Zipper inventors had their profits stuck in their teeth (The Zipper Story)

When someone mentions the word "zipper", what's the first thing that comes to mind? For many people, it's "I wish I had invented it." Zippers can be found almost everywhere on the planet. There are enough being produced each week that if they were joined into a long one, it would go around the world. Yearly production for this $8 billion industry exceeds 15 billion zippers - enough to make it to the moon and back five times.

Many inventors who file patents, including the inventors of the zipper - sewing machine inventor Elias Howe in 1851, Whitcomb Judson in 1891 (patented 1893), and much later again electrical engineer Gideon Sundback in 1913 (patented 1917), fall into the trap of being too far ahead of their time or otherwise being out of tune with the market. The zipper finally started getting good market acceptance after 1930 and is now one of the world's best known products - centuries later. It did little good for its early inventors.

Judson showed his version of the zipper to 20 million (20,000,000) people and sold only 20. If he went from door to door selling zippers and found everyone home, he would have knocked on every door in London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Vienna, St. Petersburg and Milan to reach so many people. Yet he somehow only managed to sell a handful of these things. This seems like the ultimate case of not listening to the market. Judson had a severe case of inventoritis - being completely out of touch with the market and getting such terrible results.

Persistence only pays off where there is a real market. Judson certainly was persistent and spent the better part of his life working on his zipper. He brought investors into his new Universal Fastener Company, patented his zipper and promoted it at the 1893 Chicago World Trade Fair. He kept working at it for several years. Eventually, Gideon Sundback, who emigrated from Sweden to Canada, came to work for Judson's company. Sundback worked on the zipper designs for years and patented a newly improved version in 1917, years after both Judson's patent and Judson himself had expired. Sundback's new version did not do much better than the original. New machinery was built and over the next few years, production only got up to a few hundred zippers per day. This wasn't enough to make Sundback rich and Judson was already dead and buried long before then in 1909.

Zippers didn't really get their start in the market until after the B.F. Goodrich Company used them on a line of rubber galoshes in the 1920s. Goodrich invented the name "zipper" to replace awkward sounding phrases "hookless fastener", "continuous clothing closure" and "clasp unlocker" used by the various inventors to describe the product. Other players then started entering the market. The companies started by the inventors had a hard time keeping up. This includes the ones that evolved into present day Talon. Mid-1930s Japanese entrant YKK started from scratch with no patents and now commands roughly half the world market while Talon only has a 7% share. German producer Optilon has a similar share to Talon and much of the remaining share is made up of a growing number of Chinese and Korean producers.

Founded in Japan in 1934, YKK was called Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, but 60 years later the company changed its company name to match its brand name. The privately held YKK Co. is headquartered in Japan and is made up of about 100 companies and subsidiaries operating 200 facilities in 60 countries.

YKK's success is based on constantly improving the quality of their products, treating their people with respect, lowering product prices and providing excellent service while managing tight delivery schedules. The company also introduced variations in styles, colors and attributes - highly responsive to market needs. Company founder Tadao Yoshida instilled this philosophy that he called a "virtuous circle" of rendering benefits to others so that benefits would return to YKK. His company is the Toyota of zippers.

YKK keeps quiet about its manufacturing process innovations and prefers maintaining trade secrets over patents. The company obscures the details of its improvements in its manufacturing processes. It does likewise for improvements in its supply chain and distribution management methods, custom-made computer software, and special management techniques. What is impossible for the company to keep secret is that it does not have a bad case of inventoritis. YKK has always been in close touch with the market - with excellent results.

The message for inventors is plain and simple. If you are going to do something, do your homework and always be in close touch with your market. Things don't come easily but they do come along to those who are prepared to engage the market constructively. Don't make it so your ideas and inventions end up being tens or hundreds or years ahead of time like those of the zipper inventors were. Fifteen minutes is about the right amount of time. The product could have achieved market acceptance much sooner if the inventors were better marketers. If they had gotten their zippers unstuck, they might have lived to see spectacular results from what has become one of the world's best known products.

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