Murrieta inventor solves your everyday problems

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From baby products to portable billboards, Murrieta inventor Mike Donine makes his living thinking up solutions to everyday problems.

You may have seen his latest creation, The Xcuse Box, at Target.

The $10 key chain accessory plays high-quality background noises, including sirens and a carpenter's saw, that make it believable when you tell a chatty friend you have to get off the phone or let your boss know you have to miss a meeting.

"This is a canvas; you have to provide the story to go with it," said Donine, 47, who has used the box's auto repair shop noises when running late. "You could be sitting in your car and say 'I'd love to talk but I'm getting on an airplane' and hit the button."

The box, which has 10 one-minute sound bites, also can be found at Rancho Carwash in Murrieta, in the Solutions catalog, online at www.XcuseBox.com and soon at Restoration Hardware stores.

Friend Angela Studivant, of Temecula, called the contraption clever and quirky.

Target liked the novelty item so much it commissioned three more sound-related products from Donine, including a sequel to The Xcuse Box with barking dogs and kids bickering in the backseat.

Unlike many inventors, Donine did not have a lifelong ambition to create. It was his wife, Laurie, who convinced him to pursue the talent.

Raised in Los Angeles, Donine got a business degree from USC in 1982 and became a stock broker.

He conceived his first project while stranded on a stalled chair lift in Breckenridge, Colo., in 1987.

Plagued by old football injuries, Donine's knees were aching after an hour dangling in the cold.

When he got home, Donine used some webbing, nylon and an industrial sewing machine set up in his garage to make the Lazzy Legs Leg Lifter, a lightweight strap carried in a fanny pack and dropped down to ease the weight of skis when the lift stopped.

Later, he'd take the straps with him on the quad chair and sell them to admiring fellow skiers out of his backpack for $50. Lazzy Legs was carried at sporting goods chains until an ongoing drought knocked the bottom out of the ski market.

Donine was trying to sell Lazzy Legs to a snowboard shop when he met the man who invented Rollerblades. One try and Donine was hooked.

He used his leftover supplies from Lazzy Legs to make a bag that held one of the first versions of the inline skates. Donine happened to see an employee at Nordstrom setting up a display of the skates, and managed, on the spot, to sell the store on his skate bag, wrist guards and kneepads, which he hadn't even produced yet.

"That was a very creative period for me. I have great ideas that can translate quickly onto paper," he said from his small home office, surrounded by posters and framed patents of his products.

Selling ideas is the hardest part of the process, said Andrew Krauss, who teaches inventors to market their products through the 2,500-member Inventors Alliance.

"There's a whole host of people who just have ideas, but ideas aren't worth much if you're not able to sell them," Krauss said.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued 183,187 patents last fiscal year, more than double the number 20 years ago.

Most inventors don't have the business sense for manufacturing, bookkeeping, marketing and managing cash flow, Krauss said.

That's where Donine's business background comes in handy.

Carl von Hirsch, owner of a Temecula machine shop and Donine's fabricator, praised his business sense as well as his cleverness.

"Mike has a very creative mind. He finds materials that make it possible to make a product that is economically feasible to present to the market," von Hirsch said.

Donine invents out of necessity. When his four daughters, now ages 8, 9, 11 and 12, were babies, he designed 30-plus items for One Step Ahead, a baby products catalog.

In 1997, he created the Theodore Bean baby carrier. Two years ago, Donine sold the design to Maclaren, a producer of high-end baby products.

Now Donine is peddling his latest creation, the steel Billboard System that slides into a vehicle's trailer hitch for easy removal. It's ideal, he said, for real estate agents, contractors, restaurants and casinos.

He's also marketing his Pac-Rac, a sort of utility cart that snaps onto a Jet Ski and carries chairs and a soft-sided cooler. The rack is carried at Malcolm Smith Motorsports in Riverside, Chaparral Motorsports in San Bernardino and Temecula Motorsports, among others.

In the meantime, Donine said he is enjoying the satisfaction of being an inventor.

"Life is more fun because you don't know what's coming around the corner," he said. "You're looking for the project that will catapult you to wealth, but in the meantime, it's an adventure."

[via pe.com]
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