“On the commercial side, we have taken the convenience factor to the next level.”

Dr. Corwin Littell is the President and founder of Ready Made and a licensed Psychologist with a strong business background. He has owned and operated several profitable companies in the past and is a strategic visionary that continues to innovate solutions which keep Ready Made on the path to market. He has invented over thirty (30) different products and has 18 years of combined experience as an engineer.

Ready Made Inc. is a company with an innovative new product that serves two purposes:

1. To save busy parents time and hassle with no mixing and no mess. It’s a very convenient alternative to the old fashioned baby bottle and it’s bacteria free every time.
2. To provide a safer, sterile solution for feeding infants after natural disasters and during humanitarian crisis.

Current options for infant bottles require sterilization, mixing, filling and assembly. If not properly sterilized, this can cause some serious illnesses for infants, both in humanitarian and disaster relief as well as in the home.

The Ready Made Single use baby bottle requires no assembly, is pre-filled with infant formula and is packaged bacteria free at the factory.

BusinessInterviews.com: How did you come up with the concept behind a single use baby bottle?

Corwin: I was out with my nephew driving around town when he decided to throw his bottle out the window on the road. I didn’t have another bottle available for him, so I decided to pull into a store to pick something up. I stopped at the convenience store and it occurred to me that there was not an ‘off the shelf’ ready-to-serve baby bottle available for purchase. It seemed like this would have been an ideal solution for me at the time and I couldn’t understand how this product was not available.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you talk about the development process behind the Ready Made bottles and any challenges you’ve encountered along the way?

Corwin: That is an excellent question, there have been many challenges. We were very close to moving forward with a plastic bottle when the scientific community began to realize the potential harm that BPA’s caused. We found our company in this crossroads where the current technology for manufacturing was being found to be unsafe. We immediately scrapped the plastic bottle and began working on a paraffin based bottle, however that too was a challenge as the manufacturing processes for folded paper have not evolved to the point that would allow versatile caps similar to a baby nipple. As we struggled with the paper product, BPA’s were phased out of plastic manufacturing in the US and aseptic PET plastic bottles were improved to the point that they were an excellent option. So over the course of developing this product, we have had some major technological problems, however the advances in technology have also helped us to solve overcome manufacturing problems we were originally facing.

BusinessInterviews.com: Despite being in the pre-production phase you’ve managed to catch the attention of both the humanitarian and commercial markets. Can you discuss your two-pronged approach to the different markets that you are serving?

Corwin: On the commercial side, we have taken the convenience factor to the next level. Though there are products currently being marketed as ‘single use’, they are not actually packaged fully assembled and ready to serve. This means parents still have to assemble the bottle prior to feeding. With parents ever more busy, it is much easier to have bottles ready to go for a trip, for daycare or for simple everyday feeding. Being fully assembled also reduces the risk of contaminating the bottle with bacteria from the hands during assembly. This is actually the main reason the humanitarian market is interested in our product as well.

The Single Use Baby Bottle will be aseptically packaged bacteria free and will come fully ready to use. In humanitarian and disaster relief efforts, this will solve logistics and sanitary issues that are currently being faced when feeding infants. Think about this; after a natural disaster, there are often displaced and orphaned infants. The local drinking water is often contaminated and the sanitary conditions on the ground are often not fit for adults, let alone infants. Without proper sanitation, if bottles are made for children, they often get sick and in fact, many die from common gastrointestinal sicknesses. Our bottle allows a child to receive a clean meal without the need to touch the feeding apparatus. The caregiver can simply remove the protective cap and feed the child thanks to our patent pending valve design.

BusinessInterviews.com: As a parent, I always wondered why ready-made bottles weren’t available especially for travel purposes, why do you think that there has been a gap in the market until now?

Corwin: As we have seen in development of this product, there have been some hurdles in developing the technology. On top of this, there are 3 major companies that command 90% of the market share. With so few competitors commanding such a large share of the market, there hasn’t really been a space for much innovation. In fact, the standard bottle was designed in 1955, without much change in nearly 60 years. We have already seen interest from the emerging markets and believe this is what will allow us an opportunity to compete where there are still growing, unsaturated markets.

BusinessInterviews.com: In your vast experience of inventing over 30 products and bringing them to market, what are some of the key lessons that you’ve learned about the design and marketing process?

Corwin: Never be afraid to change. When creating a new product or concept, it can be very tempting to continue working with a product concept even after issues arise. Consider the BPA concerns that arose a few years ago. It can be hard to let go of the direction that the company has been pursuing, however you have to be flexible and ready to change in order to move in the right direction. We could have made bottles several years ago, but they would have contained BPA’s. When you’re working to help save lives and make a quality product for infants, you can’t just ignore the research and move forward to make the quick profits. It’s the long term vision that will outlast the short term gains.

BusinessInterviews.com: What’s the most exciting thing on the horizon for you in 2014?

Corwin: We have tied up the loose ends and have identified our manufacturing partners, have interested buyers waiting for production to start and have an excellent team that can make this happen. For 2014 we are excited to see the project receive funding and begin production and distribution. Nothing will make me happier than to be able to send our bottles out when they are needed for humanitarian and disaster relief. By the end of 2014, I hope to be able to personally deliver these to some of the NGO’s that have written to us asking for a better option for feeding infants. That’s the part of this that really excites me.