Business

Stay-at-home dad ‘kickstarts’ business idea

As a stay-at-home dad for the past 12 years, Tonis Tollasepp began finding unconventional ways to approach household chores.

“In cleaning house, in doing laundry, in doing dishes, I thought there’s got to be a better way to improve the functionality of this,” the Bennington Heights resident said from his living room. “I love to look at things and redesign and reconfigure, and see how I can maybe improve things.”

After coming up with the initial idea for three products to simplify kitchen workflow, it took two years of trial and error and development for the father of two to create the katcher, kaddy and kup.

“It’s been fun building things and staying home with the kids,” Tollasepp says. “I’ve been fortunate enough to see the first crawl, the first walk, the first word… but I’ve realized that a lot of concepts haven’t changed throughout the years.”

One of his creations is the kup, a container that suctions to kitchen sinks, which conserves water and dish soap as users fill it up instead of the entire sink. The kup can also be used to pre-soak cutlery, catch food scraps and can easily be removed to clean other areas in the kitchen.

“From the water conservation side, if you didn’t have a dishwasher, and you washed your dishes as a family of four, you could save 60 gallons of water every week,” he said. “When you think of 60 gallons of water, it’s like filling your gas tank for a mid-size car 3.7 times a week full of gas.”

Tollasepp has taken to Kickstarter, the online funding platform for creators and innovators, to get backing for his invention, in hopes of raising $40,000.

“The concept isn’t glamorous,” he says. “It’s not an iPhone 6, it doesn’t do electronics for you, but it makes life easy for you, it conserves water, it helps the economy and it does ultimately help some with some climate change, in the bigger scheme of saving water.”

If the Kickstarter campaign doesn’t work out, Tollasepp says he’s already got plan B in the works, which includes setting up in the inventors booth at the 2015 International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago.

“There’s a lot of retailers and buyers who come to see the products, so it’s a great venue,” he says. “There’s a panel that adjudicates and give you critiques, then it’s trade shows and knocking on doors at retail stores and online stores as well.”