This storage rack can go almost anywhere
By Bill Citara
Staff Writer
As anyone knows who has
ever lived on a boat, in a
Conch house or mobile home,
every scrap of space that can
be claimed and put to use is
worth its weight in grouper.
Enter, Rex Rothing, 51,
owner of WoodShop 102 in
Key Largo.
The expert woodworker and
retailer of exotic woods has
developed what he calls the
MagnaRack, an unbreakable
plastic, stick-to-almost-any-
metal rack that can be used to
hold everything from kitchen
spices to shop tools.
Though it sounds simple
enough, getting the
MagnaRack from idea to
saleable product was anything
but.
Rothing first thought it up in
1999: like many of us, he was
running out of kitchen space
and wanted a rack he could
place just about anywhere.
That original MagnaRack,
made of wood with ceramic
magnets, "wouldn't hold itself
up," Rothing says.
He tried to license the idea to an independent manufacturer,
an attempt that ended only in
frustration, so he set about
developing and marketing the
MagnaRack himself.
After a period of trial and
error, Rothing hit on "rare
earth" magnets, super strong
magnets made in China from
neodymium iron boron mined
there. |
Now, after six years and
some $50,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, Rothing has several thousand perfected MagnaRacks ready for sale (at $19.95) at various local hardware and specialty shops.
And he is working on selling his product to the big national chains.
"People don't realize what it takes to do all this stuff," he says, then, "selling (the product) is a whole other story."
It's a story to which he intends to write additional chapters, having several other prototype inventions ready to market, including a magnetic knife block and rotary rack.
He has this advice for aspiring inventors: " It's a learning curve. You have to crawl before you can walk."
Bill Citara can be reached at 852-3216. | |
