, a freelance designer, designed the product and Mogelefsky, who works in fashion, arranged to have it produced in Taiwan.

Last month GRiPPiES won The National Parenting Center’s Seal of Approval, following eight weeks of testing by parents and kids that found that not only do they work, but will also survive multiple trips through the laundry. They are now sold in over 850 Target stores across the nation and specialty shops like Aileen’s Kids on Merrick Road.

GRiPPiES come in two designs, stars and bears. Wilder says the startup company is funded “out of pocket, little cash, lot of credit and a lot of faith.”

Meir Frankel of Woodmere, an Aish Kodesh member, had a problem. He owns a two-family home and wanted to spare the folks downstairs from having to listen to the sound of chairs scraping across the floor in his home. The result was an invention he calls Lowboz.

“I saw an older woman using a tennis ball on her walker,” Frankel explained. Using that walker as an inspiration, he created a completely new product utilizing a custom-made felt ball that fits virtually any chair and comes with a fashionable, removable sleeve — patent pending —that is available in a variety of colors.

During Frankel’s recent appearance on WNBC’s Today in New York program, reporter Cat Greenleaf may have hit upon the best explanation for the concept: “A ball with a cozy.”

Once he quieted his chairs by attaching Lowboz (rhymes with ‘oboes’) to the legs, Frankel figured his product had a wider appeal, so he began producing them locally. Frankel says sales of Lowboz have been great and he has a big target market.

“There are 18 billion chairs in this country,” Frankel explains. “It is a part of the house that hasn’t been given the proper attention yet: the bottom of the chair. “

While Frankel has seen similar concepts in classrooms, cafeterias and other commercial settings, he said until Lowboz a solution like this has never been aesthetically designed or properly marketed.

“They were big and ugly. We made them look pretty and made it into an item that could be bought by a mother walking up the aisle. I love the fact that we’ve taken an improvised solution for an everyday problem and turned it into a real product” — one that he hopes will find a place in Middle America.

He also sees the product as particularly useful in Jewish homes.

“When you have a Jewish home there’s a lot of activity. The felt pads constantly fall off [chairs] and end up stuck somewhere on the floor or even on the cat... and at that point they are muktzah on Shabbos too.”

Loboz are available in a wide variety of stores and online at www.lowboz.com. Lowboz are durable; Frankel says he’s been using the same ones on his dining room chairs for three years.

Meanwhile, Wilder isn’t looking for any more brilliance in screaming fits.

“The brilliance can be spoken,” Wilder laughed. “She could use her words.”