Skip to main content
Sister Publication Links
  • Sustainable Plastics
  • Rubber News
Subscribe
  • Sign Up Free
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Processor News
    • Suppliers
    • More News
    • Digital Edition
    • End Markets
    • Special Reports
    • Newsletters
    • Videos
    • Injection Molding
    • Blow Molding
    • Film & Sheet
    • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
    • Rotomolding
    • Thermoforming
    • Recycling
    • Machinery
    • Materials
    • Molds/Tooling
    • Product news
    • Design
    • K Show
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Sustainability
    • Public Policy
    • Material Insights Videos
    • Numbers that Matter
    • Automotive
    • Packaging
    • Medical
    • Consumer Products
    • Construction
    • Processor of the Year
    • Best Places to Work
      • 2023 winners
    • Women Breaking the Mold
    • Rising Stars
    • Diversity
    • Most Interesting Social Media Accounts in Plastics
  • Opinion
    • The Plastics Blog
    • Kickstart
    • One Good Resin
    • Pellets and Politics
    • All Things Data
    • Viewpoint
    • From Pillar to Post
    • Perspective
    • Mailbag
    • Fake Plastic Trees
  • Shop Floor
    • Blending
    • Compounding
    • Drying
    • Injection Molding
    • Purging
    • Robotics
    • Size Reduction
    • Structural Foam
    • Tooling
    • Training
  • Events
    • K Show Livestream
    • Plastics News Events
    • Industry Events
    • Injection Molding & Design Expo
    • Livestreams/Webinars
    • Editorial Livestreams
    • Ask the Expert
    • Plastics News Events Library
    • Processor of the Year submissions
    • Plastics News Executive Forum
    • Injection Molding & Design Expo
    • Plastics News Caps & Closures
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
    • Plastics in Automotive
    • Bioplastics Live
    • PN Live: Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Polymer Points Live
    • Numbers that Matter Live
    • Plastics in Politics Live
    • Sustainable Plastics Live
    • Plastics Caps & Closures Library
    • Plastics in Healthcare Library
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
  • Rankings & Data
    • Injection Molders
    • Blow Molders
    • Film Sheet
    • Thermoformers
    • Pipe Profile Tubing
    • Rotomolders
    • Mold/Toolmakers
    • LSR Processors
    • Recyclers
    • Compounders - List
    • Association - List
    • Plastic Lumber - List
    • All
  • Directory
  • Resin Prices
    • Resin Prices Overview
    • Commodity Thermoplastics
    • High Temperature Thermoplastics
    • Engineering Thermoplastics
    • Recycled Plastics
    • Thermosets
  • Custom
    • Sponsored Content
    • LS Mtron Sponsored Content
    • Conair Sponsored Content
    • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
    • ENGEL Sponsored Content
    • White Papers
    • Classifieds
    • Place an Ad
    • Sign up for Early Classified
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. News
News
April 16, 2013 02:00 AM

OdorNo bag eliminates smell, and distributors are buying it

Dan Shingler
CRAIN'S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Reprints Print
    Dan Shingler, Crain's Cleveland Business
    Garret Fortune's small company in Cleveland is making bags designed for nasty odors.

    CLEVELAND — Garret Fortune's success might just be in the bag. Not just any bag, though. To paraphrase Fortune, a smell-proof poop bag.

    "Not even a dog can smell through my bags," said the colorful Fortune, between laughs and smiles as he demonstrated his product's effectiveness.

    His tactic would have been worthy of the late, great TV pitchman Billy Mays, except that instead of selling to consumers, Fortune is pitching a product he invented called OdorNo bags to buyers for distributorships, supermarkets and big retailers.

    It's a simple demonstration.

    Fortune hands his prospects a bag and asks them take a sniff. When they smell nothing, he tells them to open the bag, at which point they get the strong aroma of coffee from what turns out to be a bag full of beans.

    Then, he hands them another bag and asks them to sniff again, then open it. The same thing happens, except the second bag does not just contain coffee — it contains one of his competitor's "odor-proof" bags with the coffee beans sealed inside it, though their aroma is not.

