An Old Town artist has hit the big time, expecting 15 million viewers to watch TV’s daytime cooking guru, Rachael Ray, extol the virtues of her new traveling cup sling.
Barbara Hranilovich, artist and book illustrator, now adds “inventor” to her repertoire of skills. Her CADDi was featured as an audience gift on the January 19 Rachael Ray show.
The show focused on favorite gifts given during the holiday season. They found Hranilovich and her CADDi on StartUp Nation, the web site devoted to new products and their inventors.
And there it was, the reusable $4.50 cup sleeve with strings, allowing nearly impossible-to-spill transport of any to-go-drink.
The CADDi was listed in the Most Innovative and the Greenest categories. On the site’s popularity meter, it was “on fire”. Hranilovich got a call and had just a few hours to package up the vinyl hanging beverage sleeves and get them off to the show.
Always an independent business person with her art, she’s grown her skill base by joining such groups as Ladies Who Launch, a new media company for women entrepreneurs, which hosts business incubators around the country.
Having spent $40,000 in product development, she now has a patent pending, a product of her company, BARBCO.
Source: Barb Hranilovich
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation and Jobs news editor, can be reached here.
Photo courtesy of CADDi
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