Sep 25, 2007

Family believes its Gribbits earbud accessory sounds like a winnerBy Kim MikusDailyHerald.com

A Batavia father of four young children is hoping a product he designed with his brother-in-law grabs on.

Dan Donohue and his family created gadgets designed to attach to the earbuds of iPods. The decorative accessories that come in the shape of soccer balls or flowers can also be attached to pencils or sunglasses.

The idea for the product, which the family started selling last week, developed when Donohue’s family gave him an iPod for Father’s Day. Donohue, a self-employed landscape architect, thought, “this is an expensive gift. How can we afford this?”

Donohue, a regular at the local library, is an avid reader of motivational books and stories of people who have developed successful ideas.

With the help of his wife and children, he came up with the idea of an earring or accessory to decorate his new iPod.

“I thought, ‘There’s got to be an opportunity here,’ ” he said.

For assistance, he turned to his brother-in-law, Gladden Griggs from South Bend, Ind., a mechanical engineer. The men developed the decorative pieces they call Gribbits. They are pre-fabricated decorations attached to a plastic, rubber-type tube that holds the ornament to the ear piece of the iPod.

They developed a logo of a frog and the tag line, “The Gribbits that grabs.”

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