Draper company raises a stink with 'The Bug'
August 2005
Big ideas can be born in the smallest of places. Even in a garage in Draper, where Alan Wheatley first breathed life into The Bug.
The Bug, a pod-shaped air freshener, is the newest product to come out of HandStands, a Draper-based company.
According to Wheatley, HandStands’ co-owner and chief marketing officer, as well as the inventor and designer of The Bug – the idea first came at a trade show several years ago. The HandStands team was at the show marketing a product called the Sticky Pad. The rectangular shaped product has a sticky bottom that adheres easily to car dashboards: it was designed to offer a slip-free place for things like keys and cell phones.
A few booths down was a company selling air fresheners, Wheatley said.
“We saw that and thought, ‘We ought to mix these two technologies. We ought to make an air freshener with a sticky bottom,’’ Wheatley said. “And that is how the idea was born.”
Upon returning from the trade show, Wheatley dived right into researching the air freshener market. He found that many people had used the traditional tree air freshener, but stopped because they thought it looked too tacky hanging from the rear view mirror.
“That helped us see the advantage of our product, which you can stick anywhere,” he said. “It’s a little more classy.”
Then Wheatley started thinking about the design of the product. He bought a mold at a chocolate shop and started casting prototypes in his garage.
“It was pretty ugly at first.” Wheatley confessed.
The original shape was a dome, but too much of the scent was trapped inside. Wheatley added slits at the top to allow more fragrance to slip out and shaped his prototypes with sandpaper until they looked just right. “When we started getting to that point I said, ‘This looks like a bug,” he said. The original name was “The Stink Bug”, but no one thought an air freshener should be marketed with the word ”stink.” The bug part, though stuck.
Once the design was decided, however there were still some bugs to work out of “the Bug” Wheatley said they experimented with all different kinds of gels in the manufacturing stage to make the product attractive and cutting–edge.
“We wanted it to dance on your dashboard,” he said.
The current product comes in a variety of colors and scents (yellow/vanilla, green/pine, red/berry, blue/summer breeze, purple/new car and orange/citrus twist), and can be found at big retailers including Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy.
“Its been a fun product, “ Wheatley said “….People become smitten when they see this product. There hasn’t been much innovation in the air freshener business for years.”
HandStands has been in business for 23 years. The company started in Sandy and relocated to Draper 10 years later. It employs about 65 people in the Draper area, along with about 30 subcontractors, who work from home, packaging the products.
The company also tries to give back to the community by lending an ear to budding inventors. Wheatley said he receives at least one phone call a week from an inventor, some local and some not, looking for a way to take his or her product to the next step.
“I listen to them all,” Wheatley said. “You never know when a good idea might come along.” He said HandStands employees are always happy to lend an ear or a conference room to help other inventors get their ideas off the ground.
And HandStands is working on their own new ideas as well. Wheatley couldn’t give any specifics, but promised that all HandStands products will, like “The Bug”, be unlike anything on the market right now. We are kind of outside the box,” he said. “We would have never brought out an air freshener that was a tree.”
Salt Lake Tribune
8/18/2005
