Whose Idea Was the Dry-Cleaning Bag Anyway?
By AMY WALLACE
LAST month’s Prototype column — about a company that makes reusable dry-cleaning bags — began: “Man or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor.”
The day it appeared, with a picture of Mr. Siegel, his wife, Jennie Nigrosh, and their product, the Green Garmento, I heard from another Los Angeles inventor, Jane Wyler. She was plenty frustrated with Mr. Siegel.
It turns out that Ms. Wyler, whose company is called Reuseniks, met Mr. Siegel in 2008 when he and his wife approached her at a trade show. The couple told Ms. Wyler that they were blown away by her reusable dry-cleaning bag, the Clothesnik. After buying two, they asked to meet to discuss investing in her company.
Ultimately, Ms. Wyler opted not to team up with them, but not before Mr. Siegel sent an e-mail message to her and her business partner, Rich Leivenberg, in April 2008, titled “WE LIKE REUSENIKS.” “The reason we want to be so involved in your company,” the message said, was because of how easily the Clothesnik “could be replicated by potential competitors.”
If a more muscular competitor were to emerge, Mr. Siegel continued, it could “undermine your uniqueness and reap the available rewards.” Ask Ms. Wyler today, and she says that Mr. Siegel was absolutely right — and that he has been undermining and reaping ever since. “Can you believe this guy?” she asks. “He stole our idea.”
Au contraire, Mr. Siegel says.
“Her claim is like the furrier telling the guy who makes windbreakers that he stole their coat idea.” The Green Garmento, he notes, is made of polypropylene and retails for $9.99. The Clothesnik is made of organic cotton and goes for $30. Given those differences, he says, “We are not a rival of theirs.”
This messy little disagreement is hardly unusual. Claims to authorship of great products have set off disputes stretching back eons. You’ve heard the saying: There are no new ideas. Especially as the Internet enables the cross-fertilization of information, we like to believe that all of this leads to more innovation — as, in fact, it often does.
Entrepreneurs shine when they respond adroitly and shrewdly to a need in the marketplace. And that, undeniably, is what the owners of the Green Garmento did — which is why they fit so snugly into a column that describes the creative process and how entrepreneurs hit upon winning ideas.
Mr. Siegel says he was under no obligation to mention Ms. Wyler when I asked him, twice, to describe the “Eureka!” moment that led to the Green Garmento concept.
He and his wife do acknowledge that they’d never seen a reusable dry-cleaning bag before they laid eyes on Ms. Wyler’s product, but Mr. Siegel’s “Eureka!” moment “wasn’t in buying a Reusenik,” he wrote by e-mail, “but in recognizing how to morph what existed into something else.”
But that’s not what he told me last month. Last month, he said inspiration visited him while he was standing in his closet, wrestling with twist ties and plastic bags.
Mr. Siegel now says that after he and his wife bought two Clothesniks, they were “intrigued” enough to do some “initial research” that indicated the product would sell better if it were made of polypropylene, which is cheaper. Because Ms. Wyler rejected that suggestion of theirs, Mr. Siegel wrote, she “is not owed anything for our idea.” (The italics are his.)
But Ms. Wyler says she isn’t looking for money from Mr. Siegel and Ms. Nigrosh. She just wants some credit. To be utterly omitted from the narrative — to be treated as if she doesn’t exist — is just too much of an insult, she says.
Herewith, belatedly, the Clothesnik’s genesis: In 1990, two young mothers — Ms. Wyler and a friend, Lynn Williams — invented the company. Both women say they were spurred by environmentalism and the fear of plastic suffocating their children. They made three varieties — the Clothesnik, the Shopnik (for groceries) and the Lunchnik — and enjoyed some success. But the partnership fell apart early, and in 1993, Ms. Wyler shut Reuseniks after becoming pregnant with her third daughter.
