Paul Kind has won a few muffins and maybe a couple of cups of coffee in the annual Tim Hortons Roll Up the Rim to Win contest.
Like everybody.
But the true winnings, he says, have come from how the game is played. “The rims are very hard to roll up, and I don’t like using my teeth,” says Kind.
So he invented the Rimroller, a keychain accessory that simply slips over the rim of a paper coffee cup and with one quick pull cuts and unrolls the rim to expose the contest winnings beneath. It’s one of those slap-yourself-on-the-forehead inventions that people often wish they’d thought of first.
Without spending a dime on advertising, he’s already sold 200,000.
He can also try selling it as a promotional item — an area where Kind has already started to see some success. Businesses attending trade shows like to have cheap give-aways to attract people to their booths, and the Rimroller — custom embossed with a corporate logo — fits the bill.
“I had this one guy, he saw someone else giving them away at a show and ordered 500 for himself,” he says. “Then they went so fast, he called back and ordered 500 more.
“It really created a buzz.”
Photo by The Star.com.