By Town Crier Report
After six months and more than 8,300 entries, Los Altos inventor Todd Basche’s WordLock has emerged as the next must-have product to make work life easier. Staples held its Invention Quest final judging event March 10, in New York City.
The WordLock is a combination lock that uses easy-to-remember words instead of numbers.
The product earned its inventor, Todd Basche of Los Altos, a $25,000 cash prize and royalties if the product is created and sold exclusively by Staples in its more than 1,100 stores across the United States and on Staples.com.
“It’s a tremendous thrill to have my idea come to life and actually become a product sold at Staples,” said Basche, the first-ever Invention Quest champion. “Staples has broken through by harnessing all of the creative energy across America and using that to create new products.”
An expert panel of judges, along with more than 147,000 online votes cast by people across the United States, decided which of the 12 Invention Quest finalists received the grand prize. A $5,000 cash prize was awarded to each of the 11 finalists.
The WordLock was chosen from among more than 8,300 ideas for new office products submitted since Staples’ Invention Quest launched last fall. Ideas ranged from Pop Envelopes, shipping envelopes that can expand on demand to fit larger items, to the Peanut Eater, a unique device that makes it easy to clean up packing peanuts for reuse or disposal.
“It’s often independent inventors like Todd Basche who create breakthrough innovations that go on to become hot-selling products,” said Invention Quest judge Joanne Hayes-Rines, the publisher of Inventors’ Digest. “Last year 100,000 U.S. patents were issued to Americans, and of those, approximately 25,000 were issued to independent inventors.”
The other judges for the Invention Quest finals were Art Fry, inventor of the Post-it Note; Corey Greenberg, technical editor, NBC’s “Today” show; Rayvon Fouché, professor and author; Mike Pappas, regional administrator, U.S. Small Business Administration; Tom Stemberg, chairman and founder, Staples; and the American public, via votes cast at www.staples.com/iq.
