It all started with a blocked shower drain. “I was frustrated and didn’t want to use any more chemicals,” Jutta recalls. The idea? A spiral-shaped beechwood rod that removes hair from the drain with a twisting motion. She enlisted a carpenter and a turner to help make the prototypes. The first drawing still hangs in her office today – a simple reminder of where it all began.
After Jutta’s family had tested out the product, she started to consider pursuing the idea more. Her parents were enthusiastic about it, and her sister tried out the rod straight away and said: “It’s a great idea. Make something of it!” The deciding factor, however, was a trip to Prague when the drain in her hotel room was blocked. She knew then that her solution had potential.
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“Patent protection was crucial for my company”
Jutta Jertrum invented a pipe cleaning rod. She turned a spontaneous solution to a problem into a business – powered by courage, perseverance and intellectual property protection.
“My patent protects me”
Her mother advised her to apply for a patent, and her father said to “just take one less holiday”. A patent attorney turned her hand-drawn A4 sketch into 30 pages of a patent specification. The application was first filed in Switzerland and then extended via the European Patent Office. When Jutta saw her patent in the public database for the first time, she felt “incredibly proud”.
She says that “the product is simple and easy to copy but my patent protects me. Without protection, you’ll have a hard time on the market. It’s a shark tank.” Her negotiating position considerably improved as soon as it became clear that her product was patented. Even before the patent was granted, it was labelled with ‘patent pending’ to deter imitators. She had experienced how unprotected ideas are copied.
She also registered the trade mark ‘TwistOut’ internationally, even as a three-dimensional shape trade mark. When someone wanted to sell a different product under the same name, all it took was a letter. “If you want to build a brand, you have to protect it.”
The beginning of the start-up
In 2017, Jutta founded her company. “It’s better to try and fail than not to try at all,” she says. She set herself a financial and time limit, went without a salary for two years and taught herself sales, accounting, logistics and marketing. “I was doing everything for the first time – often by asking questions, googling and trial and error,” she says.
A retailer in Rapperswil added the first ten rods to its range – with a return guarantee. Jutta won around four investors in the TV programme ‘Die Höhle der Löwen’ (the German equivalent of Dragon’s Den). Even though the deal didn’t materialise, the appearance did attract attention from retailers, such as ‘dm’. “When a buyer from a company like that tells you that you have a cool product, it’s a huge motivational boost,” she recalls. Since then, a major Swiss retailer has also been in touch.
Jutta says that she’s not earning millions, but she has something that’s her own. “Maybe one day my grandchildren will say: ‘My grandma invented that’. Plus, how many people can say that they have a patent?”
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