The mother of invention.(ACCESSORIES)

Accessory Inventors Discuss The Genesis Of Their Wares Whether big or small, the best music "small goods" are keys that open customers' imaginations, solve their problems, and enhance their music-making experience. Some items sport a clever, compelling twist on a familiar product. Others represent true innovation, inspiring comments like "Why didn't someone do this ten years ago?" Either way, great accessories offer something irresistibly special that practically makes them hop off the slatwall and onto the checkout counter. The following pages present a glimpse at the underlying inspiration and development of some of the current market's notable music products accessories.

HOTPICKS

Turning musicians Into Monsters!

CALLING A MUSICIAN a "monster" is a compliment of the highest order. Hotpicks USA has given guitarists a pick that at least helps them look the part.

An expert in licensing intellectual property, Stephen Key started out designing products for the toy and packaging industries. His widely recognized success in these areas led him to found inventRight (www.inventRight.com), a system that coaches inventors on bringing their ideas to market, and to be hired as a consultant for the ABC television program American Inventor. Though Key isn't a musician, his guitarist business partner Robert Stephani proposed that he explore "doing something different with a guitar pick." Subsequent market research suggested that they could tap into target consumers' lifestyle by creating picks in the shapes of skulls, vampires, and monsters.

"We knew we'd reach the metal crowd with our skull-shaped picks," says Keys, "but the appeal of the skull design is much broader than that. Skulls are very popular in the fashion world. There was even a recent Newsweek article with shoes, scarves, and other items with skulls on them. Ralph Lauren recently ran a full-page ad in Vanity Fair for slippers with skulls on them."

Key and Stephani were confident that younger players would take to the designs immediately, but market research indicated that the non-traditional shapes would also appeal to many experienced players as well. "We found that once a player gets one of our picks in his hand, he's going to love the feel and the 'attitude' of it. We've gone from novelty to mainstream, and our growth has just been off the charts."

HotPicks gave away about 30,000 picks at the 2006 winter NAMM show to create a buzz, and Key consulted with industry leaders on how to establish the brand in an unfamiliar industry. "You have to advertise," he says. "You have to let people know who you are. We also became the exclusive pick of B.C. Rich Guitars. From there it all began to snowball, and some of the big distributors began taking us very seriously.

Recent HotPicks designs feature classic movie monsters, a vampire, and a devil. Key is also working on licensing some more contemporary images that he, with track-tested authority, says "are sure to be huge."

* www.hotpicksusa.com

TRAVEL WELLNESS VOCAL-EZE

Something For All Those Vocalists Out there.

TRAVEL WELLNESS introduced the first herbal treatments to be offered in music stores in the U.S. and the U.K. The company's best-known product is its Vocal-Eze throat spray. Official Travel Wellness endorsers include Rob Thomas, Tim McGraw, and Joss Stone, but the long list of others who have used the products include Bono, Lynard Skynard, Nickelback, Stevie Nicks, and Sting.

Travel Wellness founder Ocea Deaton gained her knowledge of herbs from her grandmother, a French Canadian healer who had learned from the village's Ojibwe medicine man. She was motivated to develop Vocal-Eze when she learned there wasn't an herbal throat spray on the market that either didn't have alcohol, whose drying property is bad for a singer's throat, or that provided any medicinal treatment, of a sore throat. "Other products on the market acted as lubricant," she explains, "but none of them helped heal the thrat at all."

Though Deaton is an expert on medicinal herbs, she also consulted with the artist relations department at …