For West Windsor Councilwoman Heidi Kleinman and her husband, Ted Ross, an evening out at MarketFair to see a movie has turned into a new and unusual business enterprise.
The Eureka moment came as the couple were walking through the parking lot after the movie when they noticed about 200 kids, all carrying their cell phones in their hands, awaiting any calls they might receive.##M:[more]##
So they came up with the idea of a new product that allows cell phone users to carry their phones on their wrists, feel the phone vibrate, and access them quickly when a call comes in.
Called a Phubby — a combination of the words “phone” and “cubby” — the product is made of lycra spandex, a high quality bathing suit material, and comes in 21 different colors.
This is the first time either Kleinman or Ross has ventured into this type of business, much less together as business partners. After months of designing and creating the product, testing every aspect of it, marketing it, and patenting it, the couple have launched their online store this month, and have watched excitedly as they find hits to their site from around the world, including places as far as Bulgaria, Hawaii, and across the Midwest.
The couple say their experience in different fields and areas of expertise has helped them to put their ideas into action and get the business up and rolling. Branching out to create their own product and marketing it through their own company has also taken them down a new path.
Between the two of them, they have a combined more than 60 years of experience in various fields, and have busy lives already outside of the business. Kleinman is the president of her own architectural firm and also serves on council. Ross, who most recently has worked with a hedge fund, previously has been a president of a computer software firm, director with global agricultural company American Cyanamid, and founded a real estate specialty finance company. But creativity and entrepreneurship aren’t anything new for the couple.
Kleinman was born and raised in Springfield, and Ross is from West Orange. She attended school at Virginia Polytechnic Institute’s architecture school, and he attended New York University, and the two met after college. Both of their fathers had attended pharmacy school together at Rutgers, so Kleinman says she has know his parents her whole life. Kleinman’s mother worked for the New Jersey State Unemployment Office, and Ross’s mother is a real estate agent.
After their marriage, Ross worked in Wayne for the corporate offices of American Cyanamid, and eventually, the couple moved to Belgium for two years while he worked there. The couple moved back to West Windsor in 1997, when Ross pursued an entrepreneurial venture with a local friend in the computer software business.
Kleinman says her mother loved to paint, which is, where a lot of her creativity comes from. But referring to she and Ross, Kleinman says: “We’re both very creative. We’re always making things.” Ross often does woodwork, and Kleinman even made their stain-glass kitchen table. Kleinman did most of the designing of the Phubby, and Ross handles more of the operational duties associated with running the business and the website, and handling its marketing.
The process itself began in September when Kleinman began creating various prototypes of the product, by experimenting with a variety of fabrics for which she sometimes traveled into New York to find. She eventually settled on lycra spandex after testing various materials and sizes, and working with different types of ribbon used for opening and closing the Phubby pocket. In fact, the couple did lots of research and remained focused on the fabric and finding suppliers for the fabric, and asking those suppliers which manufacturers they worked with, until they found a manufacturer in New York City. Another local resident, Jerry Fields — who does graphics for the West Windsor Arts Council and Farmer’s Market — does the graphics for the company. His children, Erika and Jenna, helped come up with the product name.
“It’s taken time, but it was well worth while in terms of making sure” the product works to their satisfaction, Ross says. In fact, the couple, who are now empty nesters, say working together is going great, with both bringing a different set of skills that are complementary to each other. The couple has two daughters, Nell, a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, and Emma, a graduate of the University of Chicago, who now works with an ad agency in Chicago. The family moved to West Windsor in 1997 from Belgium, and both their daughters are graduates of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North.
Their idea comes from a practical observation — many people carry their cell phones in hand to ensure they don’t miss a call. And the couple say they noticed a variety of problems people experience with carrying their cell phones with them — they don’t hear them when they are set to vibrate; it takes too long to dig through their purses, bags, or briefcases to find them once they are ringing; they don’t want to set their phone to a loud and obnoxious ring tone, but setting it to vibrate leads them to miss calls because they don’t realize their phones are ringing; they have no pockets; and many others. Traditional cell phone clips for pockets can also get caught on various objects, for example, as someone brushes past the corner of a table or desk, or while they are just out and about carrying on with their normal daily activities, the couple say. And so many cell phone holders and clips on the market today are made for one particular brand and model of cell phone.
