Here Are The Steps To Go From An Idea To On The Shelf With Tracy Hazzard From The Killer Innovations Podcast With Phil McKinney

This is Killer Innovations, a show about ideas, creativity, and how you can innovate. Welcome to the Innovators Garage, where you learn to create your next game changing killer innovation.

Welcome to this week's episode of Kilnovations, a show about creativity, innovation and design. I'm your host, Phil McKinney. This is show number one for season 12 of the Kilnovation Show. Can't believe it's been 12 years since we started. The very first show was me sitting with a laptop and a cheapo microphone plugged into my laptop in a bathroom at a Marriott resort in Phoenix, Arizona. And yes, the original show is still out there in the archive. So if you're willing to dig in and make fun of me from the early days, I just keep reminding people I've been doing this show before itunes even existed. So you could either call me an innovator or you can call me old. Be careful of which term you use. In this episode, we have a special guest, Tracy Haser. Tracy got referred to me through some emails that I got, so she chased her down and we scheduled her to appear on the show. Tracy has a lot of background in innovation, work that she does for clients, et cetera. But what's really impressive is Tracy's track record on commercialization. It's not just about having the ideas, but actually turning those ideas and making them real. So, Tracy, welcome to the show. I really appreciate you taking this time to join us today.

Well, thank you so much for having me and congratulations on 12 seasons.

Yeah, my wife keeps asking me, are you gonna keep doing this? I said, well, I could wheel my wheelchair even into the studio and keep doing the show. It's just so much fun. And I've met so many people. And you've got a podcast too, so.

You know, the joy of getting up there and putting together content, getting it out there and waiting for people's feedback.

Yeah, we're just about to hit our one year anniversary.

You're a rookie. Yeah, exactly.

That's what I'm feeling like. Although it is almost 220 episodes. Cause we do five a week.

You.

In my first year, I did one a week in 2005. That was the first year. March 28th, 2005 was show number one.

And I did.

51 shows in 52 weeks in the first year. And back then, since you didn't have itunes, there was a lot of hand holding and a lot of. I had to write a lot of HTML code to support the podcast. So, yeah, this is before any plugins even existed. For WordPress to do podcasting. And I think I was Libsyn customer number four. So.

Yeah, I have a price. My pricing at Libsyn is like, lower. Nobody's got a lower price at Libsyn than I do.

Well, you deserve it.

I got grandfathered in. I went through all the bucks. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Give us a quick like five minute kind of intro about you and what you do.

So I am a designer. I went to Rhode Island School of Design way back when and met my husband there, who is my partner, which a lot of people are shocked at. I do work 247 with my husband and happily we've been married 24 years, so it's working. But we have a business called Hazdesign H A Z. Z, like our last name, has two Z's in it. And we have a lot of core clients who we get on the shelf at retail. And I don't want anyone to be mistaken by what it means by getting on the shelf. I mean, we design the products that get on the shelf. So we're like ghost designers behind the scenes. And we normally work for brands that already have an established product and we help them figure out what to make next. And that's sort of our core competency, what you should be making.

So how long have you guys been doing this as a consulting, as a services offering?

Well, in this particular formation of the business, we're coming up on seven years in this formation of it, but we've been working together on and off. We had a business in the late 90s, early 2000 where we did accessories for handheld computers and we ended up with an infringing product with Ideo and Palm computing and some crazy things. So when we talk about ip, we've got some stories.

Yeah, well, I've got stories after because I was the one that did the palm acquisition at HP.

Oh, did you?

Oh, yeah. And also 33,000 patents in the patent portfolio at Hewlett Packard and hundreds of patent attorneys on the payroll just to deal with patent litigation.

And that's kind of our specialty is really doing and building an asset portfolio of not just patents, but designs that are valuable so that someone can get acquired. It's kind of been our. We've done it three times already in the last seven years. Just get a client to a certain level, build up their design and asset portfolio, and then they get sold.

So is there a certain segment that you focus on? Is it consumer electronics? Is it something? What's the segment that you tend to Focus in on.

So we don't do food or chemicals. So nothing like, you know, I just don't want to deal with it. It's just too difficult. And there's a whole regulations and it takes longer to deal with those things. So we don't do anything that the FDA might have to approve.

