• Cincinnati Enquirer/AP, Monday, November 5, 2007 10:33 AM

Nottingham-Spirk Design Associates has sold its ideas -- a low-cost spinning toothbrush; a plastic paint can with a spout; a kids' tricycle with a built-in squirt gun -- to a variety of companies, including Procter & Gamble, Newell Rubbermaid, Little Tikes, and Black & Decker. Product designs emerge from brainstorming sessions where designers try to make keen observations about ordinary things.

The Cleveland-based firm, with about 70 employees, also designed the Swiffer SweeperVac that has become a well-known product for Procter & Gamble. "What we have found is that by being outside of the bureaucracy of the average corporation, we're free to do anything we want," says co-CEO John Nottingham. After its designers come up with a viable idea, the company shops it around.

There's millions, even billions, to be made from products that take off with consumers. "Ask American manufacturing companies today, and they will probably say 70% of profits comes from products they didn't have three years ago," says Cooper Woodring, interim executive director of the Industrial Designers Society of America.

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