    "I'm on board," said Jon McMillen, who got the demo and is a buyer for E&H Family Group, a Wooster, Ohio-based company that owns and operates 13 Buehler's supermarkets, as well as four Ace Hardware stores.

    "Our first order just hit the docks, and we're in the process of sending them to stores now," McMillen said.

    The poop factor

    Why does a grocer or hardware store want to carry odor-proof bags? A few simple factors, according to Fortune and his wholesale customers. One is that more Americans are living longer, becoming incontinent and using adult diapers, which tend to smell. Odor-proof bags enable those people to dispose of diapers discreetly and to keep their homes odor-free.

    There also are stinky baby diapers to be dealt with and smelly dog poop to be picked up. And no one wants to get a whiff of any of it.

    "If you go into stores today and look in the incontinence section, or in the baby diaper section … you don't see a product like this on the shelves," said Tom Finnegan, a buyer for Gurnee, Ill.-based Veridian Healthcare LLC, which distributes blood-pressure monitors, thermometers, hot/cold packs and other items to pharmacies, grocers and other retailers around the country.

    Finnegan's wife is a first cousin of Fortune — but that's not why he agreed to carry OdorNo products, Finnegan said.

    "That doesn't work," Finnegan said. "I've been doing this for 24 years and I'm too smart for that."

    He's carrying the bags because he thinks they'll sell. They're not cheap, at about $10 for a box of 25 bags. But they're still selling, according to Finnegan.

    "Amazon.com has already begun to order them from us," he said.

    Fortune's current challenge is not so much selling the bags, but making them fast enough to keep up with demand.

    His plant in Cleveland has only one production line running so far, though a second is on order. He said he'll begin operating two shifts, probably by the end of April, which would double his plant headcount to 24 workers.

    Demo reaps dollars

    Fortune's main backer is happy with the progress so far. That's Miguel Zubizarreta, chief technology officer and a minority shareholder of Hyland Software Inc. in Westlake, Ohio, where he was the third employee to join the burgeoning software company and led its early development efforts.

    Zubizarreta knows Fortune through Hyland Software founder Packy Hyland, for whom Fortune was once a salesman. But as with Finnegan, the personal connection is not why Fortune won him over.

    "I saw that demo, and I invested," Zubizarreta said.

    Zubizarreta said he's a minority shareholder, but he's prepared to put more money into the company. He said he'll soon invest about $1 million to buy inventory and increase production, which might make him the company's majority shareholder.

    "I will be a couple million dollars into it," Zubizarreta predicted.

    But he isn't worried about his investment, he said, because he's seen the order flow so far, including one order for 200,000 boxes of OdorNo bags from a major retailer that the company wouldn't identify.

    "I would expect this to be generating profits on a monthly basis before the end of this year, but I see this as a long-term company because there are so many other uses for these technologies," Zubizarreta said. "I'll expect all capital to be returned by the end of 2015."

    Fortune expresses similar optimism.

    "We'll be making 'sold' product for quite a while now," Fortune said.

    Hooking users

    Fortune is planning to grow rapidly.

    OdorNo's operation is about 15,000 square feet, and can hold up to 24 of its current production lines, Fortune said. As it grows, it has another 100,000 square feet available in attached space, which it will begin using as a warehouse and distribution center as the production floor fills up with machines.

    He's starting with adult diaper bags, baby diaper bags, pet waste bags and odor-proof garbage bags, all with market-specific packaging. But that's probably not the end of it. McMillen, for instance, thinks there's a market for fishermen who don't want to smell their catch, or their bait, either on the road or once they get home.

    And Fortune sees even more ways to market his product.

    "I'm going to work on something like an adult Diaper Genie next," he said.

    RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
    Treaty talks end with plans for a draft agreement, but hurdles remain
    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Do you have an opinion about this story? Do you have some thoughts you'd like to share with our readers? Plastics News would love to hear from you. Email your letter to Editor at [email protected]

    Most Popular
    1
    PVC compounder Manner launches $54M expansion in Illinois
    2
    Debate exposes divisions in plastics treaty talks
    3
    Treaty talks end with plans for a draft agreement, but hurdles remain
    4
    India's Vasantha invests $7M to open mold making support firm in Ohio
    5
    Graham Packaging wins validation for GHG emissions reduction
    SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE NEWSLETTERS
    EMAIL ADDRESS

    Please enter a valid email address.

    Please enter your email address.

    Please verify captcha.

    Please select at least one newsletter to subscribe.

    Get our newsletters

    Staying current is easy with Plastics News delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge.

    Subscribe today

    Subscribe to Plastics News

    Subscribe now
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram

    Plastics News covers the business of the global plastics industry. We report news, gather data and deliver timely information that provides our readers with a competitive advantage.

    Contact Us

    1155 Gratiot Avenue
    Detroit MI 48207-2997

    Customer Service:
    877-320-1723

    Resources
    • About
    • Staff
    • Editorial Calendar
    • Media Kit
    • Data Store
    • Digital Edition
    • Custom Content
    • People
    • Contact
    • Careers
    • Sitemap
    Related Crain Publications
    • Sustainable Plastics
    • Rubber News
    • Tire Business
    • Urethanes Technology
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Copyright © 1996-2023. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Processor News
        • Injection Molding
        • Blow Molding
        • Film & Sheet
        • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
        • Rotomolding
        • Thermoforming
        • Recycling
      • Suppliers
        • Machinery
        • Materials
        • Molds/Tooling
        • Product news
        • Design
      • More News
        • K Show
        • Mergers & Acquisitions
        • Sustainability
        • Public Policy
        • Material Insights Videos
        • Numbers that Matter
      • Digital Edition
      • End Markets
        • Automotive
        • Packaging
        • Medical
        • Consumer Products
        • Construction
      • Special Reports
        • Processor of the Year
        • Best Places to Work
          • 2023 winners
        • Women Breaking the Mold
        • Rising Stars
        • Diversity
        • Most Interesting Social Media Accounts in Plastics
      • Newsletters
      • Videos
    • Opinion
      • The Plastics Blog
      • Kickstart
      • One Good Resin
      • Pellets and Politics
      • All Things Data
      • Viewpoint
      • From Pillar to Post
      • Perspective
      • Mailbag
      • Fake Plastic Trees
    • Shop Floor
      • Blending
      • Compounding
      • Drying
      • Injection Molding
      • Purging
      • Robotics
      • Size Reduction
      • Structural Foam
      • Tooling
      • Training
    • Events
      • K Show Livestream
      • Plastics News Events
        • Plastics News Executive Forum
        • Injection Molding & Design Expo
        • Plastics News Caps & Closures
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
        • Plastics in Automotive
      • Industry Events
      • Injection Molding & Design Expo
      • Livestreams/Webinars
        • Bioplastics Live
        • PN Live: Mergers and Acquisitions
      • Editorial Livestreams
        • Polymer Points Live
        • Numbers that Matter Live
        • Plastics in Politics Live
        • Sustainable Plastics Live
      • Ask the Expert
      • Plastics News Events Library
        • Plastics Caps & Closures Library
        • Plastics in Healthcare Library
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
      • Processor of the Year submissions
    • Rankings & Data
      • Injection Molders
      • Blow Molders
      • Film Sheet
      • Thermoformers
      • Pipe Profile Tubing
      • Rotomolders
      • Mold/Toolmakers
      • LSR Processors
      • Recyclers
      • Compounders - List
      • Association - List
      • Plastic Lumber - List
      • All
    • Directory
    • Resin Prices
      • Resin Prices Overview
      • Commodity Thermoplastics
      • High Temperature Thermoplastics
      • Engineering Thermoplastics
      • Recycled Plastics
      • Thermosets
    • Custom
      • Sponsored Content
      • LS Mtron Sponsored Content
      • Conair Sponsored Content
      • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
      • ENGEL Sponsored Content
      • White Papers
      • Classifieds
        • Place an Ad
        • Sign up for Early Classified