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Aussie Chopsticks
For eating Chinese Foods without
spilling onto the table or floor.
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The Aussie chopstick is a successful invention by the Bill Allardyce. The story goes one day bill was fiddling with a bent piece of wire and had an idea of joining two chopsticks together. Realizing how easy it was to manipulate the bent wire he thought that if he could use chopsticks in a similar way, it would prevent any Chinese food from spilling on to the table and floors.
Satisfied his idea was marketable he decided to make a prototype. After several weeks he created the model which was basically two chopsticks connected by a bent piece of plastic and some car body filler. His next move was to attempt to copyright his idea but his first attempt failed because the tweezer concept was already available on the market and could not be patented. He instead had to take out design registration to protect the idea.
With the idea protected he re-designed the Aussie Chopstick for mass manufacture which took several months at considerable cost. The first run was for 20,000 and within a short time order came in from major supermarkets for 30,000 pairs. By 1990 more than 250,000 Aussie Chopsticks have been sold. In the mid-1990s the Aussie Chopstick was sold to a major direct selling company who purchased 200,000 with the intention to purchase another 1.2 million.
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