Green Bay man reinvents wheel, gets patent
If you’ve been out and about at area farmers’ markets, you may have noticed the Luna Café mobile. The eye-catching transport is actually a bicycle that pulls a self-propelled trailer that was invented and patented by Brian Bartel of Green Bay.
Bartel, an engineer and MBA, spent 11 years working in his field before becoming a stay-at-home dad in need of a creative outlet. The ideas seem to come naturally to him, and he tried several of them before embarking on this project.
“I read ‘Inventing for Dummies,’ and it was actually quite helpful,” Bartel said. “I learned that you don’t need a completed product before getting a patent. I was thinking that I had to perfect it — that stuck in my head — when in reality, with a drawing and a paragraph or two, you can get a patent.”
The idea has to be unique and something that hasn’t been patented, and the Brouhaha Bicycle Trailer fit the requirements. The trailer has an electric motor with a sensor that will cause the trailer to brake and maintain speed with the bicycle. It can carry up to 400 pounds.
On his website, www.rollouttrailers.com, Bartel says the trailer can be considered “zero towing force” or a “hybrid electric articulated vehicle.” What it is is very unique.
“My original idea was to come up with a teardrop micro camper to pull behind a bicycle and was trying to figure out how to pull a heavy load behind a bike," Bartel said. "That’s how I came up with the idea. I kind of concluded that if you want to go camping on a bicycle, you should just take a tent.”
Once the idea morphed from camper to trailer, Bartel met with the Small Business Development Center, one of SCORE’s partners at the Advance Business and Manufacturing Center at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. His goal was to find out if the idea had merit. What he discovered was overwhelming support and encouragement to pursue a patent.
Steve Greenfield, owner of Greenfield Patents, filed the provisional patent and worked with Bartel in obtaining the patent. In an effort to perfect the trailer, Bartel developed five prototypes and asked users to test them.
A church in Sheboygan used the trailer to haul food to shut-ins. An outdoors store in Lake Geneva used it as a kayak carrier to haul kayaks up and down a hill. A Madison brewery made it into a beer hauler and accompanied a local bicycle club on rides, and a university in Missouri found it helpful for hauling recreational equipment around campus.
The trailer can be used for everything from hauling garbage to tailgating at Lambeau Field. Bartel says that it is so efficient that the bicycle rider will feel very little difference between riding with or without the trailer. There are also environmental benefits.
“I like to use the car as little as possible, and this removes one more excuse,” Bartel said.
He is hoping that renewed interest in biking will result in a large company adding it to its product line. Until volume increases, his margins are slim and he would like to be able to make larger orders to reduce costs. With every sale, he is one step closer to realizing that goal.
“Each sale is another feather in my cap, but it would be nice to have someone take over the line and handle all of the details," Bartel said. "I have so many ideas and I want to keep pumping out those ideas. That’s what I’m good at — reinventing the wheel.”
For others like him, he recommends going to a place like SBDC or SCORE and getting advice to see if there is support for the idea before forging ahead.
Tina Dettman-Bielefeldt is co-owner of DB Commercial Real Estate in Green Bay and past district director for SCORE, Wisconsin.