Lois Kolada and her husband Paul are nice examples of creative and driven entrepreneurs who call Columbus home.

Why?  The idea they are launching may help you get better at cleaning up your leaves each fall.  Cleaning up leaves is not what I would call a night on the town.  But that’s just me…

Here’s what I mean:

[Dsolv Bags Interview - Lois Kolada from Nate Riggs on Vimeo.]

Just so you know, these folks are not clients of mine, although I can see loads of potential opportunities regarding how they might be able to use the web and social media to market their products.  I learned about them from my good friends at MediaSource, who Lois and Paul have hired to help them with things like media relations.  MediaSource is also a Columbus-based company.  Starting to see a theme here?

My History of Cleaning Up Leaves

I get a ton of emails these days from companies that would like me to write a post or send a few tweets with links to their stuff.  If it makes sense, I try to help when and where I can.

Dslov Bags caught my attention because it’s a neat (and simple) idea that makes life a little easier.  When I was growing up, I lived in a house with two massive oak trees in the front yard.  About the time the leaves came down was when my social life on Saturday mornings started to fade into memory.

At first, my parents thought a leaf shredder would be a good idea (you know, the type that sits on a 30-50 gallon trash can).  I never really understood how that dumb contraption helped the leaf-raking process.  If you look around, you don’t see too many of those in yards these days.

Then came the days of simply blowing the fallen leaves into the street so that the city vacuum truck could come and suck them up.  What a great idea!  Unfortunately, Massillon’s trucks only came through about once every other week.  Fall tends to be a season that’s fairly windy, so there were many times when my brother Nick and I would head to the garage after a few hours of work only to turn around and see mother nature delicately dispersing the freshly raked leaves back across our clean yard.

Around the time I was a senior in high school, paper lawn bags became the fall rage.  The environmentally conscious trend was really taking hold and everything biodegradable was in style.  The first thing my parents did was to go out and buy packages upon packages of these paper lawn bags.  It almost seemed like having them sit on the sidewalk in front of your house served as some type of values statement to your neighbors.

And then it rained.

There is no joy like re-cleaning up soppy, wet and ripping paper leaf bags when it’s about 38 degrees outside, on a late Saturday afternoon, when you are 18 years old.

Value Innovation

OK.  So I clearly have some deep-rooted issues with raking leaves.  Now you know.

I see the value of Dsolv bags, because, for me, there is a little emotion tied to the problem that the product solves.  Value innovation is rooted in creating emotion in the mind of the consumer.

If I had these things when I was living at home, I would have enjoyed many more hours goofing off with my friends or chasing after girls.  Those two activities would have made me much happier than re-bagging or re-raking a two-acre lot.  For high school kids everywhere who are sure to be tasked with leaf duty this fall, I think Lois and Paul’s Dslov Bags might be one of the products that makes them happier.

Now You

How does your product or service create emotion inside the people who buy from you?  Does it at all?  Should it?

[Photo credit: nikkiartwork.com]

nateriggs

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