Princeton students’ project is heading to market

Vacuum cleaner attachment to be sold by "As Seen on TV" direct marketing company

By: Lauren Otis
   It is a young student entrepreneur’s dream: The product you’ve developed as part of your class project is good enough to get picked up, manufactured and sold in the real world. Five Princeton University graduates are living this dream, with their idea for a vacuum cleaner attachment being readied for market.
   As with many entrepreneurial dreams, while serendipity has played a role, the dream’s realization is the result of long hours and hard work.
   It all began last fall when the students signed up for a new "entrepreneurial engineering" course taught by Daniel Nosenchuck, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, in collaboration with Ajit "A.J." Khubani, president and CEO of Fairfield-based Telebrands, the "As Seen On TV" direct marketing company.
   The course — the subject of a March 10 Packet feature article — sought to emphasize the business side of engineering, focusing on the marketing, development, financing and distribution of applied engineering products.
   Three engineering students, Jonathan Brosterman, Sameer Shariff, and Robert Moore, history of science major Lawrence Azzaretti, and politics major Robert Gonzalez, formed one of several class teams charged with coming up with a saleable product idea.
   At first, "we just literally sat around a round table and pitched ideas and talked them out," said Mr. Moore.
   The group pursued one idea for several weeks, but then the idea for an attachment which could convert a regular home vacuum cleaner into a wet vac "sort of sprang up," according to Mr. Moore. Switching products midstream in the course "added a lot of work but we ended up with a great product," he said.
   The effort paid off, with Mr. Khubani impressed enough by the product to want to market it through his company.
   "It’s great for picking up any kind of wet mess," said Mr. Khubani, giving the example of a dropped jar of olives which shatters on the floor leaving broken glass, olives and liquid all over. "How do you pick that up?" he said. The wet vac product, which would retail for less than $20, would simply attach to the end of the vacuum cleaner hose. The "wet mess" would be sucked into a separate attached canister, using the vacuum cleaner’s suction but not its waste bag, he said.
   Mr. Khubani negotiated what he termed a "typical royalty agreement based on sales" with the students. Then they all headed off to Dongguan, China over the students’ spring break to inspect a manufacturing factory for the product.
   Mr. Moore described the experience of going to China as "amazing." Practically speaking there wasn’t a real need for all five members of the team to go, but Mr. Khubani offered to pay their way anyway, he said. "There was a huge amount of generosity on his part," Mr. Moore said.
   The team stayed in Hong Kong, traveling by train to mainland China for factory visits, a trip which Mr. Moore described as "eye-opening from a cultural aspect." The trip from Hong Kong to the mainland "was like going to a different world," he said.
   The trip was equally eye-opening from a business standpoint, Mr. Moore said. Not only did the team get a chance to view the manufacturing process first-hand, but they got to meet in person with the Chinese engineer who would oversee manufacturing of the product.
   "I would never have, before this trip, placed any value on a face-to-face meeting with an engineer," to go over the product to be made, Mr. Moore said. But the ability to just "draw things out" and brainstorm in person was invaluable, he said.
   Right now the Chinese engineer is currently building an initial prototype. The goal is to ramp up production in July or August in order to hit the upcoming Christmas season, Mr. Moore said. There is a small lull now until the prototype arrives.
   "For the first time in a while over here we are all just sitting around doing nothing," Mr. Moore said. That is not to say the team members’ lives aren’t busy. All seniors when the project began, they have just graduated and are moving on to a variety of challenges, one going to Stanford Law School, another to Google, others to venture capital and investment banking firms.
   Will the wet vac sell? "We hope so," says Mr. Khubani. "In our business you never really know until you put it up the flagpole and see who salutes as we say."