New Tool Cuts Through Wrap Rage

Ever suffer from "wrap rage"?  Like when you buy a toy or a kitchen utensil so tightly wrapped in plastic it takes an act of congress to get it open? Now there's a solution. 

Mike Sherman, CEO & Founder of Zibra explains.

What is "Open It" ?
It's a consumer friendly product that can open any package. It's a cure for Wrap Rage. Groups of women known as "Designing Women" with the Zibra Company, suffering from frustration of opening plastic packaging took action and developed a solution.

The Open It combines a cutting tool, dual-head screwdriver and retractable cutting blade in one safe and easy to use tool. The Open It easily opens clamshells, toy packaging, boxes, CDs, DVDs, battery compartments and more.

What makes it unique?
The unique part of it is that the jaws are offset - this keeps your hand out of the way so you don't cut your hands.

The Open It cuts thru the wire ties on toys, or electronics, corrugated heavy tape.

But what really makes us unique in the marketplace is we design our products for women, but also by women. We have teams of women, maybe 8 people, and we make sure the chemistry is right. We never talk about products. They talk about the experience of something. So we had a group that explored the problem of opening things - packages, presents, things that arrive at your house. And when we realize we've got something, we add in some engineers who can solve the problem.

Since 83% of all consumer purchase decisions are made by women, we thought it would be a good idea to create products that are designed by women who actually use and have a need for these products.

Are you making money ?
This tool has sold extremely well at Home Depot, Walgreens and Bed Bath & Beyond. We originally placed it in 10,000 retail outlets, now it's in 30,000. It works, it solves a problem.

Why the different colors?
The group that liked the orange was a younger group, and other groups liked berry red and mocha.

Why is it in a hard-to-open package ?
People always ask that. Retailers won't sell it any other way.

How did you get started, and what's ahead ?
I put up my own money. Now we are in the black, and not looking for capital at the moment. But we are looking for more problems to solve and to expand our business. Then we'll look for capital.

Are you a buyout target ?
Not today, we're relatively new. Maybe in 3 or 4 yrs if we maintain the growth.

© 2008 CNBC.com