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Date: March 30, 1994

Location: Edgewater

Title: Designers at Innovations & Development Turn Out $19.94 Works of Art

Author: Dan Goldblatt

Subject: A new look can turn a tired old product like a staple gun into this year”s hot item

Leonardo daVinci, Intel and Black & Decker come together in a converted linseed oil factory on the banks of the Hudson River. Here, technology ranging from the peristaltic pump invented by Leonardo during the Renaissance and computer technology popularized by IBM combine with inspiration and craftsmanship to make common consumer products new again.

Innovations & Development Inc., an industrial-design firm based in Edgewater, has lately been racking up awards for its work on the Black & Decker PowerShot staple gun. The PowerShot in many ways epitomizes the contribution industrial design can make to the creation of a new product–or in the case of the familiar staple gun, a tired old product. Says Martin Schrock, vice president of engineering for Black & Decker”s accessories and fastening division in Towson, Md.: “We felt we needed a fresh look.” With three awards in the bag already, and a fourth from a prestigious trade magazine to be announced in the fall, the industry likes the designing IDI.

Gary Grossman, 54, a principal at IDI, says other firms had “tried and failed” to come up with a new design for the device”s first overhaul in some 40 years. This new design makes accurate, effective stapling much easier, according to B&D and Grossman. According to Diane DeOssie, a B&D product manager, the PowerShot has been selling well since it came out late last year. In addition to pleasing the folks at Wal-Mart and Home Depot, the PowerShot has received awards from the Chicago Athenaeum, the Industrial Designers Society of America and Popular Mechanics magazine.

While this may be one of IDI”s more visible successes, it is not the company”s first. IDI was formed in 1968 by Grossman and his partner, Ed Meisner. Grossman, who spent his teens building model airplanes and boats, graduated from Syracuse University”s industrial design program in 1962. He got a job at Ford Motor and then went through its executive-training program. Gross-man says that although designers were “treated like princes” at Ford, he left after 21/2 years because he was afraid he would have trouble finding work if he were labeled an automotive designer and the car industry ran into trouble.

Grossman met Meisner while working with Raymond Loewy/Snaith, a New York City industrial-design firm. He and his future partner developed the Water Pik, and after that project they decided “the world could use new products and our kind of thinking,” says Grossman, so they started IDI.

Clients over the years have included some big names. The company has been designing the refrigerator for the year 2000 for Whirlpool. In 1980, it designed the Litton Pocket Socket wrench, which has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian Institution. It spent five years in the 1980s developing a system for the safe delivery of toxic drugs to patients that combined the peristaltic pump, invented by Leonardo daVinci, with an IBM-compatible computer and a bar-code reader to ensure that the right patient gets the right medicine.

The company, which had revenues of some $2 million last year, now has 12 employees and is not looking to expand. “We don”t want any growth,” Grossman says. “My partner and I and our two key people love to do the work. If we grow, we”ll have to add layers of people.”

Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Industrial Designers Society of America, says his group”s members serve manufacturers in several ways. A designer might develop a new look for an existing product. Schwartz cites the PowerShot as an example. Good industrial design can also make a product easier to sell and easier to manufacture. The PowerShot has fewer parts than previous staplers and so is cheaper to produce.

Grossman says his company hasn”t been hurt by the recession. Reason: his services are such a small part of overall product development cost. “It costs $7 million to $15 million for advertising to promote a product,” he says, “What”s a couple of hundred thousand for design?” Grossman says clients today are looking for “total solutions,” not just styling. Rather than just a facelift, companies often seek everything from the initial idea to a finished prototype.

Designers at IDI have been given very free rein for several current projects. In one room at its office is a wall covered with sketches for Evenflo, a baby-products company that makes products like Similac. IDI has been charged with originating new product ideas for the firm, and the staff has generated myriad drawings of plates, toys, nipples and bottles. Grossman calls this a “fishing expedition” for ideas. “We primarily want to come up with a new one of these,” he says, holding up a baby bottle, “but we go way out all over the place.”

In another room, a mannequin leg juts from a workbench. IDI has been asked by Johnson & Johnson”s orthopedic division to find a better way to remove a cast. Today”s cast cutters are slow and the blades are reminiscent of a circular saw. Sketches in progress show machines that take off a cast using technologies like ultrasound or pressurized streams of water. Idea by idea, IDI takes another old product into the future. u