Behind the Many Faces of Innovation, 2010
By AMY WALLACE
Originally appeared in New York Times, December 25, 2010
LAST week was Doyle Doss’s busiest of the year. An advocacy group for the homeless had called from St. Louis to buy 12 of his Kandle Heeter Candle Holders, which promise “dry, radiant space heat from a candle” for just $29.95 each. He also had a bunch of laminated wildlife portraits — priced at $14.95 and sized to “make your refrigerator happy” — to put in the mail, and so many wearable hummingbird feeders on order that he had to hire part-time help to build them all.
Yes, you read that last one right: Mr. Doss, whose tiny creative enterprise, Doss Products, is based in a chilly cow barn just south of Eureka, Calif., is the proud inventor of a hummingbird feeder that he calls the :–2<: (pronounced “eye 2 eye”). Priced at $79.95, it is a red, helmetlike contraption that dispenses sugar water from a tube positioned between two eyeholes. You wear it on your face. Click to continue »