In Business Las Vegas April 20-26, 2007
by Cristina Rodriguez / Staff Writer
In a year, mother-daughter team Beth and Jenna Bromberg hope to be traveling the country, talking about breast self-exams and selling pink, plastic mitts to make those checks easier.
After all, it was just one year ago that Jenna, then a 20-year-old junior at UNLV, found she had a lump in her breast. Twice before, her mother had lumps removed.
All were benign. But cystic or dense breast tissue runs in the Henderson family's genes, so the Bromberg women know that self-exams are vital.
Their intentions will reach widely this summer as they plan to stockpile 30,000 or 40,000 products called BeMitt-- a patented, redesigned tool they hope will stand up against just a few competitors.
"Ultimately my goal is (to provide the products like) how you get the toothbrush when you leave the dentist," Beth Bromberg said. She also wants them sold in retail stores, for about $17 to $20, and for them to sit on the bedside tables of women.
A newwork of believers is helping the mother-daughter team, including a small manufacturing plant owner in rural Colorado, a breast-cancer surgeon in Michigan, a local graphics designer and a distributor who knows a man Beth met once on a plane.
The product, which fits into a CD case, is a medium-thick plastic bag stuck inside of another. In between the sheets is mineral oil.
The design reduces friction and magnifies texture. usually women are told to reduce friction by checking for lumps with soapy water in the shower, but BeMitt is meant to be used when the skin is dry.
"I forget -- and I've had breast lumps," Beth says.
To demonstrate, she pulls a hair from her head and puts it on a flat surface. When a finger rolls over it, the hair is unnoticeable. With the mitt on, it jumps out.
Beth jokes about going bald from so many demonstrations. That's what the next year holds for her and her daughter, who will finish classes at UNLV at the end of the summer and earn an English degree.
Manufacturing of BeMitts could be as little as a month away. The Brombergs sent a packet to the Food and Drug Administration this month, and they expect approval in 30 to 90 days.
Guiding them through the process is George Glumac, the manufacturer in Montrose, Colo., about a five-hour drive southwest of Denver. Glumac opened up a small plant four years ago after leaving a large-operations plant in Denver.
Though Beth searched online and e-mailed 300 manufacturers who could do filling and heat sealing (how the bags are held together), she only received one response -- a referral to Glumac's company Sample Solutions.
An alternative medicine enthusiast, he jumped on her idea because it empowers individuals to look out for their own health. Glumac usually considers 20 to 30 projects a year, follows through with, at most, five of them, then typically sees one of two products take off.
He is not charging the Brombergs; instead he plans to make money on the sales.
"Her design was fairly simple," he said in a telephone interview. "The interesting thing about what Beth came up with was the approach to marketing, how to market it properly. She's right -- very few people have heard of the darn thing."
Beth Bromberg -- who was working on her idea when Jenna was undergoing and recovering from the lump removal -- bought one of those products, and a similar product sold out of India. She considered becoming a distributor of the Indian version, but wanted a neater, more compact design.
Also, "I feel very strongly about products made in he USA," she said.
The product at first was to be sold in her now-closed online gift shop. Now she is focusing on BeMitt for her company. DJA Distributors, which operates out of a shared office with her husband's finance company.
The family went to a patent lawyer in Manhattan Beach, Calif., last summer. They brainstormed what would be different about BeMitt: A one-handed design, rather than an already patented two-hand product? A smaller size?
The lawyer said that would not be enough, but he had an idea that made the cut. The bag-inside-a-bag design would let the user "flip" it inside out to clean the inner bag.
The Web site, www.BeMitt.com, remains to be done. The Brombergs are getting help from a las Vegas designer. Leslie Caywood, marketing chairwoman for the local National Association of Women Business Owners chapter.
Caywood, owner of Graphic Design Studio, plans a design that is not too girly, but rather is elegant and slightly clinical.
"I thought: I want to work on this, no matter what," she siad. "Every last one of us in the U.S. has been touched at one time or another by the word 'cancer.'"
The Bromberg women hope to at least encourage what women know how to do, but often forget.
"We're hoping this becomes your little string around your finger, sitting on the nightstand," Beth Bromberg said
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