AON Invent, a local startup that helps inventors and entrepreneurs manage intellectual property rights and analyzes product innovations, has sold its SnappDown pallet design to Chicago-based Imperial Graphics & Displays for an undisclosed sum.
The SnappDown pallet system was created by Andrew Bojie, one of the AON Invent founders. Co-founder Larry Robertson said the SnappDown pallet system was designed to create savings for retailers in display material and labor reduction.
Robertson explained that the SnappDown merchandising system consists of a pallet cover and integral graphic panels, which can be pre-installed at the time the pallet is packed with product. As it is delivered to the floor of the retailer, the sides of the pallet cover snap down to cover the pallet, and the promotional graphic panels are already in place, creating a self-contained point of purchase display. It also eliminates the need to transfer temporary displays from their wooden shipping pallets to a composite stack-base (pallet), before going to the sales floor.
WalMart has approved the SnappDown system for its stores because of the potential savings involved with store labor, according to IGD president Jim Hauser. He adds that Walmart and its vendor partners could see sizable savings from incorporating SnappDown into their temporary displays as well as a larger area for graphic messaging.
AON Invent and its sister business All Product Design continue helping other product inventors, consumer packaged goods companies develop their ideas into market-viable products.
Robertson heads up AON Invent helping entrepreneurs with development, patenting and licensing on a fee basis. AON assesses the market potential for the invention. It then progresses through a step-by-step development system where it’s engineered, designed and tested by Bojie and the All Product Design division and then presented for feedback to a panel of industry experts.
He said those products that can fill a consumer need are given the green light for manufacture and placed in the hands of consumer packaged goods companies that supply retail shelves.
story by Kim Souza
ksouza@thecitywire.com