Inspiration can be found in many different places, and business owners need to keep an open mind when it comes to setting their company apart from the competition.
This is what Iris Rubinfield, president of Master Manufacturing Co., has learned in her 50-plus years in the world of business. She regularly brainstorms with her employees and salespeople, takes customer feedback seriously, consults with design firms and gets ideas from inventors.
“We feel that we’re a problem-solver,” she says. “We provide a solution to something that is needed, and we have an innovative approach to it.”
Rubinfield and her husband, Don, worked side-by-side at the company, which manufactured casters, until his death in 1979. By the mid-1980s, Rubinfield realized she had to diversify her company’s product line, and her answer came with the advent of the office supply superstore.
Today, her Cleveland-based company creates products for the office supply industry, including ergonomic chair cushions, furniture touch-up kits, furniture sliders and self-stick wheels.
“One of our most successful items is our doorstop, and the idea came from one of our customers,” she says. “There are a lot of doorstops that aren’t any good, and the customer said somebody’s got to make a good one. We made one, and now we have 10 different kinds of doorstops. That’s kind of how things happen here.”
Almost all of the products introduced by Master Manufacturing during the last 10 years have been created in response to a suggestion or a problem, and the company holds many patents for its creative products.
Over the years, Rubinfield has learned that to have an innovative company, the business owner has to be willing to take a gamble, and hopefully in the end the company will have more winning concepts than losing ones.
She’s also learned that it’s best to stick to what you know. Her company has recently discovered a demand for its products in new markets, and its items are now being carried in the janitor supply field, craft stores, grocery stores and drugstore chains.
HOW TO REACH: Master Manufacturing Co., (800) 323-5513 or www.mastermfgco.com