Biz Mix: Necessity – the Daddy of invention

Lisa Trank Biz Mix

Sometimes opportunity comes knocking and you just have to answer the door.

For Longmont resident Peter Champe, that knocking when his second child was born. It’s funny what the brain of an exhausted parent is capable of creating.

After a series of colds that inhibited his then 1-year-old son from breastfeeding, Peter and his wife were fed up with the available bulb and battery-operated nasal aspirators. As any parent of a stuffed up infant has experienced, none of the normal methods work very well and are not only exercises in frustration (and acrobatics), but are darn near impossible to use.

BabyComfyNose.

So Champe decided to tackle this stuffy situation head on and turned to his background in structural engineering and material sciences to bring his vision to life. He sketched a 3D model of what would become BabyComfyNose, a parent-powered suction-based nasal aspirator. Soon after, he presented his concept to friends over dinner.

Knock, knock. As it turns out, one of his dinner mates had a connection to Greg Oberg, Vice President of Product Development and Engineering at Aim Processing, a custom plastic injection molding company also based in Longmont. With his friend’s recommendation, Peter took his concept to Oberg, who on the spot decided to help him take the product to market.

How does BabyComfyNose work? Based on the Inuit’s traditional method of more directly decongesting their infants, the device uses a parents’ own suction, but without the exposure to mucus and germs.

“The design of the BabyComfyNose eliminates any possibility of oral contact with mucus and germs. Mucus is pulled into the receptacle body and is isolated there,” Champe says. “The BCN protects you in two ways: Firstly, because the body is wider (like an egg in the middle), air velocity is reduced in the center of the receptacle. This creates a ‘break’, where air flow is insufficient to pull liquid droplets up to the suction tube. This effect has been confirmed by independent testing. The second way that the BCN protects you is that lightly-wadded tissue inserted into the body of the unit functions as an excellent, cost-effective, and disposable filter.”

In just one year, and despite a production setback that included a search for a dishwasher-proof plastic, BabyComfyNose is a reality, complete with physician and pediatrician endorsements, as well as lots of enthusiasm from parent groups. The BPA- and Phthalate-free product was also recently featured at the 2009 Colorado Inventor’s Showcase held by the DaVinci Institute’s, a Louisville-based non-profit, futurist think tank. BabyComfyNose retails for $14.50 and is currently available online and in specialty stores.

You’d think Champe would take a moment to catch a much needed breath, but he’s not slowing down. He understands that taking a product to market is just the beginning and is busy applying the same diligence to bringing BabyComfyNose to a national audience. To learn more, visit www.babycomfynose.com and to view a demo of the product: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvL-a-7FhLs.

Lisa Trank is owner of One Purpose PR & Communications, a sustainable public relations, social media and communications firm founded in 2007. Lisa has called Longmont home for close to 10 years and is thrilled to be running her business and raising her family here.