Friday, June 11, 2004 04:59
PM
Point Pleasant resident
designs inventive way to pack for beach
By Bill MIller
Going to the beach is a summer ritual for many
residents of the Jersey Shore.
A common problem many beachgoers face prior to hitting the
sand is how to pack beach essentials without having all the
room in their beach bags taken up by their towel.
Point Pleasant resident Tina Marie Connors believes she
has invented a solution to that problem by a creating a beach
towel that can transform into a backpack or tote bag. Known
as the Towel Down, Ms. Connors has patented her invention,
shown it on television and recently won a silver medal at
an inventor’s expo in Pittsburgh.
On Monday Ms. Connors demonstrated how Towel Down works.
Not only can it simply be pulled through to create the backpack
or tote bag, but when it is a towel it has pockets for keeping
keys and wallets hidden and safe. There is also a pouch that
can be stuffed with sand to create a pillow for lying down
to sunbathe and other pockets that can be filled to weigh
the towel down so the wind doesn’t carry it away. The
product is also equipped with Velcro that allows several Towel
Downs to be joined together to make a blanket.
Ms. Connors recalled how she invented her towel, noting
her background was in finance, not design. Ms. Connors graduated
from Pace University in New York with a degree in management
information systems. While going to school she worked full-time
on the New York Mercantile Exchange. She worked her way up
from runner to commodities trader spending 18 years in the
exchange.
Ms. Connors noted when she got married she moved from Battery
Park in Manhattan, where her commute was 10-minute walk, to
New Jersey, where her commute became two hours long. Eventually,
the commute caused her to give up her job in the city and
work from home on her trading career. By February 1998 Ms.
Connors had moved to Point Pleasant.
Yet, Ms. Connors explained, she had been coming to the beach
long before she moved to Point Pleasant, often spending time
in the Hamptons and at the Jersey Shore. She said it was her
frequent beach excursions, and the aggravation often caused
by standard beach towels that inspired her invention.
“The corners would blow up. You try to put things on
the corners to weigh them down. I just couldn’t stand
it so I decided to invent a towel with everything in it,”
said Ms. Connors.
She added she also wanted something that could keep a person’s
hands free as they walked to the beach, hence the towel’s
ability to become a backpack.
In 1995 Ms. Connors said she did a patent search and found
there was no similar product on the market. Once she began
trading from home she got the patent, a process that she noted
takes a couple years to complete.
“Now I had the time to put into the towel and to get
things going,” said Ms. Connors.
As for how she actually designed the towel, Ms. Connors
said one day she just went out and bought a sewing machine
and some washcloths and made it herself. While she describes
the original towel as a “silly prototype” it was
inspired enough that she took that prototype to a dry cleaner
and for $400 had a more professional looking prototype made.
When the time came she found a manufacturer and sent the second
prototype in to be mass produced.
Since then Ms. Connors has done her best to get the word
out about her invention. She noted she has done interviews
in newspapers and well as on television and radio. She has
also seen her towel included in the gift baskets given to
the nominees of the 2003 Latin American Music Awards and the
2004 Screen Actors Guild Awards. She also noted she recently
sold an order of 2,500 towels to Trump Plaza for use in an
upcoming promotion.
Most recently, Ms. Connors won the silver medal at the INPEX
[Invention and New Product Exposition] show in Pittsburgh
in May. The 2004 invention show included participants from
throughout the United States and 20 other countries and included
more than 1,000 inventions.
“When I won I was very happy about that,” said
Ms. Connors, who noted she got to have a picture taken with
Art Fry, the inventor of Post-Its.
Looking to the future, Ms. Connors said she made many contacts
at the invention show and will be attending another trade
expo in Las Vegas in September. She said ultimately, she would
like to see her towel on the shelves in Wal-Mart and Target
stores or perhaps on a shopping channel such as QVC.
For now, Ms. Connors, towels are for sale locally at Brave
New World as well several other shops in beach areas such
as Cape May. She also sells them online at www.toweldown.com.
As for those who have seen and used the Towel Down, Ms.
Connors said, “I get a lot of positive feedback. A lot
of people like it. People are starting to use it.”
“Basically I had an idea. I didn’t want the years
to pass and say I should have tried that. If doesn’t
work out I’ll know I did my best, and if it does work
out; great, it’ll be a nice accomplishment and the work
is worth it,” said Ms. Connors.
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