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by Daron Arnold
Gordon Adkins, Inventor, GPik and the iPik.
Rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix faced his own conundrum as a ‘lefty’ in his right-handed, riff-driven world. Undeterred, he simply grabbed a right-handed guitar, flipped the strings and went on to write music in an unprecedented style.
Gpik inventor, Gordon Adkins, is like Hendrix in a way. He’s just a normal guy with a nagging problem. His story goes that he had stumbled onto a PDA that he just had to buy a few years back, but to his discomfort - like most personal device users - he was always fumbling to compose emails while in the midst of doing other things. With a device that needed two hands to operate, his routine straddled between risking personal safety and an endless search for a dropped stylus (e.g. under the car seat). Fortunately, Adkins’ annoyances led him to a clever solution.
His lucky strike came after checking out a few hardware stores. One day he happened into a music shop and there his idea for a “thumb stylus” was born. The Gpik is a unique accessory that quickly turns your thumb into a stylus. Adkins worked with an engineer to create what he couldn’t find in the market and they received immediate reassurance. Gordon knew he was onto a good thing when factory workers were using the Gpik right off the production line for their electronic notepads.
Ready for wholesale and distribution, the patent-pending product comes in nine different colors and is made from a durable plastic that can be wrapped around almost any size thumb. “Because Gpik wraps snuggly, you increase the speed and accuracy of your work,” he says. Because that “work” is becoming more and more a touch screen world, Adkins recently developed the iPik for glass screens like those found on the iPhone and the iPod Touch.
Gpiks and the new iPik are not only useful with touch screens, Blackberries, PDAs and cell phones, but they’re great for kids with Nintendo DS or enterprise-based touch screen devices like those used in applications by such companies as FedEx and UPS, or with Walmart’s inventory devices and even hand-held GPS units. The potential growth of Gpik with small keypads and touch screens is really endless.
Adkins is bringing this product to market “ready for distribution”. He has opened the door to white labeling and bulk buying for custom kitting. Gpik can also be sold attached to a retractable lanyard so that it need never get lost. Adkins’s website
http://www.gpik.net has an e-commerce portion with a high per-unit price to provide plenty of ceiling for the wholesale market and will not compete with his resell channels.