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By KEVIN WALTERS
Staff Writer
ARRINGTON COMMUNITY -- John Cuzzone is hoping to start a
flood from a trickle.
That would be a flood of public interest -- and sales --
in the water-saving irrigation device Cuzzone invented that he's been
selling on the Internet and hopes to see on hardware store shelves soon.
Cuzzone's Trickle Ring is a plant-watering
doohickey that connects to garden hoses and stretches around the base of
trees, shrubs and other greenery. Because the ring directs spraying
more directly than a bubbler or soaker hose, the water doesn't drain
elsewhere.
That means gardeners don't waste water with runoff and
can better water their plants in the heat of late spring and summer.
"It saturates the ground around the perimeter more
uniformly and stretches around the tree and snaps back into a circle,"
said Cuzzone, 47, a native of New England.
The whole idea for the device came because Cuzzone saw
trees he replanted die because they couldn't get enough water. The
first-time inventor and commercial airline pilot built the prototype for
the device in his garage and claims his Trickle Ring can send
5 gallons of water into the ground in about 20 minutes.
Early interest in the Trickle Ring has
been good. In the year and a half Cuzzone has sold the device via his Web
site and eBay, he says he's sold more than 1,000 Trickle Rings.
"My biggest client was a (commercial) grower in Hawaii that enjoyed
them and bought more than a hundred of them," Cuzzone said.
A single Trickle Ring sells for $10.95,
while a box of 12 sells for $108.95.
What Cuzzone wants next is to reach a broader audience
for his device by selling it in hardware and home supply stores across the
country. Doing that means finding help to produce the products in large
quantities and a marketing firm to help sell them.
Both of the firms Cuzzone says he's enlisted have
Southern roots: The Trickle Ring will be made by Available
Plastics Inc., a manufacturing firm in Huntsville, Ala.,
while the Franklin-based marketing firm M & M Marketing Group will help
get the word out about the devices.
Cuzzone is optimistic that the Trickle Ring,
which he hopes to patent one day, will soon be stocked on the shelves of
local hardware stores.
Cuzzone hopes to attract the attention of national
gardening magazines, which may further raise the public profile of his
device. Several magazines have requested Trickle Rings for
demonstrations, he said.
So, how has the Trickle Ring performed out
of the garage and in the real-world laboratory of his back yard?
He says he's planted about 100 trees and bushes so far
and not yet lost a tree to thirst.
"Just give the trees a good start and they’ll
eventually do fine on their own," Cuzzone said.
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