The Greatest Idea That Never Was

This idea struck me as if it was a no-brainer. I've been running around the world recently, hopping on and off planes, trains, and the occasional automobile. I saw some incredible things along the way and I truly hope that you all consider traveling for an extended time.

Anyway, in the final leg of my travels I had to deal with the burden of overweight luggage as I was coming back to America. I was based in Europe and there are lots of discount airlines (SkyEurope, EasyJet, RyanAir, etc.) that you can book tickets for under $100 easily. Unfortunately, these airlines, while being extremely cheap to book your tickets, have stringent and terrible rules when it comes to overweight luggage.

EasyJet and SkyEurope have a policy of a maximum of 20 kilograms (44 pounds) per passenger. Now this is a great deal of allotted weight if you're traveling for a weekend or similar time frame. However, if you're traveling anywhere for an extended period with more than a couple days worth of items, then this allotment quickly becomes a lot smaller.

Additionally, the amount that they charge you for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) that you're over is disgusting. In Prague, I had to pay 240 Krowns for every kilogram I was over. That's roughly $15 per kilogram. Therefore, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble quickly if you go far over the limit. That $70 ticket that they initially charged you doesn't look as reasonable anymore.

The idea that hit me square in the face after going through a number of calamities involving my own overweight luggage was to have a piece of luggage that can essentially weigh itself. If you could develop a way for a piece of luggage to have an internal weighing mechanism, then you could do away with the stress that goes into weighing luggage at the airport and being stunned by the amount they charge you.

I was ecstatic when I thought of this idea. It seemed simple, necessary, and had enormous potential for revenue.

• Sizing the Market (US)
  

To give an idea of how much money this could generate, I want to get into some numbers and figures that will tell the story better than I could ever. Throughout this process, I will only be discussing the American market.

According to FlightAware.com, a superb and excellent website that tracks flights in real-time by airport, airliner, or model of plane, there are typically approximately 40,000 flight arrivals in a 24 hour period.

Further, according to the book Air Transportation by Robert M. Kane, in the year 2000 there were approximately 139.9 seats on an average jet airliner.

Therefore, we can figure out, at full capacity, how many people use air travel in a year. So, if we multiply the 40,000 arrivals a day by the average number of seats a jet airliner has, 139.9, we conclude that the maximum capacity of air travel in the US is 5,596,000 people a day. If we go one step further, we find that in a year there is the capacity for 2,042,540,000 people to travel.

However, planes are rarely at full capacity. Further harking on Kane's book, Air Transportation, he reveals that airplanes typically hold 63% of their maximum capacity. Therefore, if we use this statistic in conjunction with the maximum capacity of air travelers a year found previously, we can conclude the amount of seats filled each year.

• 0.63(2,042,540,000 people) = 1,286,800,200 seats filled

That's a ton of seats each year being filled in and out of the US. We have to continue going one step further, though. This number doesn't take into account that people may fly more than once in a year. There a tons of people that have to fly more than once for their jobs or for personal pleasure. Therefore, I would assume that the average amount of flights a person has in a year is 12.

• 1,286,800,200/12 = 107,233,350 people a year flying

Next, we have to figure out how many of these people are going to be checking luggage. Whenever I go to the airport, I see a lot of people who just have carry-on items that don't necessarily have to check any of their luggage, but then again, I also see a ton of people who do. I would say that the proportion of people checking versus those not is still larger. I would say that its around 60% on average. Therefore, to figure out how many items are checked each year, we multiply this proportion to the amount of people flying each year.

• 0.60(107,233,350) = 64,340,010 items of luggage checked a year

However, when people check luggage, sometimes they check more than one piece. However, I would say for the most part people typically check one piece of luggage per person flying, yet, in certain instances it could be two or even three pieces. Therefore, I would assume that 1.3 pieces of luggage are checked per person. This gives us a new total for the market of checked luggage each year.

• 1.3(64,340,010) = 83,642,013 items of luggage checked a year

Now that we finally got to the bottom of how many pieces of luggage are checked a year, we can figure out how much money we can make on our self-weighing bag.

If we make the most conservative estimate of the market, capturing 1%, we can sell a total of 836,421 bags a year. After looking around at some prices of luggage on various websites that sell luggage, I figured that we could sell our self-weighing luggage with all its wondrous features for a very competitive price of $150.00. If we sold our luggage for this amount, we would have a revenue stream of $125,463,020.00 per year.

That isn't half bad for capturing just 1% of the baggage market. And, I assume that in years to come, this market share will only grow as the airlines become more stringent about their weight policies and people become more conscious about the amount of weight they can bring on an airline.

So, there I was. Sitting at a lunch table with my uncle mesmerized by the fact that in a few short years I'd be a billionaire. I went home that evening and started researching how scales work and how you could put one inside a bag.

I found out that digital scales work via load-cell technology that uses properties of electromagnetism. Essentially, by bending a piece of metal, an electrical output is created that can be measured. It was frightfully easy as to how to create this self-weighing bag. I thought I was good as gold. I was about to email a patent lawyer that I knew to start what was going to be my journey to a billion.

However, just before I did that, I looked up some costs associated with filing a patent. What I found was quite daunting. Here are some figures courtesy of IpWatchdog.com:

• Filing fee for individual inventor: $150
• Search fee by Patent Office: $250
• Examination fee: $100
• Issue fee: $700
• Patent drawings: $125 each
• Attorney fees: $252/hour (Based on 2001 economic data - National Average)
• Patent Search by attorney: $300-$600
• Patentability opinion: $1,200

With all of these fees, it appears as though the cheapest road to filing a patent for my invention was going to be around $4,000 to $6,000. This is the absolute cheapest method. However, patents can sometimes cost in excess of $25,000.

But, I figured what's $6,000 when I could potentially be making over $100 million. Anyway, just before I sent the email off to my patent lawyer friend, I decided to do a patent search of my own, which is highly recommended before undergoing the process of patenting. You can do this easily through Google Patents or the US Patent Office directly.

To my shock and dismay, I came across several patents that have been processed within the past two years that articulated my idea better than I even could. You can see them by clicking these links: 1, 2, 3. Doh! I felt like an idiot. I couldn't believe that someone had come up with this idea, and even beyond that, years before I did.

I slouched back in my chair, came back down to reality, and had no choice but to continue thinking up new ideas.

• Conclusion

Ideas are valuable commodities. As we have just seen, a simple idea to add a weighing instrument to a bag has the potential to generate $125,463,020.00 a year. Therefore, as an inventor, it is very important to familiarize yourself with the rules and regulations as they relate to patents.

Understanding how patents work and how to formulate them well is extremely beneficial. As I said earlier, I wouldn't be daunted by the initial payments necessary. If you believe in your idea and you do enough research about it and the market it functions in, then it should pay enormous dividends.

Additionally, if something like this has ever happened to you before, don't become discouraged. It is all part of the process. Persevere and tackle these obstacles as learning situations in which you can improve upon for next time.