My early years as an entreprenuer

Setting up in the TV studio for another big sales day on live T.V. shopping

Taking a simple idea and making it "shrink"

In 1995 I came up with an idea that ended up turning into something good for me. I invented a product that helped save space in home storage. This product went on to sell millions of pieces in over 60 countries around the world.

United States Patent US6202849

Where did I get the idea?

In the early 1980's when I was serving in the military stationed in Japan I had seen a Japanese friend of mine take a sheet of plastic and her home iron and make a giant pouch out of it. She heat sealed the sides and slipped her giant futon into it and then sealed it up leaving a small space for her vacuum hose. Then she flipped a switch and within seconds the giant futon was reduced down to a small pancake size. She then sealed the hole with the iron and put the drastically reduced futon into a small closet. A place that would have been impossible to store it minutes earlier. That was the seed that never left my mind.

I was going through closets doing some cleaning in 1995 and was frustrated at the lack of space I had. It was at that time that I remembered what my friend in Japan had done years earlier. I realized that if someone could make those bags more user friendly that most everyone in the world could use them. I went to work researching plastic bags for two years getting different samples and things.

Working on another idea in Japan with Mr. Tanaka in 2005

I happened to make contact with a man in Japan named Mr. Tanaka who is  brilliant with plastics. He has over 200 patents relating to plastic packaging. Mr. Tanaka and I came up with a design for a bag that could be mass produced, re-usable and marketed in many places. I made many trips to Japan in that time as well as other places in the world to research my new and exciting idea.

In 1997 I launched my first product on TV in Florida at the Home Shopping Network. There I stood for my very first time in front of the TV cameras on a live shopping program. After only 10 minutes we had sold 21,000 bags and it became a big hit on TV shopping. That success continued in various places around the world and I found myself going on TV in Japan, Canada, Australia, England, Italy and Germany. I racked up some serious airline miles during that time of my life. It was an incredible business high.

My father was my financial partner in our private company and for years a larger company had been romancing us to buy us out and in 2006 we finally decided to let go of our company. My dad was getting older and I wanted to spend more time doing charitable work helping others. We were not mega rich but we did fairly well considering where we started. The company sold and I headed to the Philippines to work full-time on my philanthropy.

More pics from the TV studio

Making the last finishing touches before the live sale on QVC

Everything on the left is in my bags on the right.  Now that is space saving!

Out front of the worlds largest TV Shopping Network QVC with Mom. 

The channel reaches 200 million homes worldwide

A video animation of one of my products called the CUBE (Stack-N-Vac)