Millstone man gets provisional patent for "Flex Soap."
By: Scott Morgan
MILLSTONE Taking into account the war, the Depression and the rationing, growing up in the 1940s was hard enough. But when you shared the house with six siblings, belts could get pretty tight.
For Louis DeVitis, a resident of Sweetman’s Lane, nothing seems to embody the lengths to which his family went to save money and resources better than soap. Yes, soap. Sharing a bar of soap with his family meant saving the chips and jamming them back together to make another bar. Economical, yes, but who wants to spend their time smashing soap chips?
Not Louis DeVitis, that’s for sure. And to show he’s serious, Mr. DeVitis recently garnered a provisional patent (patent pending) for a bar of soap that won’t get flaky when the going gets tough.
"Flex Soap" is Mr. DeVitis’ idea of keeping your soap together. Bolstered by an internal mesh netting, which is inserted into the bar as it is being manufactured, Flex Soap is stronger and more durable than your average bar of soap, Mr. DeVitis said. The netting, he said, keeps the bar from breaking apart, but also (and just as important), this netting is designed to let the bar mold to the shape of the user’s hand.
Why is that important? Because if it fits the curvature of the hand, it is less likely to fly away in the shower, Mr. DeVitis said.
That aspect could be the ultimate selling point for a tough market, according to Mr. DeVitis’ product manager, Glenn Lurie, of Lawrenceville-based Pinpoint Direct Marketing.
"It’s going to be a hard sell," Mr. Lurie said, acknowledging that he believes the bar to be a good product. However, he said easily broken soap is no longer the plague it once was for bathers. The real angle, Mr. Lurie said, will be in pitching the bar as a personal item, uniquely crafted by and to its user. Such a product position, Mr. Lurie said, could offer soap companies a very valuable commodity something new.
But though Mr. DeVitis said he is a strong believer in not counting his proverbial chickens too soon, the marketing wheels are turning. Mr. Lurie said he has packaged Mr. DeVitis’ invention, built a brochure and contacted some of the "major players" in the soap trade Palmolive, Colgate, Procter & Gamble Co. So far, Mr. Lurie said, the only response (and a tentative one at that) has come from P&G, but hopes are still high.
Mr. DeVitis said his main reason in creating Flex Soap is to reduce waste. In fact, being well aware that his mesh netting is an after product (though he said it creates far less waste than a discarded bar of half-used soap), Mr. DeVitis already is working on phase two of his unbreakable-soap quest a strip that takes up far less space and accomplishes the same results as his mesh netting.
For the moment, though, Mr. DeVitis is busily trying to get his first soap marketed. And while he acknowledges the soap market is a tough bubble to pop, Mr. DeVitis remains hopeful that his new bar will flex its marketing muscle. After all, he said, "if you have a soap bar that will stay intact, which one would you opt to buy?"