{"id":13254,"date":"2016-01-27T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=13254"},"modified":"2016-01-27T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T23:15:00","slug":"local-inventors-are-two-for-two-on-cbcs-dragons-den","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/local-inventors-are-two-for-two-on-cbcs-dragons-den\/","title":{"rendered":"Local inventors are two-for-two on CBC\u2019s Dragon\u2019s Den"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stepping in front of CBC\u2019s Dragons seems like a daunting task for anyone, but when you\u2019ve already tangled with the business titans once \u2013 and emerged with a deal \u2013 the second-time-around is a lot more comfortable.<\/p>\n

At least, that was the case for Aurora inventor Adam Pauze and his son-in-law, former Major League Baseball player Cliff Floyd.<\/p>\n

The duo, who struck pay dirt initially during the 2014-2015 season of the hit CBC series after forging a tentative deal with former Dragon Arlene Dickinson over Mr. Pauze\u2019s innovative dry wall axe, were back \u2013 this time with an invention of Mr. Floyd\u2019s: a baseball cap liner to protect the heads of players.<\/p>\n

\u201cCliff came to me just after a couple of pitchers were being hit by balls in Major League Baseball,\u201d says Mr. Pauze. \u201cCliff noticed it and said, \u2018Hey, you know what, Pops? We need to come up with something that is going to protect our youth.\u2019 He was thinking about the kids who play travel baseball right now. We went to our product developer, Bob Dickie at Spark Innovation in King, and between me, Bob and Cliff, we came up with the concept and took it from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spark Innovation was also a significant partner in the development of the drywall axe.<\/p>\n

Although they struck a deal with Ms. Dickinson the first time around, she later backed out of the deal.<\/p>\n

The axe is still \u201cplugging along\u201d, sold nation-wide at Canadian Tire, and experienced a significant bump in sales following their first television appearance, but the duo still have yet to \u201chit the American money machine,\u201d according to the inventor.<\/p>\n

The new baseball cap liner, however, is a different story.<\/p>\n

Friends and family gathered at Aurora\u2019s Boston Pizza on Wednesday night for a viewing party to watch the pitch unfold.<\/p>\n

They were not disappointed.<\/p>\n

The men emerged from the Dragon\u2019s Den, deals in hand from Joe Mimran, Michele Romanow and Michael Wekerle for a $150,000 investment in the product in exchange for a shared $2.50 on each unit sold over the next 15 years. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis influx of cash just makes everything move a lot faster,\u201d says Mr. Pauze, noting their latest appearance was taped six months ago. You don\u2019t have to wait around, you can order products, and you can do some marketing. Over the last six months, we signed a deal with the two largest baseball associations in the U.S. \u2013 the Babe Ruth League and the Cal Ripken League. Now, we are the official fielders\u2019 head protection for both leagues and we start selling it through their facilities come April when we\u2019re invited to go to their camps and all their tournaments to start selling our product.\u201d<\/p>\n

The product also recently received the green light to be sold to high schools across Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n

Despite this success, however, they are not keen to rest on their laurels. Given the warm reception received by this invention, they are already hard at work brainstorming how it can be used in other sports, including soccer, racquetball and curling, as well as entirely different applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in the process of developing a few new products and once the ball cap liner starts moving on, we\u2019re going to expand it into the medical field for people with self-injury behaviour, autism and things like that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stepping in front of CBC\u2019s Dragons seems like a daunting task for anyone, but when you\u2019ve already tangled with the business titans once \u2013 and emerged with a deal \u2013 the second-time-around is a lot more comfortable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/2016-01-28-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3rM","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 21:37:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}