Shower Gutter inventor full of tenacity for idea

Published 11:21 pm Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Inventors often have snappy ideas. Their brainstorms go like this: sketch like crazy, manufacture a few models, sell a couple, then see the project fizzle.

It might be a crummy product, or they lack the marketing skills to make a living off, say, a leg lamp.

I’ve got to hand it to Johnny Olson in Arlington. I wrote about his Shower Gutter 13 years ago. He’d created it 10 years before that, in 1985. He’s sold a few, though not a million, and he’s still out there pitching his invention.

That’s tenacity.

The old saying — don’t give up your day job — certainly applies here. His day job is construction.

When I wrote about Olson, Eagle Hardware showed interest in the project.

Then Eagle Hardware was sold.

Now he’s working on Lowe’s.

The Shower Gutter is a plastic strip that tapes to the stall wall to grip a shower curtain edge, so water doesn’t drip outside and rot floors. One happy customer, Les Unruh of Marysville, used a Shower Gutter for 10 years in his former Arlington home.

“It worked good,” Unruh said. “It kept the water out.”

He doesn’t own one now because he has a glass shower door.

The product is patented.

“It sells for under $15,” Olson, 51, said. “I hate to put it like this, but older people love this product. The funny thing is my son, who starts the University of Washington today, along with his roommates, loves it, too.”

The bachelor with two sons and a daughter said women don’t like glass shower doors because the glass can be hard to clean. Use a shower curtain, he said, get a cute new one every six months, and keep the Shower Gutter in the stall.

The optimistic handyman puts his creative mind and hands to good use, improving his mobile home outside of Arlington. He has a flair for tiling, on floors and walls, and installs concrete and builds fences.

He takes jobs as they come in. He is a union carpenter, but union work is hard to come by, he said.

Olson needs to keep food on the table. Two 180-pound Neapolitan mastiffs, Gunnar and Scarlett, nearly pushed me down with affection.

Mr. Buttons, an umbrella cockatoo, hopped off a tree branch to perch on my shoulder.

“He likes girls,” Olson said. “We all like girls here.”

It was fun to see the big white bird outdoors, without a care in the world. Olson has a friend named Dorothy who borrows Mr. Buttons during the day, then brings him back at night.

Olson is negotiating with a company in Ohio to produce his product. In his spare time, he is drawing up plans for a snazzy new-fangled running board for his truck.

Maybe the time for selling his inventions is long past?

“Give up?” Olson said. “You kidding?”

Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451, oharran@heraldnet.com