MAKO Client Spotlight: Bob Ginther – The Tri-Plunger

If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you won’t be surprised to see that we love to follow the successful product design and small business journeys of our clients.

One of our clients who’s seen immense success and positive reviews for his genius and handy invention is the successful home inventor, Bob Ginther.

Bob approached MAKO with a clear idea about creating what is now known as the ‘Tri-Plunger.’ A plunger that takes the shape of a triangle allows it to be more efficient and effective at unclogging toilets.

Over the past couple of months, Bob has seen great outcomes from his product, became an established small business owner, as well as getting the amazing opportunity to appear on multiple news broadcasts, and successfully sold his product with major home hardware retailers.

Working with MAKO Design + Invent as a Small Business Owner

Before Bob became the successful home inventor that he is today, he started out with an idea. Throughout his extensive term as a plumber, he has come across a dozen different situations in which clients were dissatisfied with the inefficiency of regular plumbers.

In order to solve this problem, Bob thought of combining his years of experience and providing a better, more effective solution to this common problem. He thought of creating a triangular plunger that is more suitable for fitting the holes within toilets, making it much easier to unclog.

Thus, with his idea in mind, he immediately went into research to find out how he could create this amazing product idea and how to patent it.

Determined to bring his idea to life, he reached out and patented the idea for the Tri-plunger and founded MAKO Design + Invent to help design and prototype the concept for the Tri-plunger.

The Success of The Tri-Plunger

Once the team at MAKO Design + Invent was able to come up with the most suitable and preferred design concept for the Tri-plunger, it was time to put the product into manufacturing.

After Bob began to receive his first couple of shipments, he reached out to the local home hardware stores in his city to introduce the product as a qualifying and great product to have on the shelves of stores. Bob immediately found success from the local home-hardware stores and co-op home centers in Western Canada, who bought several boxes of the tri-plunger, thinking his product was genius.

Picking up exposure through positive reviews and word of mouth about the effectiveness of the tri-plunger, Bob was reached out to by various news broadcasters such as CBC and Global News to interview him on the tri-plunger.

With the success of home-hardware stories and major news broadcasters reaching out to Bob and taking interest in the Tri-plunger, Bob is a great example of a successful home inventor and how a simple yet effective product, along with a clear vision and determination is what it takes to be a successful and thriving owner of a small business.

Being a Successful Home Inventor

We reached out to Bob to congratulate him on the recent success of the Tri-Plunger and asked if he had any insights, stories, or words to share on his journey as a small business owner. Bob shared his story of the Tri-Plunger below:

“As a first-time inventor I knew it was clear that I had to do a patent search with a company I found online, thus, I found a patent attorney and got a 1-year patent for the Tri-plunger. Although I paid for the patent, I found that nothing was happening to get my small business going.

After trying out a couple of different strategies for my business, I found myself feeling like I was running out of time. I decided to head back to point one and continue with more online research on how I could get my idea for the Tri-plunger going, and that’s where I found MAKO Design + Invent.

The MAKO team was very helpful and agreed to help me make my idea a reality. With their help, the Tri-Plunger was soon designed and produced. I then found myself needing to make some changes to the original design and structure of the Tri-plunger, to which the team at MAKO was glad to help again. Now, the new and improved plunger is performing well in the Co-Op stores in Saskatoon and is receiving positive reviews that the product works very well.

I have been incorporating the Tri-plunger into my work for nine months on many different plugged toilets, and it has made my job much easier, and the customers love it. I have recently made a deal with the Federated Co-Op to get them distributed in Western Canada. The Tri-Plunger has also been approved to be sold in the Toronto stores in Canadian Tire!

They are already in Preston and will soon be distributed throughout all locations. My hope as a small business is to soon get them across Canada and into all Canadian Tire stories. All of this was able to come to fruition because I found the right company to help me.”

Recent News on the Tri-Plunger

As the popularity and success of Bob’s Tri-plunger continues to grow, we were pleased to hear an exciting update from Bob himself: the Tri-plunger is now for sale in the first Canadian Tire store in Saskatoon!

In addition to this great news, Bob also shipped out 12 boxes to the Co-Op main warehouse in Calgary, meaning that the Tri-plunger will be distributed and soon be on the shelves among other Western Co-Op locations!

Those of you who live in East Canada and are interested in the Tri-Plunger will be glad to hear that the success of the Tri-Plunger is making its way to the east end and will soon be available in the Toronto Canadian Tire store locations.

We hope the development and story of Bob’s Tri-Plunger will inspire others to become successful home inventors themselves!

If you would like more information on Bob and how to get a Tri-Plunger of your own, feel free to contact Bob directly at his email: rginther@me.com. The Tri-Plunger is also available at Canadian Tire and Co-Op stores in West Canada.

If you have a great new invention idea and you’d like to learn more about this process, get in touch with MAKO today and visit our website to find out more. Or feel free to give us a call at +1 (888) 806-6256 (MAKO), and we can set you up on a call with our product strategist!

About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!