[umberto]

I'm looking for a manufacturer, preferably in the US, for three interior accessory products I am trying to develop.

I have an '04 MINI Cooper with sunroof. I noticed 3 shortcomings with the car the bunch of times I test drove it, and knew I would buy the car anyway and try to come up with some fixes for my own use....but they came out so well, that I feel I have some viable products here. The shortcomings:

1) the lack of an opaque shade for our large sunroof;

2) the lack of a decent cupholder for our useless stock cupholders;

3) the fact that our front visors are too puny and short to adequately block the sun.

I have tried peddling my ideas to a few of the vendors on the MINI forums and they all say: nice idea, works well, looks good, but we are too busy to develop a specialty product for a limited market like the MINI......I am hoping that one of you out there might have some suggestions for a manufacturer of interior car products who might want to take on some new products and have an exclusive market:


items:


1) an opaque shade for the sunroof.....this is NOT a cardboard place-in thing that you put in or out each time you need to use it to block the overhead sun blaring through the mesh...mine is a permanent retractible opaque shade that you can use, or when not in use rolls up to be basically invisible, and then you can still use or not use the mesh shade or the sunroof glass...you can even have the front half opaque and leave the rear half mesh so the sun overhead is blocked, but light can still filter through the mesh behind in to the car....and my shade is shiny and light colored on the outside of the shade to reflect the heat of the sun out of the car. This is easily and permanently attached with no drilling or modificaton and can be removed easily if desires



2) the best darn cupholder yet for the MINI. It holds your drinks, even a 24 oz gatorade bottle, down near the level of the stock cupholders but not under the toggle switch bank. So the drink is where you would expect it to be, not bumping into the the passenger's knees or up near the air conditioning vents or splashing over the radio/AC controls



3) a visor extender attachment.......essentially flexible vinyl/plastic and fabric and velcro....attaches to the visors (one for each side) and has extenders that pull out to block the sun, which the MINI's puny stock visors do not do too well. This item might also have some application for cars in addition to the MINI as on Miata forums and Beetle forums there were also some complaints of the visors being too short......please note, my visor extender has pull-outs to the left and right to make the visor act longer, not to act deeper.


Any help you could provide would be appreciated......a couple of the larger vendors said that if these products were presented to them already to ship, they would and could sell them...they just do not want to bother with the manufacturing of them....me neither as I am not in manufacturing....I'm just your friendly neighborhood optometrist in Massachustts who is bothered by, and aware of, glare issues with the MINI (sunroof and visor product) and hated the huge monstrosity afterthought cupholder they put in my car at the dealer.

My plan is to simply sell my idea to a manufacturer who would then produce it....I do not want to be involved in the manufacturing. I have working prototypes in my car and working prototypes to send out....as well as some email pictures I could send and a homemade (USA format) video showing the products at work and the 'how to install' video

a lil help would be nice

Russell

[minicore]

Quote: Originally Posted by umberto (original)

3) a visor extender attachment.......essentially flexible vinyl/plastic and fabric and velcro....attaches to the visors (one for each side) and has extenders that pull out to block the sun, which the MINI's puny stock visors do not do too well. This item might also have some application for cars in addition to the MINI as on Miata forums and Beetle forums there were also some complaints of the visors being too short......please note, my visor extender has pull-outs to the left and right to make the visor act longer, not to act deeper.

Pretty sure that's already been done? Could be wrong though...

And the bigger cupholders would probably be limited to the US market (or anywhere else where drinks tend to be jumbo-sized). Main problem I have with them is that they're too big (won't hold a can of Red Bull!) but they cope perfectly with regular cans of coke, cups from McDonalds, etc, etc.

[Paul]

They've all been done I believe. We used to have a sponsor here who did custom visors, and many places seem to offer clip-on cupholders.

[Wooly]

Dont take this in a bad way but i dont think that it is a good venture. these products cannot be patented as theyve all been done before, the market competition i imagine would be very tough and financially it wouldnt be viable when you consider manufacturing costs to sales mark up. you would have to sell a huge amount to make it worthwile, and even if you do sell huge amounts i doubt the market would be big enough.

the third idea has definately been done as i have one, but i dont carry it on my visor i just put it in the side pocket. and i have to disagree, the visibilty with the visor down is pretty poor, it covers half of my windscreen when its down, with the cd pocket attached it is reduced even more. it doesnt look very appealing either.

if you want a job designing best thing is to just apply at a manufacturer and see what they say.

just trying to save you the hassle and the money mate!