Right.

That's number one rule. We don't like to do fashion, although I have a textile design degree, so I have a background. There are fabrics incorporated into what we do on occasion. But we don't like to do fashion because it's too fast, too seasonal. We want to do things that are going to last longer than that. So we kind of joke that we don't do food and fashion, but that's about it. We pretty much do everything else, but we don't do coding or software. We work with people who do and help make the hardware that it goes into, but we don't do that.

So do you focus then on the design side of it, the aesthetics of the industrial design portion and then you have others that you work with that then do the UI ux?

Exactly.

Guts of it.

Exactly. That's kind of our specialty. But we take it from idea. So even if you didn't have an idea yet, like a lot of our clients, it's like, I need to make a broader product line. I don't know what to make next. So we take it from idea and we take it all the way till it's in box. So we baby it through. We source for clients. We do everything you might imagine in the process to getting it back on that shelf, including sit in on buyer presentations in the sales side and convince them that they should buy it.

So you graduated from college with your textile degree? I was an architecture major, never been an architect. In fact, I changed my major to computer software engineering.

Smart move.

Yeah. Yeah. What did you do right at school? You didn't jump right into doing this, obviously.

No, I went the corporate track and I worked for Milliken and company, one of the largest in textile design design companies in the world. And that's really where I got my business crash course. I learned statistical process control and we had a leadership orientation training. I wrote an article for Inc about it recently because Roger Milliken is kind of partially responsible for Trump and so because he changed Republican politics through a course that I actually took down there called Freedom School. At times it was all about libertarianism. And this is what you do when you come out of college as you get go through this course that teaches you about Business and libertarianism. It was crazy, but it was great because design school doesn't teach you that.

Right, exactly.

And then I went to Herman Miller. You can't get more innovative than that. And I really got an extreme crafts course in design research and innovation and how to handle in house and outhouse design, which is really kind of a lesson about when you need that.

Right. So when were you at Herman Miller?

I was at Herman Miller when they introduced the Aeron chair, and I helped work on the fabric for the arms and for the fabric for the back.

Okay, so the mesh back, I guess, is the way they always.

Exactly, yeah.

Because at hp, we actually partnered with Harman Miller on the replacement chair. Now, the only thing I can't remember what the name of it's called now, because the code name was Amsterdam, but I can't remember the name of the.

Did it end up Mira or something?

Yeah, that's right. It had this orange cloth back to it that. Yeah. At hp, we had a huge design team in ergonomics, so we sometimes got pulled in. Given also that we saw a lot of office equipment. So there was some. It was a good collaboration. But Herman Miller is unique in the fact that they do do kind of that external. They use those external designs. They may come up with a rough idea, but then they pretty much give the whole thing to some outside designer that either they've worked with before or they want to.

Get their design thoughts on.

Yeah, I mean, it's really a unique model and they do it because they want to have that outside perspective. They want you to have a broader view of it and not get so tunnel vision with what's going on in the company. And I think it really helps and makes for better design that has a more universal appeal.

Yeah. I remember going up to the Herman Miller headquarters and there's that wall where they have kind of all the materials. So you had a very paint combination and foam and fabric.

That was my responsibility.

Oh, really? I mean, you wouldn't believe. This wall just goes on forever and you can basically take this off and walk down and match it to this kind of thing. That was really great from the standpoint of allowing you to have kind of that visual cueing to what works and what doesn't work from a design from a works with the design perspective. I always enjoyed going up there to seeing the headquarters.

My job there was to turn it in, to make sure that we didn't obsolete any of those so that if you wanted them time and time again, you could recreate them.

Oh, that's true. That is a tough problem, isn't it? Once you design something and it gets integrated, particularly culturally, how do you make sure that it can extend for a very long period of time? We're going to take a quick commercial break and when we come back, we're going to pick up this conversation and really talk about Tracy's experience and the work that she does with the clients about going from an idea all the way through to the commercialization. So stay right there. We're going to be right back. We'll pick this up in the next segment. Stay right there. You're listening to Killer nations on the Biz talk radio network.

