Ever since I can remember I’ve been creating product. Endless dreams, drawings and inventions as a boy growing up in central Illinois in the 1960′s. With no computers at my side I had to do things the old fashioned way… with my brain, a pencil and paper. Not a day passed by that I wasn’t dreaming, creating, building, or improving on something. And while most kids were excited to get a Sears catalog (for the toy section), all I could hardly wait for was the next Edmunds Scientific catalog to arrive. From this catalog I would order fiber optics, paper hot air balloons, model rockets, airplanes, and science kits. It just went on and on. My father was my inspiration. He had no formal education but was one of the smartest guys I’d ever met. He was one of those fellows who could make or fix just about anything. My father made me believe that I could do just about anything I set my mind to.
Over the years I would work, many times along side of my cousins to burn, hack, nail, saw, weld and melt our way along, from one invention after another. One of my earliest pseudo-practical inventions I can remember was an electric bicycle. My father owned an auto parts store where I had access to motors and batteries. I took a starter from an automobile, a car battery, and a simple toggle switch– mounted it all on my bicycle and viola!– an electric bicycle was born. The biggest problem with my bicycle was weight and recharging the car battery. Oh, and the fact that it had only one speed, fast! But it most definitely worked, and it would take me about 2 miles on a single charge.
I remember all the way back to forth grade where I would present some of my ideas to my classmates during our show-and-tell period. For weeks I’d been working on drawings for a consumer underwater propulsion device– for scuba and recreational divers. I had the schematics all worked out and was literally laughed out of the class. A few years back, while flying across the country, I was flipping through one of those gadget magazines in the rear seat pocket. There it was– my underwater propulsion device. It really made me think about some of the things I’ve dreamt up over the years, but never really did anything serious to bring them to reality. A good friend of mine a few years back told me, “Randy, if you don’t do it, somebody else will. And now that you’ve thought of it somebody else is thinking of it too.” It’s true! It just never fails. Just when you think you have first mover advantage, you’d better move quick because someone else is undoubtedly working on it at the exact same time. Funny how market evolution works.
What I learned through the years is that I absolutely love building product. I love dreaming and inventing, but nothing sings like bringing your ideas to reality. Nothing (for me at least) feels so good as seeing a customer get their hands on your product and (hopefully) saying, “This product rocks!”
So what’s the purpose of this blog? I can’t sit idle any longer without getting all of this out. If I have any nuggets of knowledge and wisdom to share from all I’ve experienced over the years, well now is the time. Much of what I’ve learned has been from hard knocks– through trial and error, re-trial and success. This journey of mine has been one of continuous improvement, and one that I’m still on today. I should warn you, if you have passion for product… for building product… it’s a journey, a never ending lifetime journey.
