If you’ve ever been on a plane with a young child, then you probably understand what it feels like to travel with a child and their car seat.
When Louise Stoll saw her own daughter having to fight her way through the airport with a toddler and a car seat, she had to wonder if there was some other way. After much planning and designing, she came up with what is now called, CARES.
We got an opportunity to talk with Louise about her product and how she got her start:
What is CARES and how long has it been since you created your product?
CARES stands for Child Aviation Restraint System, and is a totally new, and easy way to keep a child safe when traveling in an airplane. It was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration in September, 2006 and is the only alternative to car seat the FAA permits on planes to protect kids during all phases of flight: taxing, take off, turbulence and landing. CARES is for kids 22-44 lbs who are sitting in their own seats. It is a harness-type product that weighs 1 pound, fits in a 6 inch stuff sack, installs on any size airplane seat in 1 minute and keeps your child as safe as a 20 pound car seat would. Basically, CARES means no more lugging car seats to keep your kids safe on planes – it ends the schlep for traveling families.
I began working on CARES in 1999, sketching alternatives to a car seat for when families had to carry a child restraint through crowded airports, and the FAA certified CARES in 2006. It was nearly a 7 year long odyssey.
How does it work?
CARES is simple to use. It uses the back of the airplane seat for stability and augments the regular airplane seat belt, which is buckled across the child’s lap in the usual way. The child sits in the airplane seat during installation – very different from when a car seat is being used . The long red loop of the CARES goes over the seat back and is pulled taut; two black straps drop down from the red loop over the child’s shoulders; the regular seat belt goes through loops at the bottom of these shoulder straps. Everything is snugged down, and a chest clip is snapped shut to hold the child securely against the back of the seat. Basically, when it is installed, it resembles the kind of restraint the flight attendants use.
What inspired your creation?
My oldest daughter, Miriam, was the inspiration for CARES. She came to visit me while I was living in Washington DC and wobbled off the airplane carrying her toddler (Jake), a heavy car seat; a diaper bag – and she was 7 months pregnant. I thought “There has to be a better way!” So I started sketching alternatives to using car seats on planes.
How does it feel to be 69 and an entrepreneur?
It feels fine! There is no question that inventing CARES, and the saga of bringing it to market, and now building and managing the business of Kids Fly Safe – the sole distributor of CARES - was not how I envisioned spending my 7th decade! I had never invented anything before and when I think about it, it’s all been quite a surprise, and I chuckle about it.
What was the process like taking CARES from idea to solid product? What were some of the steps you had to take?
Bringing an idea like CARES to fruition is not for the faint of heart – or the impatient. First, at my husband’s prodding, I consulted a patent attorney to see if my drawings of a proposed aviation child restraint was patentable. He did several months of research and informed me that he thought it was. I told him to go ahead and continued working at my regular job, and 2 years later, with my patent “pending” – that is, nearly though the many reviews that take place in the patent process – I decided to see if this product really had a future. I spent a year talking to friends and family members, developing several business plans, researching the certification process in the FAA, and looking for a partner who knew how to get a product certified through the FAA’s evaluation process.
The FAA is a large, complex organization that operates the safest aviation system in the world. It is the gold standard for aviation safety . They don’t let you attach things to any piece of airplane equipment willy nilly. I needed a partner who understood how to get CARES certified, and I found that partner in AmSafe Aviation, a company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona that is the foremost manufacturer of airplane seatbelts and other aviation safety equipment. Herb Mardany, VP and General Manager of AmSafe, believed that the CARES idea was a good fit for their business model. My patent was granted in June, 2002. AmSafe built a prototype from my patent application drawings and began the rigorous process of testing and evaluation inside the FAA that resulted, 4 years later, with the FAA announcing that CARES was certified for all phases of flight – and that US registered airlines couldn’t prevent a parent from using CARES for their child.
Where do you see your business in the next 5 or 10 years?
I think Kids Fly Safe, LLC will continue to grow rapidly in the next few years. We have already been certified by Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and Singapore and we will be found in every country within a few years. We have already sold over 21,000 CARES through our website alone (www.kidflysafe.com) and are now expanding into retail stores and other web stores. Our growth will be both domestic and overseas as more countries certify CARES for use on their airlines. People aren’t going to stop flying, a new group of kids grows into the age bracket for CARES every year, and everyone knows that the seat belt alone doesn’t provide a safe seat for them.
I predict that eventually the airlines will become our primary customers, either because Congress mandates that they provide “an equivalent level of safety” for their youngest passengers as they do for everyone else, or because they understand that handing out CARES to families with young kids – just as they now hand out extender belts to very large people – is good business.
I noticed you are the winner of Good Housekeeping’s 2008 Good Buy Award. What was it like going through their review process before becoming selected as one of 8 winners?
Winning the ‘Good Housekeeping Good Buy 2008 Award was certainly a high point in the life of CARES. The process was quite painless as I didn’t know that CARES was under consideration until a week before the announcement. It is, of course, a tremendous honor. They evaluated 2000 products and selected only 8 – and CARES was the only children’s product. The actual award event was splendid – held in the lovely headquarters of the Good housekeeping Research Institute on the top floor of a NY skyscraper, and CARES received lots of publicity for weeks afterwards on television, radio, the web and internet and the print media. I give a great deal of credit to my public relations firm, KidStuff PR, and Lisa Orman, its president, for selecting appropriate places to submit CARES , and maximizing its visibility.
If you could go back in time, what one thing would you change and why?
I would have found AmSafe Aviation and KidsStuff PR sooner!
What kind of investment did it take to get your business off the ground?
Well, it certainly took a huge investment of my time. Although I was working full time as a senior executive in a non-profit organization for two years while the patent process was moving along, after that I essentially devoted full time to “making CARES happen”. So – there was the cost of a highly competent patent attorney – about $40,000 ; and then the cost of the salary “foregone” for a number of years. AmSafe aviation also invested time and money in the long certification process.
Did you have a favorite resource that helped you get to where you are today?
My best resources have always been my “stick to it” personality when I think I’m on to something interesting and important, my ability to stay focused on the end result, and my loving and supportive family that tolerates – in fact always seems to encourage - me when I decide to do something even if it is out of the ordinary.
What advice has been inspirational to you as your business grew? Do you have any advice that you’d like to share with any potential entrepreneurs reading this?
“Keep it simple, keep it focused, and recognize when the path you’re on isn’t working and change course” were the best pieces of advice I got, and are the best advice I could give to potential entrepreneurs.
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