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This is Killer Innovations, a show about ideas, creativity, and how you can innovate. Welcome to the Innovators Garage, where you learn to create your next game changing killer innovation, innovation.

Welcome back to this week's episode of Kill Innovations, a show about creativity, innovation and design. I'm your host, Phil McKinney. We're here each and every week sharing with you tips and tricks and how you should think about taking what you can, what your raw idea that you've got rattling around your head and how do you actually commercialize it? How do you turn it into something real? We bring on guests, we bring on people who've got expertise to share with you so you can learn from them. This week we have Tracy Hazard on. Tracy's got an extensive amount of experience in doing product design and product commercialization. Now, in my experience, I've worked with a lot of design houses, but there's not, there's, there always seems to be this gap where people think the design ends and there's no reaching across to help in that commercialization. And if you're a regular listener of the show, you know my quote, which is ideas without execution are a hobby, and we're not in the hobby business. It's all about making those ideas real to have significant and meaningful impact on solving a problem for a customer, financial success for your organization, whatever your motivation is, none of it happens unless you actually turn it to real. Tracy, let's pick up. We talked last. Got a little bit of background on you in the first segment. What I want to talk about now is talk about that commercialization because it sounds like what you're doing is somewhat unique to other design groups that I've worked with, which is actually participate all the way through that commercialization versus just handing it over at the point of design.

Yeah, we really dialed that in and realized that early on when we Were being asked as an industrial design firm to just do the design work. Things weren't successful, they weren't making it to market. There's so many things were going wrong. And if we had entered into a deal that was royalty based, we were just not getting our funding, we weren't getting the money on the end. And so we were working our butts off, dropping it off at the door and then not getting any of the upside. And mostly it was these companies not being able to deal with their sourcing or their commercialization, marketing, whatever it might be that was their problem along the way. So we said, you know what, this isn't the right client base for us. We want one that's going to allow us to embed in their organization for as long as it takes. Sometimes It's a year, 18 months. Embed in their organization and really take this thing all the way to market for them and with them. And in the process sometimes we build up their team for them because they didn't have it before. And so it just has happened. Like we built up sample shops in Asia or built quality control systems for them. I mean I've even built like sample request database libraries.

To handle this because they end up with a great product and the next thing they know they're 100 million dollar company but they have no systems in place. So we embed ourselves and do all of that and we require fee plus royalty so that they understand that we're both in it together.

Right, right. That's good because it makes everybody have skin in the game.

Exactly.

When you think back to the clients before you actually changed your process, are there like two or three common mistakes that these companies were making that you just said I got to solve those?

There are quite a few, but the most common ones I think were that they would come in and they'd say, well, I've got this great invention or this patented idea and it's so great and I love it and there's going to be a market for it. And so often there isn't a market for it or it's market that's very difficult to reach, way more difficult and requiring way more money than they had gotten in terms of financing or funding. And so that's really where it would but fail in sort of its market connection to the product. Or they would come in with the flip side of that and they'd get so in love with their product that they really weren't open to any adjustments or changes. And it just, they got so wrapped up in it and the reality was that their product wasn't the best thing since sliced bread. So it was never going to make it. So it's usually a market product fit. That was always the most common problem we found.

Well, it's interesting because that's usually the first thing any entrepreneur, any innovator should be focused in on. It's not the fact that you got an idea that passion doesn't get you to success. We all get kind of emotionally attached to the idea. So the question really comes down to is how do you translate that to something that's going to be ultimately successful? And therefore a lot of you're right, I get it all the time. In fact, I got a guy who just sent me an email last week, a listener of the show who has two different ideas and really, really passionate about it. Then you start asking some questions and they haven't really sat back and thought. So I'm kind of like, okay, here are the five questions. You need to go find 100 customers, ask these five questions and then let's come back and have a conversation. You haven't validated the idea. You validated the idea in your head, but you haven't validated the idea with that target market to even know is this worth even spending your time on? And this person in this case already has patents in process and has already dropped 20 or $30,000 in the patenting efforts ahead of really knowing or understanding. Is this a real problem that needs to be solved?

