Bringing the Belt Bucket to Life

I have a few minutes to tell you about how the Belt Bucket came to be. Although I'm excited to share with you what our current challenges are with marketing, trademarking, web design , and preparing for tradeshows, I need to fill you in on the past few years. This is important in giving you the complete picture of what we have encountered while bringing our Belt Bucket to life.

My husband, Lar, the inventor of the product, has been a custom, residential, painting contractor for nearly 12 years. After a few years of using J-hooks, and paint pails to keep his paint close at hand while painting in high places he began realizing how messy, awkward, and unsafe painting in this manner could be. Although, there wasn't an alternative. He determined that having anything attached to his ladder wasn't safe - paint filled pails added weight to one side of the ladder and threw it off balance. Also, when he tried to move the ladder, even slightly to one side, the pail could swing and with the momentum splash paint out onto the ground below - or it would sometimes just come off the hook altogether. What a mess and nuisance! He liked using the hooks in a way because his hands were free for holding onto the ladder and his brush, and if need be he could grab onto the side of the house or roof if the ladder began to slip. Resting the paint can or paint tray on the ladder shelf was not an option - too many times it had gotten knocked over since it wasn't attached to anything. The only other option was to have the paint bucket or pail on the ground below him and he would have to run up and down the ladder several times to dip his brush in the paint - and that isn't really an option at all for an paint contractor who wants to make any money on his job.

With this in mind he began devising a way to have his paint near his side but not attached to the ladder. One thought was "what if it was attached to me" so that he could use it any kind of painting situation - on the ladder or off the ladder (standing painting door trim, or kneeling down cutting in base boards.) His wheels began turning!

He stumbled across a product that a painter from years before had devised, it was a metal piece that had a small hook attached to it which held a lipped metal paint can snugly in place. The contraption then attached to a belt and you wore it around your waist. This would be an awesome solution to many of his painting problems. He searched hardware stores, paint stores, and major DIY stores with no luck of finding this tool. We searched on the Internet and visited random mom and pop hardware stores across the nation looking for this product. All we wanted to do was buy a bunch of these to use ourselves and give to our sub-contractors. After years of searching we never found this tool. When talking to others in the trade and asking them if they had ever seen a tool like this they would say "No, but if you don't invent one, I will!" We did a patent/product search and it stated that a tool like this was created and patented in the 50's, but the patent had expired years ago. We finally concluded that this tool had never been successful for whatever reason and disappeared - but it was a great idea. Maybe the inventor ran out of money to promote the product, maybe he was a visionary but couldn't market it correctly and sell it. There was much speculation on our part, all we knew was that this tool could possibly help us as well as many others so we started talking to everyone we knew and trusted about how to create and patent something like this.

Eventually, our conversations led us to an investor in California. He had been very successful with his own inventions and might be interested in helping us with ours. Fortunately, this person was the father of a very good friend (which helps in situations like this.) It's always beneficial to know somebody who has been down the path before and who is willing and able to show you how it's done. We immediately trusted him and with his son's encouragement he trusted us. After a few months a team of engineers, designers, plastics manufacturers, mold makers, the inventor and various supporters were brainstorming on how to make these things. It was decided that metal was not the best material for our product, it should be plastic to keep the weight and the cost down. After months of prototypes - the first Belt Bucket was born!

It has since changed several times, but not much. It was very exciting to see all of our ideas taking shape and suddenly here was this never before seen painting tool! After the manufacturing was complete it was onto the more difficult task of introducing a new product to the painting industry. We were ready and eager to patent this idea, develop additional products, hit tradeshows, advertise in magazines, build a website, create logos and everything else that's involved with this kind of work. BUT . . . how about I save this for a later story - it's a lot more information and difficult to summarize. I'm sure you'll appreciate it considering how long this entry ended up being. Have a great night and I'll share wit choo later!