Frustrated by not being able to reach his cell phone easily while riding his bicycle, Spokane entrepreneur Steve Lach invented a modern variation on the plastic sports-type drink bottle, a concept he came up with on a bike ride. His invention, which he named the Gadget Bottle and markets through a company he formed in January called Bevytech LLC, does double duty as a liquid container and as a holder for anything about the size of a cell phone.


Bevytech LLC sells the product on the Internet and at bike shops in several states. Lach plans to introduce a stainless-steel version of the bottle later this year, and says he has plans for two additional related products that he declines to describe.


The first Gadget Bottles were manufactured in Los Angeles three months ago, and so far Bevytech has sold about 800 of them at $7.50 apiece. Most of the companys sales have been through its Web site, at www.gadgetbottle.com, Lach says. He says he hopes eventually to find a manufacturer in Spokane to produce the bottles.


For now, the business is a part-time venture that Lach operates from his home. He rents a storage space for the bottles and ships orders from his home.


Lach works for a local insurance company here as a claims adjuster, but when he came up with his idea he was a stay-at-home dad who relished his solitary bike rides, he says. Lach says he always takes his cell phone with him on rides in case his family needs to reach him, but he often wished there was an easier way to see who was calling than groping around in his back pocket for his cell phone while riding.


He thought of the idea for the Gadget Bottle on one of his rides on Spokanes South Hill. He says that when the idea occurred to him, he got so excited he couldnt decide whether to finish his ride or rush home to test it out.


I was riding along, and I thought, This is a great idea. This is my lottery ticket, he says.


Lach says he finished the ride, then went home, grabbed a sharp knife and half-dozen old water bottles, and started paring the bottles down to create a cradle for his cell phone. Lach, who says he has MacGyvered a lot of things on camping tripsreferring to a 1980s TV show in which the main character frequently came up with creative solutions to mechanical problemslooked around for something that he could use to strap the phone in place on the bottle.


He tried using Velcro straps and the thick rubber bands used on produce before noticing a stack of specialty armbands, which ironically were first made popular in support of seven-time Tour de France cycling champion Lance Armstrong.


The result was a crude variation on the common plastic water bottle, with a cutaway design and heavy duty rubber bands to hold a cell phone or other small item that would fit on the bottle in a standard bicycle-mounted water bottle cage.


Lach contacted the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and, after talking to several patent attorneys, decided to prepare the patent application on his own.


He says he attempted to make a plaster of Paris prototype of the gadget bottle to photograph for his patent application.


I spent a month making a mess in my kitchen, he says.


Though he says he finally did get a rough model constructed, he later discovered that a black-and-white drawing of the concept was sufficient for the patent application.


Lach says he spent $500 to hire a designer from Vancouver, British Columbia, to create a computer-aided design for the mold that would be used to make the bottle, about $4,000 to get the initial aluminum mold made at Los Angeles-based Crofoot Blow Mold Inc., and another $1,000 to tweak the mold after the initial design failed in production. The bottle caps are made by Wisconsin-based Trek Bicycle Corp. He says in all he has invested about $30,000 in the company, including the production of 11,000 bottles, also at Crofoot Blow Mold.


In addition to being placed in bike shops, including several here, Lach says his product is being sold through the Web sites of distributors in Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Hong Kong. It was featured in the March issue of Triathlete magazine, which he hopes will spur additional sales. In addition, Lach plans to market the Gadget Bottle in a booth at the Bloomsday trade show this spring. He says he hopes his marketing efforts will lead to sales of at least 3,000 bottles this year.


Lach says the Gadget Bottle is a benefit to cyclists in two ways. His favorite use is to listen to music on a bicycle, which he does using his cell phones external speaker. He says cyclists never wear earphones, which can pose a danger by blocking out the sounds of surrounding traffic. Meanwhile, with a cell phone mounted under him on the bikes frame, he not only can listen to music, but also instantly can see whos calling and decide whether to answer a call.


Though Lach originally designed the bottle for cycling use, he says his customers use it in a variety of different ways and to hold various items. He says the items people carry on the bottles include energy bars, keys, or credit cards and identification. He says some people reconfigure the bands used to hold the gadget in place to hold a wide-screen phone, such as an iPhone. He says his customers tell him they like to use the bottles on airplanes, in cars, or anywhere else that a hands-free approach to carrying something is useful. Lach says his mother-in-law uses her Gadget Bottle as a shoulder rest while she talks on her cell phone, resting it between her ear and her shoulder so her hands are free to do other things while she talks.


Lach says hes proud to have invented a tangible product and to have brought it to fruition. He says the experience has tapped into his entrepreneurial spirit and he looks forward to expanding his product line. He says he has learned a lot about marketing and that putting a product on the Internet doesnt guarantee automatic success. Hes hopeful that sales will continue to grow through persistent effort on his part, and he still hopes a little bit for the lottery jackpot of sales.


If I sold 250,000, Id retire, he says, only half-jokingly.


Contact Jeanne Gustafson at (509) 344-1264 or via


e-mail at jeanneg@spokanejournal.com.