From Zero To Apple In Four Weeks… No Kidding!

When Cate Vincent dropped her iPad four weeks ago, she never dreamed it would lead to a coveted meeting in Cupertino, at Apple headquarters.  When she dropped her iPad, Cate, a grandmother, on vacation in Florida, quickly grabbed a pair of pinking shears and a plastic file folder, and designed a handle for her iPad so it would never slip out of her hands again, then climbed back into bed.  “I thought what happened next was all a joke,” she said.

“It was so wonderful to be able to FaceTime or read in bed, and know that my iPad was safe and secure, that it wasn’t going to slip out of my hands again,” she said.  The next day, she asked her friend, Tim, a neighbor and leather craftsman, to duplicate her design in soft brown leather.

It was an immediate hit with Cate’s friends and family, and by the end of the week, she’d ordered 25 more handles from Tim, filed a patent application, and opened a bank account for the Original Leather Handle for iPad.

“Folks began to ask where they could buy one, so I carried a stack with me wherever i went.  The handles began to sell, so I ordered fifty more.  Then a week later my husband raided his savings account and ordered 200 more!  Can you imagine how it felt that he had such confidence in me and my handle?” she said.

After securing a domain name, theleatherhandle.com, for 12 dollars, and putting up her own website, she began to reach customers as far away as Italy.

Then, four days later the phone rang, and a man said he was calling from Apple in Cupertino.  “I thought he was kidding.  I thought it was a prank, maybe one of our eight kids,” Vincent said, “Or a friend pulling my leg, since everyone knew I’d been an Apple fan since 1984 when I bought my first Apple computer.”

It wasn’t a prank.

Three days later Vincent was on her way from her vacation house, in a retirement village in Florida,  to meet with an Apple rep, in a glass office in Cupertino, California.  “Until I actually shook his hand, I was convinced it was all an elaborate plan, since I have friends who would do just such a thing.”  Now, the plan, which hatched in Cupertino, means you’ll be able to buy Cate’s Original Leather Handle for iPad to tuck under your Christmas tree this year.

The handle not only makes it easier to use the iPad, but protects it, as well.  Vincent says, “My precious iPad is even more wonderful now!”