Melanie Spratt-Anderson…Attorney-inventor’s idea is making a gentle splash
By Sandra Bretting
Baby care seat’s concept originated in shower, became reality on vacation
More than 30 years ago, Melanie Spratt-Anderson found herself caring for two infant siblings while she was in junior high school, since her mother worked two jobs.
“My routine in the morning was that my mother would get in the shower and then I’d pass her first one baby, and then the other. That was the fastest way to do it,” Spratt-Anderson said. “But I always thought there had to be an easier way.”
Over the next three decades, Spratt-Anderson earned an economics degree from Texas A&M and a law degree from Southern Methodist University. She practiced family law for five years, and then was elected a county prosecutor in West Texas.
Melanie Spratt-Anderson’s Turning Point in Jamaica
Through it all, she continued to sketch ideas for her invention: an infant seat that parents could mount in a shower. She wanted it to be high enough so parents wouldn’t need to bend and sturdy enough to hold a baby up to 18 months old.
“Think about it,” said Spratt-Anderson, now 45. “Here I had an idea that involved both an infant product and something that’s used in the bathroom. As far as liability insurers or anyone else was concerned, I might as well have been selling the most dangerous thing around – like a piece of glass – to newborns.”
The turning point for her idea occurred in late 2011. She took a vacation to Jamaica and met a local man who had worked as a welder and had become a fitness instructor. He offered to create a prototype for her in exchange for free legal advice.
The result, in February 2012, was the first iteration of Wash That Baby.
“It looked nothing like the product does now,” Spratt-Anderson said. “He used scrap metal, so it was very boxy and very heavy … at least 10 pounds.”
Melanie Spratt-Anderson began thinking about “an easier way” to bathe infants when she was a teenager helping her mother care for siblings. Her eventual design is called Wash That Baby.
Today, Wash That Baby is a 4.5-pound foldable seat made of PVC-coated nylon with aluminum bars for support.
Help Refining the Design
To develop the product, Spratt-Anderson and Omar Graham, her Jamaican partner, secured help from the Jamaican Business Development Center. So the center loaned them engineers and product designers to refine the baby care seat in exchange for a modest fee.
Over the next year or so, the team tinkered with the design until they felt the product was ready to be certified by a laboratory that contracts with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
“That was a nightmare,” Spratt-Anderson said, “because seven prototypes later, we finally passed their testing.”
So by her estimate, she’s spent $20,000 to get the product to its current state.
Melanie Spratt-Anderson gave up a law career to launch a baby care seat she designed called Wash That Baby! April 28, 2014 in Houston. (Eric Kayne/For the Chronicle)
So in October, she was invited to show it at the ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas, the country’s largest trade show for baby, child and teen products.
Success at trade show
“We had about 50 applications for only 18 spots,” said Judi Sunden, an account manager with the ABC Kids Expo. “We call it the Invention Connection, and it allows inventors to get out there in the public, see if manufacturers are interested and find out if there’s a market for their product.”
Following the ABC Kids Expo, online retailer Amazon.com contacted Spratt-Anderson about offering the product on its website.
So the retailer began offering Wash That Baby with a price tag of $100.34 in February.
Although she’s not allowed to disclose Amazon sales figures, Spratt-Anderson estimates some 250 units overall have been sold to date.
“My ultimate goal is to get into a store like Target,” she said. “That would tell me we’ve really made it.”
InventionStories.com would like to thank…Sandra Bretting, Eric Kayne, the Houston Chronicle and Melanie Spratt-Anderson for allowing us to reprint this article. So we asked Melanie the following two questions:
What were some obstacles and how did you overcome them?
The 2 biggest hurdles I had to deal with were defending my product in the patent application and figuring out the required Consumer Product Safety testing needed for this unique product.
In the Patent process, you have to look at similar products and persuade the patent officials that your product is different and better than previous patents granted. In my patent research, I found there were baby seats, and shower seats, but NO Baby shower seat. The arguments and claims took some creativity by me and my patent attorney at Legal Zoom in writing the patent application.
Navigating the Federal Safety Rules for US products was very confusing. Im an attorney and I had to re-read the regulations 100 times to understand!
What advice would you give to those interested in inventing?
a.) Don’t get discouraged by the obstacles. If it was easy…everyone would do it. It took Henry Ford 10 years to invent the car.
b.) Having a great idea is just the beginning. Be prepared to perserver in developing the invention and manufacturing the product, then marketing it and selling it. It took the inventor of “wheels on a suitcase” one year to get any store to show interest in his product!!
c.) Read/listen to stories of other inventors for inspiration and motivation 🙂
For more information, please visit www.washthatbaby.com
