SAMPE Journal - March/April 2016 - 45

Perspectives
Sometimes the best IP protection is the protection nobody anticipates. Let me share one of my favorite outside-the-box IP
protection strategies with you.

Decades ago every sink or wash basin in the world seemed to feature a dish that was there for the sole, express purpose of
holding a bar of soap. After using a bar of soap, it was put into that dish wet, where it turned into a soft, slippery lump. As a
result, the dish was always filled with soap scum. Nearly everybody saw the ubiquitous soap dish as a necessary nuisance.
Most never gave it a second thought. However, one man saw it as a unique opportunity.
Robert Taylor was a lifelong entrepreneur. He began his first company at the age of 28 with an investment of $3000
(€2770). His company produced old-fashioned, hand-rolled soaps wrapped in cloth. When he began to make sales calls
he was turned down by 25 soap companies. Then he had an idea: Why not match the colors of his soaps to the colors of
popular hand towels? In a short time, he was doing a brisk business with gift shops and department stores.
But what about the soap dish? Taylor looked at the soap dish and decided to eliminate it along with the soapy mess. His
idea was to replace it with a bottle filled with liquid soap. The soap would be dispensed from the bottle by a pump, which
would deliver a clean, discrete dab of soap to the user. Today that idea seems far from revolutionary but at the time it was
disruptive. The product was called SoftSoap.
There was just one little problem. Although it was a revolutionary product in its own rite, SoftSoap could not be patented.
Robert Taylor knew that in the cutthroat world of the hand soap market his idea would quickly be copied by bigger
companies who had significant resources to throw at their marketing campaigns. In no time SoftSoap would be wiped off
the shelves. What could he possibly do to protect his invention?
Robert Taylor decided to bet the company in a move that is now regarded by Inc. Magazine as one of the three shrewdest
business moves of all time. He raised $12 million (€11 million), more than the company's net worth at the time. He
ordered 100 million of the pump dispensers from the only two companies in the world that manufactured them. That
cornered the market for the entire first year. In the first six months he sold $25 million (€23 million) of SoftSoap. By the
end of the second year his annual sales were four times that much. Eventually the SoftSoap line was sold for $61 million
(€56.3 million).

So when you think about how to protect your IP, remember Robert Taylor and the soap that is now so common that we
forget that it didn't always exist. At one time it was a new concept looking for IP protection, and Mr. Taylor was able to do
so by turning his back on the old paradigms. He walked away from the soap dish and into the history books.

SAMPE Journal, Volume 52, No. 2, March/April 2016

http://www.matec.com

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