The patent attorney was skeptical. Bill Schermerhorn had called him to say he'd come up with a better idea to anchor a beach umbrella in the sand. A veteran salesman and inveterate tinkerer, Schermerhorn had gotten on the idea when he saw a small child hit by a runaway umbrella on a Florida beach.
After some study and a trip to a Home Depot and a JoAnne fabric store, he'd come up with a way to anchor a small tarp to an umbrella pole that actually worked after a test on the beach. He got in touch with the intellectual property attorney in Texas.
“He said, ‘Let me tell you something, you little whippersnapper. To patent something, you gotta have something unique, and I don't see what's so unique about putting a sandbag on the bottom of a beach umbrella pole.' ”
Schermerhorn persisted. He’d looked all over and couldn’t find a sign of of anything like his idea on the market.
A year later, without any pushback from the patent examiner, Schermerhorn was the holder of a utility patent for his idea. It was the first of four he’d be granted related to the product, the BeachBUB, for “beach umbrella base.”
Earlier this month, Greensboro-based BeachBUB USA won a 2022 “Coolest Thing Made in North Carolina” award from the N.C. Chamber’s annual contest for businesses with fewer than 100 employees.
But it's only the latest good thing to happen to Schermerhorn and his company. He’s been on the morning network talk shows, big-city local TV news and cable shopping channels, sharing his tale of tinkering to a way to prevent another incident like that one on the fateful day in Naples, Florida. And, he says, he’s been nominated for a committee developing standards for safe beach umbrellas both for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and the national standards organization.
Meanwhile, he’s planning to double or even triple the assembly, warehousing and shipping space BeachBUB USA occupies in western Greensboro to keep up with the expanding interest in the product and a developing line of accessories.
It's a story of perseverance and tweaking, of taking an idea and running with it, being willing to listen to customers, making adjustments on the fly, having patience, and, Schermerhorn says, living in a country where reaping the awards of an idea can still happen.
“I expected to be retired fully retired at this point and spending time with grandchildren and children and doing some other things,” Schermerhorn said. “But this is I think my calling now. I'm leaving a legacy to make ... our beaches safer.”
The origin story
It was 2009, and Schermerhorn was contemplating retirement and enjoying a sunny but windy day at the beach with his wife of 40 years in Naples, where they had a second home. They watched as a woman nearby struggled with an umbrella attached to the sand with a metal screw anchor. It got loose. “It hit a 7-year-old little girl square the face, cutting her from her forehead to chin, and knocked her teeth out,” Schermerhorn said.
He thought of how patio umbrellas never seemed to get blown over because they’re anchored in concrete. But no one would want to carry an anchor to the beach; it’s supposed to be a fun, relaxing time. Then he thought of how, back in college, there were basketball hoops anchored in bases filled with sand. What if there were some portable version?
The problem with most beach umbrellas, Schermerhorn recognized, was that the wind constantly vibrates the pole until it gradually works loose from the sand. What he came up with was a plastic-fabric tarp in a rounded pyramid shape, with attachment grommets at each corner and a hole in the middle for the pole. The pole goes into the sand through the hole, and then the tarp attaches two corners to anchors on a collar on the pole. The user fills it with sand to the top, then closes the third corner onto hooks wrapped around the bottom of the base. The tarp keeps the sand from blowing away. Filled, it’s about 120 pounds of sand.
The day after that horrifying incident came the trip for fabric and some anchoring and attachment hardware, and then came the call to the attorney and, eventually, his first patent.
Sourcing experience pays off
Schermerhorn called on his 40-plus years selling general business products, mostly for American Business Products of Atlanta and then his own companies. The job was largely building relationships with purchasing agents and department heads, but it was also about finding sources for products that would solve a problem and meet a need. Schermerhorn went about finding sources for each part — eventually about 160 for the full line of BeachBUB bases and accessories.
He took prototypes to a beach-products expo in Orlando, Florida. It was a dud. But Schermerhorn persisted, spending much of the winter of 2014 at farmers markets in southwest Florida and setting up demonstrations. It started to sell. Users supplied their own umbrellas. People told him it worked. Trouble was, though, the off-the-rack umbrellas didn’t match up to the base, and while there were better models on the market, they were prohibitively expensive. Schermerhorn the tinkerer got back to work.
Most inexpensive umbrellas are anchored to their bases with a frail friction pin, Schermerhorn found. Over a year and a half, he came up with improvements such as a stainless-steel hitch pin for connecting the two poles. It held up in a wind-tunnel test to 44 miles per hour — when the testing company had to stop because the sand was blowing too much.
He made inroads with resorts and beach-gear rental companies, who valued the speed and simplicity of the set-up and take-down.
“There's an old adage in marketing and sales: it's called KISS, keep it simple, stupid,” Schermerhorn said. “We've tried to make it simple so that it's foolproof. It's easy to understand. And literally if you can fill a bucket of sand up you could fill the BeachBUB up. There's no skill set in order to do this.”
The tinkering and tweaking didn’t stop. Schermerhorn and company improved on the basic carrying bag for the base-and-umbrella set by opting for a wide, padded shoulder strap for comfort and figured out how to reinforce the strap attachment and the bottom of the bag.
Schermerhorn took a basic metal pipe, bent it ergonomically, cut in three digging teeth and came up with the digging tool, which is sold separately or with the full kit. A new version of the main awning comes with a top that can hold a flag — perfect for making your camp stand out on a crowded beach when the kids come back from a swim in the surf.
Schermerhorn developed an expansion visor that can be attached to the side of the umbrella as the sun goes down, so that users don’t have to tilt their awning to stay in the shade and risk it becoming a de facto sail. The company also offers custom printing with a client’s promotional message for the awning.
Six employees, plans to expand
The company’s own promotions include sponsoring a beach volleyball tour. The pickleball association has been in contact, too.
The company has six permanent employees. It’s a low-key, casual work place, with some people, including Schermerhorn’s wife, coming after morning tennis matches. His elderly mother- and father-in-law help out many days, too.
A Maryland native, Schermerhorn praises the excellent transportation and shipping access of Greensboro, particularly the FedEx hub a stone's throw away at Piedmont-Triad International Airport. It can reach most of the country east of the Mississippi in two days — important for what is often a last-minute purchase as beachgoers plan their trips. Also helping is an arrangement where BeachBUB can deliver to a Walgreens in a beach town if a customer orders too late to get their kit at home before leaving for the coast.
Schermerhorn said he’s turned down offers from some large companies and was called by a producer of the ABC business-pitch reality show “Shark Tank,” only to say no to an appearance. While he’s open to selling some of the accessories through big-box retailers, for now, he’s sticking with fellow owner-operators at beach-supply and outdoor stores, mostly on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, along with direct and online sales. The biggest challenge is cheap, breakable knock-offs, usually imported.
“Patents keep honest companies honest,” he said.
Schermerhorn said he’s bought the adjacent 6 acres with plans to as much as quadruple the company’s present space to accommodate growth.
Each improvement comes from hearing feedback in online reviews, emails or phone calls. People are surprised to find that the company owner answers the phone, Schermorhorn said, but that’s where many ideas for tweaks or improvements come.
“As I always explained to my company, or my employees over the years, I said, ‘You know, think of it this way: We don't sell products, we don't sell services, we sell solutions. If you sell solutions, you're going to enjoy your job a whole lot more, and your customers are really going to embrace you and really going to search you out. Because there's always issues, they're always problems. They're looking for solutions.”
