Corridor Native Fall 2018

“I just hopped on the computer,
and 10 minutes later I had a design.
Gerald Beranek
BeraTek, Founder
and CEO
“We were trying to put the baby monitor somewhere, and the
best place to put it was right on the crib,” he recalled.
But Google searches turned up accounts of infants strangled by
loose monitor cords. Beranek thought a simple plastic holder could
securely hold a camera while keeping its cord safely out of reach.
“I just hopped on the computer, and 10 minutes later I had a
design,” he said.
The result, VuSee, mounts with peel-and-stick adhesive to a wall
or other surface. The camera cord winds around the base of the
mount. Beranek took some of first VueSees to a consumer product
trade show shortly after it was developed.
“It was my first time ever trying to sell a product, and it was funny,”
he said. “The new parents didn’t understand it: ‘Why do I need
that?’ The parents who were on their second child were jumping for
joy: ‘I’m tired of stacking books behind this thing to get that view.’”
VuSee found a ready market via Amazon, where it still enjoys
healthy sales. It’s also sold through stores in the Buybuy Baby
chain, although “usually we don’t push into stores, because retail’s
tough,” Beranek said. “It’s a lot easier now just to get it online and
start selling stuff.”
JUMP TO INJECTION MOLDING
Applying computer-assisted design (CAD) and CNC machining,
Beranek made early VuSee models on the 3-D printer, with e-commerce
revenues funding the jump to injected-molded plastic. Injection
molding, done in-house, is cheaper to produce but requires a
substantial initial investment in mold design and tooling.
Other BeraTek products followed a similar pattern. There’s a
holder to securely mount Amazon’s Echo Dot digital assistant, and
another that holds a Scrub Daddy kitchen-sink sponge. The Café
Wall Caddy organizes instant-brew coffee cups, and another device
holds yogurt cups inside a refrigerator.
“These products aren’t life-changing,” Beranek said. “But they’re
just 10 minutes with the CAD.”
VuSee, a self-adhesive shelf
for baby monitors, is one
of BeraTek’s top-selling
products. The plastic holder
can securely hold a camera
while keeping its cord out of
reach from the baby.
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