Well, I agree. That's like the biggest problem I see from the sort of small startup and inventor side of things is that there's too much money dropped before they even have any market proof. And our process puts that first before you patent it. We sort of have, we have a seven step process that we use and patented is, is fifth, not until fifth.

So walk us through, what's the process you use with your clients? So what's the first thing you would do? Someone just called you up and reached out to you and said, hey, I got this kind of, I slipped in the shower, banged my head, now I've got this really great killer idea.

So we do it. Our very first step is prove it. And so we check that market and product. It's usually just the product concept. We're just testing the concept. We don't need to have a prototype, we don't need to have any of that. We're just testing the market fit for that. And we're also testing the reach for that market because sometimes the market's really hard to Access and that kills the idea. It's just too costly. So we check that at the very beginning and it is almost a litmus test for whether or not they're going to be our clients as well. So that's why we do that first. The next stage we do is we plan it. We sit down and we really look and say, what are all the steps that are going to take it to market? Then we price it. You know, we haven't made anything yet. We price it, then we prototype it, then we protect it with patents or other things. And we do that after we prototype because you can always make it better. And then we predict it. This is where a lot of companies go wrong. They don't have enough financing to get them through the amount of inventory they need and other things. So we predict it before we start producing it. And that's our last p. And then promote it is a whole nother thing. It's a whole other chart.

That's great. But I think your process of.

Getting through at least through the prototype stage before you worry about protecting it, because so many innovators are worried about someone stealing their idea. I gotta hurry up and get a patent before you talk to anybody or I'm gonna make you sign a non disclosure before we discuss it. You know, my policy is I can't sign non disclosures. I talked to way too many companies. I'd get myself all tangled up. And the key there is, when the key there is, is that the competitive advantage is not in the protection, it's in your execution. Can you actually execute it and get out and establish your leadership position? It's not about waiving some document five years from now that you get from the patent office. Because five years from now you better be on to the next thing that becomes just part of that drag that is happening. So we're going to take another quick commercial break. When we come back, we're going to pick up this conversation with Tracy and get more of her insights on the, you know, the whole process of this commercialization. Also, you know, the fact that you've, you're a co inventor on so many patents. I'm interested in hearing about that. So when we come back, we're going to pick up right there. So stay right where you're at. This is Carnivations on the biz talk radio network.

Biz talk radio.

This is Killer Innovations, a show about ideas, creativity and how you can innovate. Welcome to the Innovators Garage where you learn to create your new next game changing Killer Innovation.

Welcome to this week's episode of Killer Innovations, a show about creativity, innovation and design. I'm your host, Phil McKinney. Each week we talk about those tips and tricks and hard earned scars and failures that we've all experienced in taking something from an idea and turning it into something successful. So if you're listening to the show, my guess is you've got some idea rattling around in your brain and you're trying to figure out how to take it from start to finish. And that's what this show is all about. This week we've got a special guest, Tracy Hazard. Tracy's got an extensive amount of experience in helping companies take that kind of nugget of an idea, or in some cases, even what they think is a more fleshed out idea. And how do you work it through the entire process? And Tracy and I were talking during the commercial break around our own little individual observations of some of the challenges on Kickstarter where those companies that went on to Kickstarter raised a bunch of money for hardware products, but didn't have the experience of what it really takes. It's not something you can just crank out in 30 and 60 days. Tracy, we were talking, you and I, both coming from different backgrounds, but similar perspectives in that you can look at some of those plans in the early days of Kickstarter with hardware projects, you go, that one is not going to make it.

Yeah, no, it's so true. I can see all the indicators right there. And usually it's a problem with a resource. A lot of inventors and innovators, this is the problem that they think, well, it's okay for me to use somebody who's never done this before. And that's really the biggest mistake you can make. When you don't have a lot of Runway. That's what I call it. You don't have a lot of money and you don't have a lot of time to get off the ground. You don't have a lot of Runway. So when you don't have a lot of Runway, you better have the best. And so for me, that's someone who's been there and done that, and we've been burned by it. We learned the lesson the hard way. Like we had batteries explode on something. I mean, you think what's going on with the hoverboard's bad, but we had batteries that were leaking all over a Staples store simply because we hired an engineer who didn't understand rechargeable batteries.

