Diane Mastrull: Hoodie pillowcase captivates
entrepreneur, investor
CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Rebecca Rescate found success before
with her toilet-training kit for cats, and now she is helping Chris Hindley
with his invention that may help buyers sleep through noise and other
distractions.
Diane
Mastrull, Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted: Monday, February 18, 2013,
6:19 AM
How does one outdo a toilet-training
kit for cats?
With a pillowcase designed to be
worn - yes, worn - on the head, with a hole to accommodate earphone wires and a
pocket for an iPod or a remote control, Rebecca Rescate believes.
The Yardley mother of three has
$15,000 in personal finances banking on it, and has just secured an additional
$90,000 from Robert Herjavec, an investor on ABC-TV's popular Shark Tank.
The technology titan missed out on Rescate's funky feline venture when she
appeared on the show in 2011 - sales of the CitiKitty Cat Toilet Training Kit
have reached $5 million - and "I'm not going to do it again," he said
when she returned for a Feb. 8 episode pitching the new product - the
HoodiePillow.
This time, she didn't face the
cameras alone. She was joined by a Burlington County father of triplets, who
came up with the idea for the wearable pillowcase in a sleep-deprived act of
desperation shortly after his daughters were born three years ago.
"I'm a light sleeper, so I
needed just to close myself off," explained Chris Hindley, 30, of Florence
Township. "I started sleeping with a pillow or a T-shirt over my head,
just to block out the world a little bit.
For affirmation, he took to Google
"and realized there were a lot of people that liked to sleep that
way."
Hindley, a marketing/design professional,
and his wife, Dana, a copy writer, put their entrepreneurial inclinations to
work and came up with HoodiePillow, essentially a pillowcase with a hood
attached that's made of premium sweatshirt material.
Or, as Hindley described it in a
recent interview: "A nighttime version of your favorite piece of
clothing."
Costing $5 to make and selling for
about $20 at www.hoodiepillow.com,
it is designed to fit a standard pillow. The hood is oversized to provide enough
coverage for the eyes - in case you don't have a sleep mask - and can be
loosened or tightened around the head with what Hindley says are patented
drawstrings.
About the same time that the
Hindleys created the HoodiePillow, Chris landed a job as marketing director for
Rescate's father's company in Fairless Hills, A.L. Patterson Inc., a
distributor of precast-concrete products. Rescate was using the warehouse
facility as headquarters and central shipping for what was, by then, her
going-gangbusters CitiKitty training kit.
That, too, had been an invention
inspired from a bit of desperation. Rescate had married in 2004 and, in so
doing, inherited not only a husband but also his cat, Samantha. They were
living in tight quarters in a one-bedroom on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where
Rescate was unwilling to put up with litter-box odors.
She got to work teaching Samantha to
do her business where humans do. Rescate developed a five-progressive-step ring
filled with litter - and organic catnip to help lure kitties to the bowl - that
fits under the toilet lid. Samantha was potty-trained in weeks and, by 2005,
Rescate and husband Christian had launched www.citikitty.com, selling kits for $29.99.
It was Rescate's desire to take the
company to the next level - getting product in stores - that prompted her
appearance on Shark Tank six years later. It worked. In exchange for a
20 percent equity stake in the company, infomercial czar (and TV Shark) Kevin
Harrington helped get CitiKitty on store shelves, including Walgreens'.
In awe, Hindley took it all in from
his desk at A.L. Patterson.
"I became very inspired by
them," he said of the Rescates. And he asked them to be his partners,
hoping to, in part, benefit from the warehousing and order-fulfillment
infrastructure already in place for CitiKitty.
The Rescates agreed, getting a 30
percent stake in HoodiePillow for their $15,000 investment. In June 2012, the
product debuted online, and Rebecca Rescate tried to build buzz among gadget
bloggers.
"From there, it just kind of
blew up immediately," she said.
Hindley said 10,000 HoodiePillows
were sold in the first six months, helped by national exposure on ABC's Good
Morning America and NBC's Today within three weeks of its launch.
He expects about $500,000 in revenue
this year and to exceed $1 million in 2014 - with college students being a
primary focus group. He and Rescate wanted a chance on Shark Tank to get
funding to invest in social-media marketing and develop a commercial. They were
offering 15 percent of the company for $90,000.
But the Sharks aren't pushovers.
First, they laughed when one of them, Daymond John, a fashion expert, agreed to
lie down on a couch and model a red HoodiePillow.
They got serious when Hindley
disclosed that a travel version has been developed, with an inflatable pillow
that fits around the neck. It sells for $16.95.
"I like that it solves a
problem," said Herjavec, the winning investor. As majority shareholder,
Hindley made the decision, including agreeing to Herjavec's terms: a 20 percent
ownership stake.
Before that, Rescate was a wall when
Harrington, her CitiKitty Shark investor, offered $90,000 for 33 percent
ownership in HoodiePillow. She also rebuffed real estate maven Barbara
Corcoran's proposal: that she and John together would invest $90,000 for a 40
percent cut of the company and 10 cents on every sale.
Rescate made clear that she and
Hindley were not desperate, and that the market for this product was far larger
than the one for her cat toilet-training kits:
"It's anybody with a head that
sleeps."
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