Doug Jones and Joe Spinoso like to think big. Really big. Like thinking about single orders for their handy wipe foil packets in the billions. With a “b.”
“Corporations right now are talking about half a billion wipes, huge numbers,” said Jones who, with his business partner, Spinoso, began selling their handy wipes last month in Wilton. “We”™ve had to secure pricing on everything from a bag of 75 wipes all the way to, ”˜What”™s the price if I order a billion?”™”
The list of restaurant chains, big-box stores and corporations that the two have visited or are talking to or negotiating with is impressive ”“ if confidential for the most part at this point. One chain supermarket, for example, “seems very interested” in the wipes, Jones said. The wipes ”“ which they call Smile Wipes ”“ “are a perfect last-item sale at checkout, either as individual wipes or in bags of 75,” he said. If the supermarket chain sells only five bags per store per day, “we”™ve surpassed 75 million wipes for the year.” Just with one regional supermarket chain.
And while the size of potential orders from big-box chains and fast-food restaurants they”™re talking with “is truly astounding,” Jones said, retail sales are only the beginning. The “staggering potential” is from airlines, casinos, health clubs, movie theaters, hotels, insurance companies and health-care providers ”“ just about any business or corporation that would like to put its name and logo on little packets of handy wipes in this health-conscious society.
“I was on the phone ten minutes ago with a representative from Cigna,” Spinoso said. “They”™re interested in branding Cigna on Smile Wipes, and they”™re talking about millions of wipes.” Corporate orders, he said, make projecting sales figures difficult. “One corporate order could be for hundreds of millions of wipes.”
On a less grand scale, the business partners are filling online orders from their Web site www.getwipes.com, but be warned, the site loads slowly, even with a high-speed Internet connection, from local businesses and from schools in Norwalk and Wilton that want to remove alcohol-based hand sanitizers from the classroom and replace them with Smile Wipes. But “we”™re go-getters,” Jones said, ready to tap any market. As a result of the local school”™s interest, “we met with the state Department of Education and are applying to become a vendor” to schools statewide.
Put that all together and Jones and Spinoso are projecting sales of 1 billion wipes “no later than the end of 2008,” Spinoso said. “Actually, we”™re thinking we”™ll reach that goal in six to eight months.” By the end of 2009, sales of individual wipes should be in the 3 billion to 5 billion range, with the sale of 1 billion wipes generating about $100 million in revenues, he said.
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Safe for animals and people
What makes Jones and Spinoso ”“ and their potential customers ”“ so enthusiastic about their hand wipes is a new formulation that sanitizes hands for up to six hours and replaces alcohol. “Alcohol wipes last for 10 or 15 seconds, and you recontaminate yourself,” Spinoso said. But the ingredient in Smile Wipes “has a persistent antiseptic effect, and that means that schoolchildren”™s hands, for example, can be relatively germ-free for most of the school day. Clean hands, Jones said, mean fewer germs brought to the mouth, resulting in less sickness spread around the classroom.
Spinoso stumbled on the ingredient when he owned pet stores in Wilton and Norwalk a few years back. “I always worried about keeping everything clean and the animals healthy,” Spinoso said. “We had alcohol stuff to squirt on your hands, but the dogs were allergic to it or didn”™t like it. And the customers didn”™t like it, either. So I started to do some research on antiseptics, on what”™s safe for animals and people.”
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Spinoso”™s veterinarian recommended chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG), which the vet uses to disinfect surgical instruments and wounds. “Dogs can lick it and not get sick and it”™s safe for people”™s hands,” he said. “And it actually kills germs for up to six hours.” Not only that, but CHG had a track record, as well. The FDA-approved sanitizer had been on the market since 1976 ”“ since the 1960s in Europe ”“ but not in handy wipes.
Jones had his own concerns about germs. He owns the Stand Firm Fitness center in Wilton and worried about keeping the surfaces of his equipment as clean and antiseptic as possible for his customers. “Like it or not,” Jones said, “athletes and animals spread germs.”
They met at Spinoso”™s pet store when Jones bought a large fish tank for his fitness center. The two struck up an immediate friendship and began talking germs and CHG. “We looked at boxes of wipes, buckets of wipes, little plastic cylinder containers,” Spinoso said, “but we found a lot of negative things about all of those. The best thing we found was individual wipes that are sealed and you carry around with you. If you go to the mall or the stadium, you have something with you when there are no sinks around.”
“We talked about it for five or six years,” Jones said, “then two years ago said ”˜Let”™s focus on the simplest and least expensive idea and bring it to fruition.”™” Two years and a six-figure investment later, they had put all the pieces together and began selling their Smile Wipes the first week of August.
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Phone calls and e-mails
Those pieces they put together included finding business lawyers and intellectual property lawyers, nailing down patents and trademarks and finding a broker who in turn could find Asian manufacturers stretching from South Korea to Taiwan to China to make the various components of the hand wipes and put them together into a foil packet. “Our final bag of wipes has seven different companies coming together,” Jones said.
Jones and Spinoso have been taking their bags of Smile Wipes to supermarkets and big-box outlets. “We did a promotion at Wal-Mart in Norwalk for five hours and every person coming in and going out got a sample of our product,” Jones said. “The kids that work there were wiping off the little car rides and the shopping car handles.” And a promotion at the Wilton Stop & Shop “has inundated us with a barrage of phone calls and e-mails,” he said. The duo gave Smile Wipes to people as they entered and left the store, and “though we did not try to sell the wipes, about 50 people asked to purchase our product on site.”
In the works are promotions at Caraluzzi”™s Markets in Wilton and Bethel, and a product introduction at Costco the week of Sept. 17, as well as return visits to Stop & Shop, promoting not only their Smile Wipes, but a “VW Smile Bug” giveaway. “It should draw quite a crowd,” Jones said.
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