Saturday, July 7, 2007 1:19 AM CDT
Daughter inspires Greenup family to design items for the disabled
By BONNIE CLARK, Features Writer
bclark@jg-tc.com
“We’re GIB,” said Connie Lewis of rural Greenup, while she flashes her daughter a thumbs-up sign.
Lewis and daughter Meredith are GIB, or Girls in Business, with their company Designs By Inspiration.
Meredith was her mom’s inspiration for the company, which designs and sells items that make life easier for people with handicaps.
“We’re partners,” Lewis tells her.
Now 23, Meredith was born with cerebral palsy, a disorder or group of disorders causing lack of muscle coordination.
Her diagnosis was microcephaly, which means small head, and often small brain, her mother said. She also has brain injury.
“I don’t think the doctors thought she would live, but here she is. She’s come a long way.”
When she began doing research for her company, Lewis told Meredith she could be her partner. “She didn’t know if she liked that at first,” Lewis said, “but she’s decided she does.”
The fledgling company’s first item, now on the market, is an expandable tray that fits over the arms of a wheelchair.
Designed like a drop-leaf table, extensions on the sides of the tray go up to create a larger work area, or down for easy mobility through doors or crowded halls.
“This is what gave me the idea,” said Lewis, pointing toward a drop-leaf coffee table in her living room.
“I was sitting with Meredith one day and was really frustrated at the lack of room on her tray. I turned around and saw the coffee table and that’s when the light came on.
“We’ve made a lot of things for Meredith over the years,” she said. “And, when I had the ‘ah ha’ moment, I was just thinking of it for ourselves, not something to sell.”
Lewis said she and her husband, Jim, had the first tray made at a local cabinet shop.
“We liked it, and when we were out, people would ask where we got it,” she said. “Over the years, I’ve got to know a lot of people with disabilities, children and adults, and they were indicating they would like a tray like Meredith’s. I kept suggesting they have one made, but they just never did.”
First Lewis checked with companies that specialized in selling products for those with special needs.
After signing a royalty agreement with one, she disagreed with the quality of the product they planned to sell, and decided to do it her way.
She had her prototype, positive feedback and the will to get her product to market in November 2004, and by April 2005, had a patent pending.
“It has taken me almost four years to get this going,” Lewis said.
“After the first year, I was telling people, ‘I’m about ready; I’m going to get my tray on the market.’ Then something would come up that I hadn’t thought about.
“The second year came along and I told people, ‘I’m almost ready.’ By the third year, I was saying ‘Hey, I’m really gonna get my tray out,’ but nobody was listening any more,” she said. “In another month or two, I will have been working on it for four years.”
In addition to the Internet, which has been a research tool for Lewis throughout her quest, the Senior Corps of Retired Executives, a nonprofit organization that encourages small business nation-wide through counseling and mentoring, has been invaluable she said.
“I found out about SCORE in some books and got on the Internet to see where I could find the closest group. As luck would have it, the group at Eastern Illinois University had just started about six months or so earlier.
“I went to them in August 2005, and they persuaded me to reorient my thinking, and helped me understand finance better so I could get this going on a shoestring.”
Lewis first worked with David Bateman and Dave Arseneau of SCORE.
“She had an intriguing idea, but like all new businesses, it’s one thing to have an idea, and another to go through all the horrendous mechanics to get it off the drawing board and set it up to be saleable,” Bateman said.
“Her product isn’t as simple as it sounds. There were some huge hurdles we had to battle.”
Bateman said although Lewis is inexperienced, she is “one of the smartest business people” with whom he has worked.
“We tried to help her with how to present her project to manufacturers and how to provide them with options and gain their confidence without her having to spend a great deal of money,” he said.
“We met with her, but mostly we e-mailed at two o’clock in the morning and talked on the phone a couple of times a week.”
Lewis met with people from Automated Routing in Indiana, which makes the wood trays, but there was also the matter of finding an aluminum extrusion company to make parts and ship them to Indiana.
But the day has finally arrived. The tray is being sold on Lewis’ company Web site at www.designsbyinspiration.net, and will be sold in the new Sammons Preston catalogue in the fall.
There are five products now in various stages of development, Lewis said. Most of them involve exercise. One would be considered an aid for daily living; another is a wheelchair attachment; and one is a vestibular stimulator (which helps with balance).
“After Meredith was born, a pediatric neurologist told us, ‘There’s not much you can do for her. Just take her home and love her.’ But, we started buying books and reading about what other people were doing,” Lewis said.
“I thought, ‘Well, they say people only use about 10 percent of their brains, and if Meredith only has 35 percent brain tissue, that’s more than we’re going to use.
“When I first saw a CAT scan when she was 9 months old, instead of seeing what she wasn’t, I saw a miracle.
“I thought, ‘Look at what she doesn’t have and look at what she can still do.’”
Contact Bonnie Clark at bclark@jg-tc.com or 348-5727.
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momof5 wrote on Jul 7, 2007 11:00 PM: