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.