And we outsourced to them and Then we didn't have somebody double checking their work. It's dumb mistake. Could have been saved by $800 of a consultant just reviewing somebody else's work. And we thought, oh, these guys will be fine. They know what they're doing. They've been engineering a long time, but they had not been there, done that for what we needed.

Right, exactly. And it does take up a whole set of different kinds of skill sets. And you can easily find the people out there that do it. Right. You know, it's the, you know, the old analogy that says, you know, an expert's expensive, but an amateur will cost you everything. Right?

Definitely.

So an amateur is not, you're not getting away with cheap. So don't even try to play the cheap game. You know, experts are expensive. Pay for the expertise because on the long haul it'll save you a lot of money. Because hiring that amateur or hiring somebody maybe has a, you know, double E degree and is the nephew of somebody, you know, who can come over and, you know, you think might be able to do the job. But it's never worked. Like in this case with rechargeable batteries and particularly all of the issues we see with lithium ion batteries and why the airlines are so sensitive to you being able to. You cannot put a lithium ion battery, even your spare battery in your bag and check it in cargo hold. It has to go into the main cabin with you because of temperature issues that lithium ion experiences. Now, my days of building at HP with 40 million laptops, you make darn sure every lithium ion battery is not going to have an issue.

Exactly. I mean, there's so many problems that come up, but I see it just as much with people choosing manufacturing sources. And it happens just as frequently and sometimes even more with US Manufacturing than it does with Asian manufacturing. And the reason why I think that is is because you think, well, they're right next door, so I can see them, I can go there. But if they have not done this before, things go wrong. I mean, we made that mistake early in our careers and we made, I mean, what should have been simple ballpoint pen. It was really a stylus pen, but the threads weren't done right because they didn't understand manufacturing of pens and they broke apart. And so it was a dumb mistake that wouldn't have happened from a manufacturer that knew the category you were already in. And the thing about Asia is that typically they don't like to do something that's outside their box. So you end up at a manufacturer more likely to do the type of category of product. So it just kind of naturally. And you also usually have a third party trading company in the process a lot of times or quality control. So they kind of stop it when you have someone who doesn't have enough experience and they stop you from it. That's why I see it more from US Manufacturing than I do from Asian.

So in the case of what you do for your clients, do you take it all the way through and helping them qualify the manufacturing process all the way through to that end of it?

Oh, we do more than that. I mean I will be there on the first run and sign off on the design samples that come off. Sometimes before they even pack the full container, we'll go in and we'll take a. We'll put. Assemble a product if it needs assembly and make sure that everything is right. That does not leave the very first run. Never leaves China or wherever it's coming from and get on a boat before I signed off on it. And that's the way we do it. And it has caught so many things that you can head off so many problems. And in retail you can't make a mistake, you won't get back on the shelf again.

Right.

You clog up a retailer with a bad product where they started seeing the returns, you're done. You are absolutely done. But your point is what I call the Ronald Reagan approach, trust but verify. And verifying isn't waiting for it to ship across and then even air shipping it across because you lose so much time and you want to catch it early in the process. So yeah, it's those things where you just got to be eyeballs on the thing through the whole process.

Well, and I find that our relationships get stronger with our manufacturers that we've used because of it. Because what happens is they want to do the right thing, they want to make it right, they want the next order. So if you're giving them that criteria and feedback while they can still do something about it instead of you screwed up, it kind of really builds this great level of trust. And so when things do go wrong, you hear about it first.

Yeah, it's one of those things where when people think about somebody that's outsourced, it's arm's length away and something goes wrong, they just assume that they're bad, they don't know something or whatever. In this case, my experience with. And I spend a lot of time, even now in my current job, I spend a lot of time in China, Taiwan. The key there is you have to assume Positive intent. And the best way to resolve it is don't let an email be the thing that determines your communication style. Doesn't work very well in that part with those manufacturing. But it's interesting that you've had a different kind of experience with US Manufacturing. Is it just because they don't do the scale here? They may do prototype work here, but they just don't do scale work here.

