The better you get to know your audience, the easier it will be for you to know the level of model required for a particular concept. At the end of the day, your goal is to get your product under contract or to land investors. Once a company takes over, the item may begin to take different forms and functions. In the case of a licensee, if the company respects you, you will be part of this decision-making process. And when the planets line up, magic can happen.

Inventor Ken Thorne came up with Zephyr, a do-it-yourself converter that transforms a standard oven into a convection oven, thus saving time and money when cooking.

When Ken started to prototype Zephyr, his first stop was Grainger Industrial Supply to find a motor that closely resembled what he had in mind. A sheet metal guy made the fan blade, at minimal cost. Ken then approached a pottery artist to design a housing to enclose the motor and fan blade.

Ken knew his idea was feasible, but once the parts were assembled, and after some tweaking, he knew he was on the right track. “I contacted the San Francisco distributor for small GE motors. They sent a salesman to see me,” Ken explained. “I showed him my prototype and suggested that a successful product could result in the sale of a million motors or more,” he continued. “The guy saw the potential because a week later I had a call from GE and the following week I was off to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to see the top brass.”

GE loved the idea and adopted Ken’s modifications to their motor in lieu of his filing patents. They assigned the new motor a special part number and gave Ken 10 percent of the motor’s wholesale price in perpetuity.