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Leslie Wasem decorates a Christmas tree using the Trim-It-Quick system. (Tony Duncan / Johnson City Press)
A Johnson City designer and inventor is beginning to see the light after a four-year struggle to reach the patent-pending phase of a new invention on the way Christmas trees are lighted.
Leslie Wasem says Harlan’s Trim-It-Quick is named in honor of her father, Harlan “Babe” Lanzer, who never got beyond the prototype phase in a lifetime that saw several of his inventions hit the market to bring in money for other inventors.
Trim-It-Quick is a new way to light a Christmas tree, working from the middle out. Each branch has its own string of lights, with each strand getting smaller as one works up the tree. The individual strands are held in place with a simple hook, and plugs into a central cord running down the trunk of the tree.
The idea for finding a better way came from working with her congregation and finding it took more than an hour of work with several willing hands to light just one tree.
Wasem showed a sketch of her idea to the vice president of a major store chain and he suggested she hire an industrial engineer to design the prototype and get it patented. With the help of several attorneys and family members (one of whom searched through more than 700 patents) it took a year of work to get to the patent-pending phase.
Almost immediately after showing the product in retail trade shows in the gift and Christmas trades, she had to put the attorneys to work on patent infringements.
The hard work was rewarded in ways Wasem never dreamed. Although designed for the home Christmas tree, professional decorators were the first to catch on to the time and labor that could be saved, and one of her first sales was to Disneyland.
She has also donated the lights for two 14-foot trees in downtown Johnson City, one of which is at Buffalo and Main streets, near Freiberg’s, and the other on East Main Street next to the Johnson City Federal Credit Union.
The only location carrying the lights this year is Bear and Friend Toy Shoppe, 3211 Peoples St. They run $109.95 for a six-foot tree and $129.95 for an eight-foot tree.
This year she is selling them in clear and multi-colored lights, but the company is working trade shows for the 2009 Christmas season right now, and many different color variations are coming in, as well as twinklers on the end of strings and LED lights.
It’s the kind of invention that quickly catches on in the media and just this week they were the subject of a segment on “Good Morning America,” which now has them on is Web site as one of 10 new Christmas products.
For now Wasem is concentrating on the home area and she will be at the Smoky Mountain Gift and Trade Shows, as well as Christmas and wholesale gift shows in Atlanta. Her daughter Ashley did the package design, including a drawing of the lights in place that is worth a thousand words of description.
In addition to working the trade shows, Wasem has shown a knack for public relations and has extended feelers for her lights to be used in significant Christmas decorating venues such as Dollywood, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree and the National Christmas Tree at the White House.
She stresses the lights are indoor-outdoor and even if one bulb is smashed the rest of the string will still light.
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