Mike Hill, a veteran technical education teacher with a brain that oozes inventive ideas, took a light bulb affixed inside a coffee can and turned it into a $300,000-and-growing business aimed at making life a tad more comfortable for our canine friends.
Hill, 48, is founder of Akoma Dog Products LLC, a Big Lake, Minn., company that markets heating and cooling products designed to warm a kennel during cold winter months and keep a dog cool when summer temperatures soar.
Throw in a heatpad powered by a cigarette lighter to keep a dog warm in the truck box and you have a business on track to reach $400,000 in sales this year.
The inspirations leading to the Hound Heater, the Hound Cooler and the truckbox Hound Warmer were born in Hill's fertile imagination, but they were transformed into marketable products by Stillwater consultant Charlie Gifford, a retired 3M engineer.
Gifford, who collects a share of the sales of products he helps to develop, claims the work is "a lot of fun," mainly because of the storm of inventive ideas that spills out of Hill's imagination.
"Some of them are even worthwhile," joked Gifford, who Hill said has been known to hang up the phone with a shake of his head when Hill's brainstorms whiz beyond outrageous.
A few of them make sense, however. Take, for example, the battery-operated seat warmer designed for cold-weather use by outdoor sports fans.
Hill wanted to call it the "Kozy Keister," clearly an inspired choice, but his wife, Brenda, vetoed the idea. Alas, it's now being sold as the "Heated Stadium Seat Cushion."