Presenting . . . the Rimroller™

"Da Wife" sent along a link to a new product at Lee Valley Tools: something which no Canadian coffee-drinker can be without.

This is a product that really needs a lot of explanation, not because it's mysterious in function or even difficult to use (quite the opposite), but to explain what it's doing in our stores!

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." Unfortunately, Ralph apparently wasn't writing from personal experience when he penned that quote, as one of the most difficult challenges an inventor can face is bringing a finished design to market.

When we were first shown the Rimroller many months ago, we recognized immediately that this was an elegant, well-designed, and well-manufactured product at a very reasonable price. It was one of those products that just delighted people when they used it. We also recognized that the inventor, Paul Kind, had plowed a ton of time and capital into bringing the product to the point where it was ready to market. So, while Lee Valley is clearly not the most appropriate retailer of this product, we could only stand by for so long watching Mr. Kind work hard to sell this product without success.

This is the sort of product that I'd normally expect to appear in the April update to their website, but perhaps because I rarely drink take-out coffee, I underestimate the huge demand for this sort of product.