"Patent Pending"
When it was time to work on the “About” tab on our web site I found myself at a loss. Most companies talk about their history in years, show pictures of their buildings, machinery, headquarters and employees. As a start up business, we don’t have any of that, but we do have a sequence of events that lead to a mission and a story to tell. Here is that story……..
First of all, a brief description of the “characters”: Larry Fiori, Bill Clark, and Mark Sabia. The easiest way to describe them is “Three fishermen that love to fish for Steelhead”. One of them, Mark, is actually a guide in the Salmon River area of Pulaski, NY.
A few years back, we all started using beads when steelhead fishing along with the traditional egg sacks we’d been using. Before long, we were using beads more than egg sacks. They really worked! For the most part, they seemed to fish as good as or better than the egg sacks. The biggest complaint we had about the beads was when our hands were cold it could be difficult to take beads off and re-tie the hooks. This sometimes difficult process was repeated every time we wanted to change colors or sizes.
One day I walked up to Bill Clark and said, “watch this”… I put a bead on the line and took it off with out cutting the line or taking the hook off!
Bill’s eyes almost came out of his head! He said “this is a winner; this is a great idea, what an improvement!”
I responded, “Well, you and Mark should take this idea and run with it, you could probably even make some money with it.” Bill thought for a minute and said, “well, how about you, you should be part of it”. I thought about it for a minute, and quickly came to the conclusion what a great partner Bill would be. After all, his first response was, “how about you?”… It would be good to work with someone that thought about the other guy first, which was typical of Bill. So I said “OK, let’s go show Mark”.
I have to admit it was fun watching Mark’s jaw drop.
Thus the EZ-Bead was born. Well… sort of…
It was six months later, after a lot more jaw dropping when we learned the actual cost to develop this new innovation in fishing beads, before the first EZ-Bead was produced. Up to now, all companies were just buying inexpensive jewelry beads and repackaging them as “fishing beads”! Developing the EZ-Bead would represent a major improvement over jewelry beads. However, it wouldn’t be easy. It would involve design assistance, CAD programming ( computer aided design ), prototyping & model making, mold design, mold manufacturing, resin casting, and injection molding… just to mention a few.
At one point we starting thinking we should have just remained fishermen and not “inventers”. After all, it was just a simple little bead, right. The truth was, the process of creating it was getting mind boggling. But we all know how fishermen are, once you find something that’s better, “you gotta have it”… We kept pressing forward, and now it’s a reality for all fishermen to enjoy and benefit from.
Needless to say, we hope we sell a lot of the EZ-beads !
So please try the latest innovation in fishing beads! You’ll find them easy to use and very effective, particularly when utilizing the addition of scent.
You’ll be glad you did, even though the fish won’t…
Thank you, and good fishing,
Larry, Bill, and Mark at Lazy Larry’s