Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
At a stop for coffee on a drive from Seattle to Durango, Colo. before Christmas 2002, Cody Lord and his brother got to talking.
Why wasn’t there a better way to keep a cup of coffee from getting cold too soon?
The question led to a discussion in the car, which led to a 10-year effort, which led to last week.
Lord, the Clerk-Treasurer for the town of Garfield, and his half-brother Andy Hamm are two of three partners in HLC Efficiency Products, LLC, which last week debuted its licensed product, the “Cozy Cup,” at the online sites for Brookstone, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, CVS, Rite Aid and Staples.
The $19.99 conical, neoprene sleeve recharges with a USB port to allow an hour and 15 minutes’ warming time for a beverage cup.
A partial office for HLC is now in the former Masons Hall in Garfield, above State Bank Northwest, where Lord also runs a trucking company with partner Logan Coles, who was raised in Garfield.
Coles’ father, just-retired 29-year Garfield-Palouse boys basketball coach, played a key role in keeping the quest for Cozy Cup going.
While the product is selling only online now, stores will debut it on shelves this fall and winter.
“Which is perfect because people associate it with a fall item until they start using it,” Lord said.
The start: On that drive to visit their mother in Colorado, Lord was 21 and Hamm, 26. As they talked, the two decided this product would need three features; be reusable, portable and require no cleaning.
“For the rest of the trip, we just kept brainstorming how to fix the problem,” Lord said.
Back in Seattle, the brothers later bought silicone, neoprene and industrial fuses and got to work, creating prototypes they’d hook up to a car battery in their garage.
What they had they thought to be promising and consulted a retired patent professor at University of Washington, who was also an attorney.
Larry Bonar estimated the process to get a patent could cost $100,000 and Lord and Hamm – who ran a residential/commercial painting company at the time – set out to find an “angel investor.”
Eventually, after hearing “no” a lot, they met with Coles at a Perkins in Moses Lake.
He – and wife Tina’s – sizable investment allowed the patent push to go forward.
Research and development: The product required specific wiring to achieve the exact heat that Lord, Hamm and Steve Clark sought.
Clark was a college friend of Hamm’s at Western Washington, an electrical engineering major.
Ultimately a lithium ion battery was settled on, with the wet suit-material sleeve and USB port.
“It’s been a very difficult product to develop” said Lord.
The length of the resistive wire is what creates the heat, to the particular temperature.
The sleeve’s 150 degrees augments a hot drink which, in the case of coffee, is poured at 185 degrees by most sellers.
Ultimately, the product allows the consumer to control how they drink their coffee.
Without it, Lord said, for him a cup of coffee can be short-lived.
“It gets out of my enjoyment zone in 10-15 minutes, depending on the temperature outside,” he said.
Or, as a buyer at Starbucks told them at a sales meeting in 2008, she lived in Issaquah and would stop for coffee two to three times on the drive to Seattle in order to keep drinking hot Starbucks.
The sleeve only keeps the temperature of the drink vs. changing it, holding the flavor.
Roots: Lord grew up in Twisp in Washington’s Methow Valley, the son of a single mother who worked at Sun Mountain Lodge. After getting an A.A. at Spokane Falls Community College, he went to WSU in Hotel and Restaurant Management. In his senior year, he worked as the student house manager for University President Sam Smith.
After a final semester at WSU’s International Consulate of Hospitality in Brig, Switzerland, he moved to Boise to become assistant manager of a Milford’s Restaurant.
The company that owned it soon asked him to transfer to Seattle to become assistant manager of Falling Waters in Belltown. Four months later, he was the manager, still 23 years old.
The restaurant closed as the owner developed health issues.
“At a young age, seeing a dream shut, it was hard for me,” Lord said.
At the same time, Hamm – who was raised in Woodinville, adopted from birth – was in the midst of a divorce in Denver, Colo. and moved to Seattle to start the painting business, an industry he had a background in from high school.
Lord joined him in the operation – named Lord Painting. Later they took that drive to Colorado.
In 2004, the three partners had a Patent Pending for the sleeve – meaning only proof that they had submitted for a patent on a certain date – on what they called the Blazin’ Beverage Sleeve.
The Coles’ investment was key.
“That’s what really put us on the map in terms of developing the product,” Lord said.
The three had actively been searching, sending packets to contacts in the hotel and restaurant industry, retail, auto industry and more.
“There were a lot of frustrating moments,” Lord said. “We had a wide cast out there.”
Manufacturing: With a patent potentially coming, the partners pushed harder to get the manufacturing set.
Referred to an operation in China in 2005, they put forth confidentiality agreements and sent their garage prototype.
The company sent back an exact replica, complete with visible wires through liquid-like silicone.
Lord, Hamm and Clark expected a refined silicone laminate.
They next took a trip to China and sought out a different factory which had its own engineering staff, and experience with U.S. manufacturers such as Black and Decker.
Nervous step: After HLC had filed for a patent in January 2004 and it was issued a year later, another key decision faced the three founders.
Lord read in a magazine ad about a heated and cooled car dashboard into which a beverage cup can be put, which was newly patented by a giant U.S. auto manufacturer.
Seeing a similarity, HLC elected to go into “voluntary patent reexamination,” concerned about the mettle of their heated-sleeve patent.
