After testing my first prototype out for a month, I knew I wanted to make some changes to the design.
The threading on the twist-off top and bottom needed to be more secure, to prevent leaks, so I wanted to make it a little easier to “catch” or screw on.
I put a spongy cap liner (F217) into the top lid, to act as more of a cushion when the handles of the brushes would hit the upper lid during shaking.
I decided to modify the nodules in the cleaning disk, to change the spacing and make them alternating heights. The spacing between the nodules is important to deaden splaying, when the brush toe hits the bottom of the container, and the space represents about the furthest distance the hair can spread apart when it hits the bottom.
We also decided to change the entire twist-off bottom design, so that you could literally flip the cleaning disk over, so the nodules would store inside the twist-off bottom. That would allow me to include soap or gel right inside the bottle, with the mat, without squishing the nodules during shipping.
I also made changes to the drying mat, in terms of layout size and size of the nodules. I made it bigger and made the angle more extreme. I wanted to be able to load it up with a lot of brushes!
Changes, of course, cost money, so I tried to really think things through before I started ordering up a bunch of changes, which sometimes then require other changes.
Justin said it would take a few weeks for the changes and by December, he was ready to do a new prototype.
In the end, we ended up doing two more versions of the twist-off bottom, or a total of three. And all the other changes worked out great.
The proof was in the great shake-off! I went ahead and put my old handheld brush-cleaning contraption up against the new prototype. It’s amazing how much better something works when it’s built precisely for that purpose.
I had a real consumer product now.
But now I had to figure out what to do with it, and the holidays were coming up. So I decided to take a wee breather. I packed My Brush Betty into my suitcase when I went home to Niagara Falls for the holidays, eager to show off my new gadget!
Sarah A. Webster
Founder
My Brush Betty