I think it's not really. It's not my personal experience with US Manufacturers and I mean, we've worked with them and they do great jobs and there's no problem there. But a lot of times we get someone who's already had a failure and it's usually happened in a US manufacturer. And they chose it because this company was in their town or down the street and they felt that they could go there. And it was a choice of manufacturer that was their mistake. They were something new and they chose someone who didn't have a core competency in that category of product.

Yeah. In fact, I was just listening to a podcast last week where a guy was on and I'm trying. He's one of the guys that designed, you know, this whole. This whole segment of the population around shaving. Right. I have a beard. Not an issue for me. But he went. He. His. Their whole focus was it had to be manufactured in the US and they went through so many US Manufacturers because they couldn't find one who could do it to scale like they needed it to do. So it was kind of interesting. I hadn't. I don't have a lot of experience with the US Manufacturing side. Most of my experience is offshore, so that's interesting. So.

Talk a little bit about when you're working with a client. You said before you get a fee plus then you get a royalty on the back end and you also help them protect it. How does the patent ownership work? Because I have a lot of experience in IP and that tends to be kind of a. We're not going to be able to get into this. And in fact, Tracy, if you're up for it, I'm going to blow off the fourth segment. I want you to stay on for the fourth segment so that we can actually continue this conversation on the IP piece. But I wanted to tee this up a little bit on the IP piece. Do you own the patents? Do you co own them? Do they own them and you get a royalty for it? What's that model typically look like?

Yeah, it's always a part of our process that they would own the patents if It's a fee plus royalty situation. We have licensed patents before that we had already created and then partner with a company to bring it out. It does go the other way as well, but typically they own them. We are of course, the named inventors, but that's why we have an 86% commercialization rate because we already know there's a market and there's a channel for our patents as they're coming out.

Yeah, it's good. We're going to hang on here. I'm going to ask Tracy to stay on for the last segment of the show. I want to talk specifically around.

This, around intellectual property because it's common question. I get from the listeners my own experience with IP and now running a large corporate or industry R and D lab. I have all ip. I spend a lot of time on IP issues. So stay right there. When we come back, we're going to talk about patents, intellectual properties and, you know, the challenges and all of that. So we'll be right back. Tracy will join us for the fourth segment. You're listening to Kilnovations on the Biz Talk radio network.

Biz talk radio.

This is Killer Innovations, a show about ideas, creativity and how you can innovate. Welcome to the Innovator's Garage where you learn to create your next game changing killer innovation.

Welcome to this week's episode of Killer Innovations, a show about creativity, innovation and design. I'm your host, Phil McKinney. This is the first show for season 12, so we're off and running now. Love your feedback on this show and any of the previous shows you listen to. You can always drop me an email@philillerinnovations.com in this episode we've been talking about really the whole process of going from an idea through the commercialization process. And how do you make it real with Tracy Hazard? Tracy's got a lot of experience.

Is it has design? Is that your name of the firm? So has design.

Yeah.

I don't know. Maybe not naming it hazard maybe be a little bit of a push on me.

That might be a little dangerous.

That would be a little dangerous. Your hazardous design. So it has designed has done a lot of work over the years with a lot of different companies helping them really take those ideas, but getting it all the way through the process. Not just the design, but actually the whole process of establishing all the way out through the manufacturing piece. So at the end of the last segment we were talking, we started to get a little bit into the actual property. I've asked you to Stay onto the fourth segment here because IP is one of the most common questions I get from listeners. It's about should I patent? Where should I patent? US patents versus international patents?

You know, do I, you know, how do I license patents? Should I license patents? If we co own a patent, who should own it? All of those kinds of issues. So I'm going to give you a couple minutes just to kind of give your work because you're already named on a whole bunch of patents already. And you were talking a little bit before the break about some cases the client owns it, in some cases you create the intellectual property and you license it out. So those are kind of the two models you focus on.

Yeah, typically, I mean, we have what we call an intentional invention process that we use with our clients. And so we are encouraged through the process to invent and create patented intellectual property for our clients. And that has to do with the sort of fee plus royalty structure. So it's a part of it. There's always a boost in our royalty if it's, if the patent issues at some point. So we usually get an extra 1% on top of everything.

Oh, wow.