The move put HLC in danger of outright losing their whole patent.
But they were assured again, the U.S. Patent Office ruling to confirm theirs for the resistive wiring and “Frustra” design of the Blazin’ Beverage Sleeve, which was made to fit a conical cup.
“So we’re the only people that can do a heated beverage sleeve,” Lord said.
Letter from New York: In 2006, HLC received a letter from a man in New York City saying he had been working on the same heated-coffee-cup sleeve idea, but HLC filed for the patent before he did.
Glenn Eckert congratulated them and later flew to Seattle and proposed that they license the product to him. Lord, Hamm and Clark said no.
Eckert first found out about the Seattle group after creating his own prototype out of a battery-powered sock. In 2003, he hired a firm to do a patent search and it came up with nothing.
Eckert went ahead, and on the eve of a free-coffee demo for what he called a “Hot Shot” in Greenwhich Village, he went on the new search capability of the Patent Office’s website.
There it was.
“Cody Lord, Andy Hamm, who are these guys?” said Eckert.
Reading the patent description, it concluded: “Future versions may include a battery.”
“That one sentence ruined my life that day,” Eckert said, a native of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. “I was crushed.”
In the following years, after his trip to Seattle, he stayed in touch, but still got no interest in a deal from Lord, Hamm and Clark.
The dream: In 2007, Lord had a dream that he was in Howard Schultz’ house, CEO of Starbucks.
The next day, when he and Hamm were sitting at a Starbucks and refining their business plan for Blazin’, the painting business got a call from an architectural designer about a bid for a high-end door at a house on Lake Washington.
Lord said Hamm could just go over and do the bid.
As he left, though, Lord had a thought, ‘I wonder if that’s Howard Schultz’ house.’
He called Hamm on his cell phone twice but, due to weak coverage around Lake Washington at the time, never got through.
Two and a half hours later Hamm returned.
“You are never gonna believe where I was,” he said.
“Howard Schultz’ house?” answered Lord.
It turned out the house was owned by Schultz and being rented by Schultz’s brother-in-law.
Hamm got to talking with him during the visit and mentioned the product he was working on the side.
The man seemed impressed, and said, ‘I’ve got to get this in front of my brother-in-law.’
Hamm didn’t have a business card with him or sample sleeve.
“We never knew if it got mentioned to Schultz or not,” Lord said.
Meeting with Starbucks: The three kept working away, and got some encouragement as well. In March 2008, Lord and Hamm tapped a short-lived sales representative who secured a meeting at the Starbucks corporate office in downtown Seattle.
Hamm, who prefers not to do much selling, decided not to go, to let Lord, Clark and the sales rep. take the meeting.
The four of them drove a Lord Painting duallie truck to the company headquarters and parked. Hamm went to a Starbucks across the street while Lord, Clark and the rep walked into the office building, expecting just a one-on-one meeting in the foyer.
Instead they were given badges and taken to the 7th floor, where they were invited to sit down with the senior buyer from Issaquah. The eighth floor – top – was where Schultz’ office was.
Ultimately Starbucks said no, but the buyer encouraged them to keep at it, the timing would get better. A week later, Starbucks announced the closure of one hundred stores. By July, that number was 600. It was the beginning of the recession which would mark the next three years of the American economy.
But Tim Coles, the veteran coach, was part of the effort now.
“He’s a very good motivator,” said Lord. “It’s like a big sporting event.”
Hard period: By 2011, the three partners started to realize they needed more help.
“This was a hard period,” Lord said.
He and his brother grew apart on the project.
They decided to license the rights.
“The likelihood of three guys getting this product from conception to the market we wanted was difficult,” Lord said. “We can’t be everything, it’s too daunting a task.”
A year later, they signed an agreement with Eckert in New York to license their creation to him.
“I went from six years of flat-out no to well…,” said Eckert of his persistent e-mails with Lord. “I felt he was starting to weaken.”
A year and half later, Eckert sub-licensed the sleeve to Viatek Consumer Products, which has offices in Tennessee, Florida, Hong Kong and China.
He had made previous contact with Viatek on other invention ideas.
“There’s a very fine line between genius and quackery,” Eckert said. “Everybody has a great idea. You’re a punch line. Dr. Brown from ‘Back to the Future.’ You’re always a crackpot until you can show them you’re not. You’re guilty until proven innocent.”
In working with Viatek, they deciphered that the name “Hot Shot” was being used and bandied about new ones. Cozy Cup became the choice.
“An electric blanket for your cup,” reads the packaging.
The launch: HLC will receive royalties quarterly, beginning this October.
“It’s a mixed bag of emotions,” Lord said. “I wish it was our ‘Blazin’’ sleeve, but we’re ecstatic. This product being on the market is a joyous experience.”
Lord and partner Logan moved to Garfield three years ago. They now run a trucking brokerage and compliance company, also out of the second floor old Masons Hall above the bank in Garfield, one of Lord’s three employment endeavors.
HLC retains the rights to the patent for Blazin’ Beverage Sleeve, which may one day be a consumer product or, Lord suggested, may manufacture sleeves for branding, labeling or other promotions.
HLC’s main office remains a room in Hamm’s Seattle home.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
Reader Comments(0)