Ky. team promotes its product one mistake at a time

Sally and Dana Robinson feel famed inventor Joy Mangano’s pain.

Like Mangano, a successful entrepreneur who is known for the self-wringing Miracle Mop and who was portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence in the recent movie Joy, the Robinsons have had to overcome many obstacles to develop their product, the PurseKeyper.

A combination purse and key chain, PurseKeyper, is available in a wristlet. The product, “provides convenience for women who never have enough hands during their everyday routines because it is a key fob, wristlet and purse holder all in one fashionable unique device,” the product’s website states.

Sally Robinson and her eldest daughter Dana struggled with patent rights, financing, marketing, distribution and even the right type of packaging. But the pair persevered, and the leather PurseKeyper is now on sale in 40 Kentucky and three Indiana Kroger stores.

Sally Robinson came up with the idea in 2010. The 62-year-old former teacher, home décor fabricator and craft maker said she always had a head full of inventions like Mangano.

Mangano’s idea came about because she was tired of getting her hands wet every time she would wring out her mop, she said. For Robinson, the inspiration for the Pursekeyper was something more serious: safety for woman.

“I always had a fear of my purse being stolen out of the cart when I would go shopping. And my purse was heavy,” said the Somerset native, who is CEO of the company.

Although the Robinson’s main customer is busy moms who have to juggle too many things at once, their product is also aimed at college students who need a more compact and convenient way to carry their personal items.

Family friend Amy Baughman, 47, met Dana 15 years ago and Sally shortly after. Dana gave Baughman a PurseKeyper to carry around and get feedback on it. “Being a mother I immediately loved the product, I have actually been carrying one ever since,” Baughman said.

“Now that my daughter is 17, I insist she also carry one for safety reasons, so she is always ready to enter her car at the mall and other places that could be potentially dangerous,” Baughman said.

Robinson, who earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Kentucky and a master’s degree from Eastern Kentucky University, and her husband, Bill Robinson came up with the money to start manufacturing the Pursekeypers at a plant in North Carolina. It is now produced at Somerset Embroidery, Silk Screening and Apparel, which is owned and run by Derek Morrow.

They also received advice from SCORE, a national organization of volunteer business mentors, and the Small Business Administration.

Early on, the Robinsons had their product in as many as 100 Dillard’s department stores. But they didn’t sell.

“We had the wrong packaging. We could get on the shelves but we couldn’t get off the shelves. All the (store) buyers loved it so we knew we had something,” Dana Robinson said. “But once it got to the stores the customer didn’t know what it was, and we didn’t have money for marketing and advertising.”

The packaging was problematic.

“We had it in a gift box so you couldn’t even try it on or feel the fabric. It’s like ‘what were we thinking’,” said Dana Robinson, the company’s chief marketing officer. “Then we put it in these pink organza bags and that was just a mess because people would take it out and look at it and leave it out, and you can’t see the color through those bags.”

“We didn’t even have a sign attached to our display before,” added Dana Robinson, who graduated from UK with a bachelor in business administration in marketing, and was a special events manager for in-store promotions in New York.

Now the product is on a hangtag dangling from a peg with a display sign on top. The product comes in five colors and is available with logos for sororities, UK and the University of Louisville. Prices range from $14.99 to $16.99.

“It is so nice to be able to carry my key chain on my wrist so I don’t have to dig for my keys in my purse,” Baughman said.

The women had to fight off a competitor until they received a patent in 2011. Their victory was short lived, however. Dana Robinson, 45, a mother of two, went through a tough divorce and wasn’t able to focus on the business.

“We shut the doors and I even started selling pharmaceuticals,” she said.

While on hiatus, the Robinsons immersed themselves in small business owner courses and came up with the idea for another product — the PhoneKeyper, a carryall case in three sizes that attaches to the PurseKeyper, Dana Robinson said. The PhoneKeyper sells for $15.99 to $18.99.

“After the divorce it seemed like everything started clicking,” she said.

They re-opened for business in December 2014 and were lucky to get a deal with Kroger to deliver to 40 stores in Kentucky and Indiana.

That was good news and bad news.

“We thought we could deliver all 40 in two days. Well no,” Dana Robinson said. “If you want to make sure you get paid you need to be there when the receiver is there and get in the system.”

It took awhile for the Robinsons, who make all the deliveries, to work out the logistics of arriving between 4-9 a.m. at the stores. Dana Robinson described their typical day this way: “We get up and don’t put any makeup on, put jeans and tennis shoes on, and go deliver to Kroger. My guest bedroom is my distribution center.”

Another lesson the women, like Mangano, had to learn was how to do television sales. They got five minutes on the QVC channel to pitch their products on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving at 4 p.m., when most people are busy traveling. Unfortunately, Dana Robinson said, the host spent the first minute and a half talking about the colors of the PurseKeypers and not what it was used for.

That experience illustrates their biggest challenge: making customers quickly understand what the product is and how it can be used.

“People are busy and you have their attention for like three seconds,” Dana Robinson said.

Nationally, only 29 percent of business owners are women, according to the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, In Kentucky, that number is 25.6 percent.

“It is a struggle,” Robinson said, but she and her daughter are strong women, she said. That’s why they relate so much to Mangano, the agreed.

“The story is so similar because we don’t want to give up,” she said.

“I saw the movie Joy and I have to say the stories are so similar and so empowering,” Baughman said. A favorite quote from the movie? “We got here from hard work, patience and humility.” Baughman said,

“This exemplifies the PurseKeyper plight.”

For now, the Robinsons have no intention of slowing down and are excited for the opportunity to expand after their first profitable year in 2015. They are currently in talks with a major baby retailer to be another distributor.

“I sent my application to Shark Tank last week,” Dana Robinson said of the reality television show in which business owners pitch their ideas to investors.

This story was originally published March 6, 2016 at 3:26 PM with the headline "Ky. team promotes its product one mistake at a time."