Ross says he spent a lot of time doing research online to see if there were any other products on the market where people could keep their phones on their wrists. “I honestly didn’t think it was an invention,” he said. “I couldn’t find anyone who’s done this.”
Once the product was finished, he and Kleinman applied to have the product patented, and began reaching out to manufacturers. Currently, the couple is selling the product primarily through www.Phubby.com, and running the business out of their house, where they keep storage bins with drawers neatly labeled and organized by color throughout their basement. Their ideas include eventually seeing it expand into being sold at kiosks in places like malls and airports, and even seeing it be purchased in bulk by companies or organizations who would put their logos on the product.
So far, they have already signed up to be exhibitors at a trade show, and have been in discussions with large shopping mall owners about having their own space to sell the products. “There’s sort of other tentacles out there as well,” Ross explained, saying the couple has made an application to be featured on QVC, the home shopping network. They are waiting to hear back from the network.
While the Phubby is convenient and practical, the couple says, it’s not something that people would be embarrassed to wear. “It’s a very functional item, but we also see it as a fashionable item,” Kleinman says. The idea, the couple say, is to ensure all types of people can find a style that fits them, from the conservative, solid colors, to more creative designs, like cowhide, hearts, and camouflage. All together, there are 21 different colors or designs. The product gets its name from a combination of the P-H in phone and the word cubby, and that’s because it’s marketed as a “cell phone cubby.”
How it works is a person slides his or her wrist through the Phubby. Then, the person slides the phone into the product, and closes the velcro flap. There is also another little pocket that can store things like chapstick or credit cards. When the phone rings, one can easily feel it vibrating, and can answer it by simply pulling it out of the Phubby. And they say it’s perfect for those who like to walk or bike, and even for motorcyclists who may not even know they missed a call because they can’t feel or hear the cell phone ring while they are riding.
The product comes in three sizes — small, medium, and large — which one can simply determine by wrapping a dollar bill around his or her wrist. If the bill completely encloses the wrist, the person is a size small. If it does not, and there is enough room to fit one or two fingers between both ends of the dollar bill, the person is a medium. Anything wider is a large.
Throughout the design stage, the couple’s local friends gave them their input as they went along and have raved to them about the product, but it’s the fact that other people are visiting their website and becoming interested in it that is exciting to them — and getting orders from those people. It’s also been exciting to see which colors people are picking, they say, although they can’t exactly determine yet which colors or designs are the most popular.
The couple say they are marketing to everyone — men, women, teens, and kids alike — even though “textbook marketing would say narrow it down,” Ross says. The couple is obviously expecting clients in the younger generation, people under 25, who tend to have their cell phones with them at all times.
Ross says running the business out of their house means that work can be done at any hour of the day at anytime, but that can also work against them because they are combining their work life and home life.
The couple are in the business full-time though, Kleinman says. “Obviously I work at the township, too,” she said, which can be compared to a second full-time job with the amount of hours each council member has to devote to it. “It’s really about creating a balance. We both think it could be a really good idea, and it’s fun planning to do these trade shows. It’s fun to see it grow from a kernel of an idea,” which began with wanting to create a solution for such a common problem that many Americans face when it comes to carrying their phones with them.
And that’s what makes the couple unique, they say. “There’s lots of people with good ideas,” Ross said. “Very few people take the next step and create a business.”
Strangers who have seen the product seem to be really interested in it, Ross says. On a recent trip to the post office to mail out some of the orders that had come in, a postal worker asked him what the products were and raved about how she needed one. And some people are simply curious when they see him walking around with the Phubby on his wrist. When his phone rings, and he pulls it out of the wrist pocket, people have asked him where they could get one, he says.
As for plans of coming up with new products in the future, the couple want to stick to the Phubby. And with the recent trend in the cell phone industry for gradually smaller and thinner cell phones, and with 150 million cell phone users in the United States alone, the couple say they hopefully shouldn’t have any problem finding customers.
“Right now, we’re targeting to get the most amount of people to try it once,” Ross said. And with a price of only $12.95, they’re hoping people will see it’s not a big risk and bite.
South Mill Design, LLC, 1-877-466-0273; www.phubby.com; info@phubby.com.
