Aussie Chopsticks
The Aussie Chopsticks were invented for people
who had difficulty using real chopsticks.
The Aussie chopstick is a successful invention by Bill Allardyce. The story goes that one day, Bill was fiddling with a bent piece of wire and had the idea of joining two chopsticks together. Realizing how easy it was to manipulate the bent wire he thought that if he could use chopsticks in a similar way, it would prevent food from spilling onto the table and floor.
Satisfied his idea was marketable he decided to make a prototype. After several weeks he created the model which was basically two chopsticks connected by a bent piece of plastic and some car body filler. His next move was to attempt to patent his idea but his first attempt failed because the ‘tweezer’ concept was already available on the market and could not be patented. He instead had to take out a design registration to protect the idea.
With the idea protected, he re-designed the Aussie Chopstick for mass manufacture which took several months at considerable cost. The first run was for 20,000 and within a short time orders came in from major supermarkets for 30,000 pairs. By 1990 more than 250,000 Aussie Chopsticks had been sold. In the mid-1990s the Aussie Chopstick was sold to a major direct selling company.
