2009 Fall Home and Garden Show

Things have been moving along here with the Draw Collar. We had a booth at the Fall Home and Garden Show here in Sandy, Utah. It was a great success - in that we were able to talk to a lot of people and get the word out that there is finally a fool-proof product available to solve the problem of smoky wood burning stoves.

It has been wonderful that as people purchase and install the Draw Collar, they have been thrilled with it's performance. Not one person so far has said that it didn't fix their problem. In fact, we have received many more testimonials from customers who have been completely satisfied.

We are also excited to finally have a programmable 7-day digital timer available. This timer will allow people to set specific times for turning the Draw Collar on and off for every day of the week. Very convenient, especially if there is a regular time that they like to have a fire - every night after work, Sunday mornings... the flue will be primed and ready for a fire whenever they are! Easy!

*Things to watch for:

We will be having an ad in the November Hearth and Home Magazine along with an article about our product, and we hope that this helps to build name recognition.

We will soon have the necessary documentation to begin distribution in Canada, and we are excited to watch things grow there.

Things are moving right along, and we are just so excited to bring this product to the market.

Time is A-flyin'

Ok - 2 months has just flown by since our last post. We managed to take a break from building Draw Collars for most of July, and we're starting to gear up to resume production. (however, we do have a wedding in the family this month, so it may be a little light on the Draw Collar side of things...)

John has been spending a lot of time on the phone and emailing to get distributors excited about things, and hopefully to spur them into placing an order. We have been getting a few small-ish orders here and there, but nothing huge. But still, it's progress!

This past weekend John was back in New York (Arcadia) for a dealer show put on by Empire Distributing. It was a great trip and John was excited to talk to some new dealers and to teach them a little about how to sell the product once it's in their stores.

He was also able to debut the new showroom sized display box that demonstrates the powerful draw that is created by the Draw Collar. These display/demo boxes are available for purchase, and are a great tool to help customers see for themselves how it works.















This is not the GREATEST picture of the box, but it does show the smoke being sucked back down the clear pipe, and through to the other side...


We are getting ready to place ads in some industry magazines, and hopefully there will be a few editorials that will discuss the merits of the Draw Collar. Hopefully as the fireplace season starts to gear up, we will start seeing the orders pouring in...

It's Not ALL Work

John spent yesterday and today in Minnesota meeting with a new distributor. But true to form, he managed to squeeze a little fun in.






He made it to the Mall of America where he wandered around aimlessly and ended the night at a movie. Lucky guy.

The meeting with the distributor went well, and we're excited about the impressive response to our product that continues to come in.

Now if only we could get product manufactured fast enough!

I never fully understood the intricacies of this whole process. To go from idea, to patent, to development, and finally to production is much more difficult than I'd imagined. Although, I do understand that even with as slow as it feels things are going, it's still remarkably fast in terms of the typical time frame for this process. And we're immensely grateful.

And They're Off!

We shipped our 1st full pallet of 60 units last night. I wish we'd gotten a photo of the tower of Draw Collars perched precariously in the back of the pick-up! It was quite a sight. But they made it safely to the trucking company, and are on their way to Colorado.

Soon, we will be receiving enough product to build 1000 units, and then we'll really be on our way!

New York Trip

John just got back this week from Arcade, New York where he was invited to participate in a show featuring the new products that debuted at the HPBExpo this year. It was a truly quick trip. His flight left SLC at 11:15 Friday night, got the booth set up on Saturday mornig, managed a quick trip to see Niagara Falls, spent Saturday night in a little town called Hamburg, worked the show on Sunday, caught a plane out of Buffalo, NY Sunday afternoon, and he arrived back here Sunday night (Mon. a.m.) around 1:30. He's still trying to recover.

The following pictures are of the show that Empire Distributing put on back East for the retailers that didn't make it to the Reno Expo. The guys back there at Empire are awesome and John was really impressed by the quality of show they put on. There were over 100 retailers that showed up, and the folks that John was able to talk to were very excited about the Draw Collar.

There was a stage set up, and when John got up to do his presentation, he told the audience that he needed to take their photo for his Public Speaking Merit Badge to earn his Eagle...

The show was set up in Empire Distributing's gigantic warehouse.

The Draw Collar display. You can't actually see the Draw Collar on the stove because the top is lifted up. But like I said, it went well, and people were very excited about the product.

We are looking forward to a great relationship with Empire Distributing and their retailers.

Testing

John is coming home today after spending time at Intertek (a testing facility similar to UL) where they ran some high intensity tests on the Draw Collar.

They hooked the collar up to a fuel generator and fired it up. They heated that bad boy up to nearly 2100 degrees. The pipes were glowing red. (the draw collar is the black thing on the top of the flue pipe)



After it cooled, they went and plugged it in, and the thing still worked! Success!

They also tested the clearances. Single wall pipe has to be 18 inches from walls, and double wall must be 6(?) inches. So we needed to know if the Draw Collar would affect those standards. Success again! It is good to go.

We were very relieved that this testing is done, and that we can move forward with confidence knowing the product is safe.

And our website is now up and running (there's still a few minor details we're going to tweak, but feel free to check it out! I linked it on the sidebar.) A huge thank you to Matt B. for all your help in hooking us up!

It's Starting!

We're starting to get actual orders placed for Draw Collars!

Mostly small-ish orders, but a few bigger ones are starting to come in as well. We are thrilled.

As distributors & retailers get them and actually test them out and see how effective they are, word will spread quickly.

Our official website should be up and running within a week or so. We're very excited. It will look amazing.

Our instruction/warnings manual should be getting finished right away, and all of the other myriad of details associated with starting a business are getting resolved, so hopefully we can manage to do this without too much drama.

This is such an exciting time for us. We can't wait to see what the future holds for this company!

Our First Post

The Draw Collar is a device that is installed on a woodburning stove (replacing a 1 foot section of pipe) which is plugged in and will heat up, warming the air inside the flue - creating a draw before a fire is ever lit - thus eliminating smoke coming out into the room.


It's been a long, long road in many ways.

But in others, the time from idea conception to winning a prestigious industry award has been mind-blowingly short!

A little background - John has been in the fireplace industry for about 14 years in varying degrees. The past 5-6 years have been in depth.

My family has a cabin in the Uintah Mountains, and a few years ago, John put in a new wood-burning stove. The flue of this stove is probably 20 feet long (or more), and it was difficult to get a draw going. We tried many things - lighting paper inside the flue, holding a torch up in the pipe - all of the normal things. One particular trip up there, inspiration struck. The concept that would become the Draw Collar was born.

The next little while was dedicated to securing a patent, and then on to the practical development. Attempts at having a prototype made started in China, and have ended with a local metal company, Metco. We have been so grateful for Randy and his crew - for their excitement and willingness to go above and beyond the standard.

Person after person has come into our lives that have contributed in various ways, and we are forever in their debt.

This past week was spent in Reno at the HPBA Expo. Response was greater than we ever anticipated, and the dreamed about and coveted Vesta Award was ours!


Now, as we move forward in our efforts to build this business, we will use this blog as a means to document our journey. The frustrations, the elations and the hard, hard work that will go into turning our invention into a successful business.