After running Sign FX for many years, Steven had times where he was looking at moving on. His accountant was not happy about this because the business was going so well, so he suggested that Steven should just diverse his interests into other more creative ideas for stimulation. This turned out to be an incredible journey and learning curve. At first Steven started a small enterprise at a shopping centre and also created a banner “hire” concept, unfortunately both of which failed.
He then went on to be more adventurous, designing and developing a novelty board game for ladies functions and hens nights called “Pin the willy on officer billy”. At first this game had minimal interest until a wholesale adult goods company took it on as a distributor and sold it in over 200 adult stores around Australia. Hundreds of games where sold but eventually it was becoming too time consuming to produce and Steven took it off the market. Sales were good considering the internet and modern marketing techniques where not available at that time.
The proudest and most challenging invention was by far his kitchen product, the “Hygiene hanger”. This was a product that Steven invented for sponges and dishcloths to stop them from smelling, being untidy and also killing off bacteria, making them cleaner, last longer and more hygienic for everyday use. This product took over 18 months to design, develop, produce prototypes and labelling samples. Issues that needed to be overcome were also costs to produce, bar-coding, packaging, importing, warehousing, marketing and distribution etc. All these things where extremely time consuming, costly and mind boggling to say the least.
Finally Steven was able to have the product made in Taiwan, and was able to get a distributor to help with the importing and warehousing which allowed Steven to go off and do the marketing.
To Steven’s surprise the product gained a lot of interest, winning second prize at the Sydney new products show and exhibition for kitchenware and also received a favourable full page write up in the Herald Sun.
Steven's product the “Hygiene hanger” was then picked up and sold in “House” and “K-Mart” stores all over Australia and sold over 20,000+ units. The desire to pursue this and take it to an international market was very tempting until a competitor copied the product, altered it, and made it in cheap plastic for half the cost, at this point Steven decided to not invest in it anymore and took it off the market.
Steven still has thoughts even today to “Re-release” it due to the new opportunities with the internet and social media that was not available at the time.
Note: All photos are of the actual products Steven invented and created.
To read more about these inventions, please click on the following link Write ups and articles
1, Hygiene hanger invention – Photo of finished products
2, Hygiene hanger invention – Photo of product in use
3, Hygiene hanger invention – Photo of original prototypes
4, Hygiene hanger invention – Photo of original design sketches for packaging
5, Hygiene hanger invention – Photo of original design sketches of logo for packaging
6, Hygiene hanger invention – Photo of original design’s of colour presentation for packaging
7, Hygiene hanger invention – Image of colour promotional flyer
8, Hygiene hanger invention – Image of black and white order form
9, Hygiene hanger invention – Herald sun write up
10, Hygiene hanger invention – Herald sun write up - PDF
11, Pin the willy on officer billy –Finished product packed ready for sale (One of)
12, Pin the willy on officer billy – Finished product packed ready for sale ( Three of )
13, Pin the willy on officer billy – Finished product exposed actual game
14, Pin the willy on officer billy – Finished product packaging sample
15, Pin the willy on officer billy – Finished black and white order form