It encourages us to really give them something valuable, make sure it will issue. So the whole thing is incentivized to make us do the best we can. So we have set up the process to encourage it, but we also understand the value of it. So in the mass retail world and consumer retail product patents sometimes are the only thing that keep you the vendor of choice. So it happens so often that a Target or a Walmart will go and direct source around someone and say, well, that sounded like a great idea. But there's nothing proprietary or patented about it. So we're going to just go around it. So we really work really hard not to just create something that's stylistically designed patent that they can easily get around, but that there is something at the core, very unique about it. So that at the end of the day that can't happen to you. And that's critical for our clients to create a product that will last in the program for a really, really long time. And we've had an office chair at Costco, for instance, that's been there four and a half years, that never happens. And that one actually isn't patented. But the proprietary ness of what we did with it is so difficult to imitate.

So in this case, the patents you're talking about, because maybe listeners don't understand there's utility patents and there's design patents. Yeah. And a lot of People get thinking that if I get a design patent, it's as valuable. It's not. Design patents can easily be designed around you change the look a little bit, you know. And the courts haven't been really clear on enforcements around design patents versus utility patents are the ones that one take longer to issue. Two are harder to get issued because of what's called prior art. Anything that's been done before in a similar space. So the work you're doing is focusing on the utility patents, not the design patent side.

Sometimes we do both. And we have a special process we do for design patents. So if for instance, like an office chair, where we're going to do it, we do the back separate from the arm, separate from the base, and we design patent each component separately, which gives you greater protection overall. So we've developed a system to help our clients with that. Because sometimes stylistic stylists, design is all that they have to go with. There is no other choice. It's gonna be what it is. There is a lot of prior art, but we try to work really hard. So, you know, for instance, we had a client who had beanbags and they had a CPSC recall. So it got recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission because two children had died getting zipped up inside them. And so we said, well, I don't want to even design beanbags if that's the problem. So they had come to us and said, we have this problem, we're going to use it, lose a $20 million business for us. When this recall happens and then they don't put us back on the shelf, what can we do? And we came up in two weeks with the safest zipper you can possibly imagine. Then that just got filed. That was our 36th patent. But it's really critically important that it can solve a problem that really makes you the vendor of choice. Nobody else is doing that. Nobody else can guarantee that. Kind of unable to open Zipp. So now they're the vendor of value.

Yeah. So the question then gets into is patent litigation, do you go out and.

The cost to defend. Plus then you have what's referred to as non practicing entities who are basically law firms who own patents that just go out to sue just to see what they can get.

Do you run into a situation or is it simply. Does it get. Is it more of the negotiation from the standpoint of getting Target Net to pick you up? Because they don't want to go fight that battle, they're just going to take it because you've got the patent issued.

Yeah, typically we start with a provisional and then we go to full issue and all of that. The process is actually, we let it be slow. It almost always issues. We've already set it up that way. But we let it be slow because it's a deterrent enough in the retail product cycle that it even exists there. And so it keeps those buyers at bay from doing direct sourcing against you. It keeps other vendors at bay, and that really helps the process there. But chances are pretty good by the time it issues, your product's already discontinued and off the shelf anyway. So it's more important that you get on the shelf. And we just almost use it like a deterrent. And normally there isn't a lot of litigation because of that, although I have learned my litigation lessons over the years. And being infringed on and then having to sue Palm Computing and Ideo and also the other way being claimed that you are infringing on them.

Yeah. Well, at some point, you and I will have to have the conversation, since I did the Palm acquisition at hp about Palm litigation. I'm assuming it was before.

Thank you.

It was before the HP acquisition.

I have to thank you. That's why we settled with ideo, because the acquisition was happening.

Ah, that's a good one. So you can thank. So you can buy me dinner the next time you come to Colorado. That's right. Say, hey, Tracy, if people want to follow up and get more information about you, where can they find you Real quick? We're on really short time.

Anywhere on social media has design H, A, z z d e S, I, g, n and my website is hasdesign.com.

And we'll put all the links into the show. So thank you very much. Check us out over@killinovations.com look for the show notes. You're listening to killnovations on the biz talk radio network.

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