The XHhose®: no more kinks !

I don't normally watch shopping channels, but this morning saw the XHose® on one of those irritating, fast speaking shows that repeatedly tells you the same facts.

It is a garden hose which has no kinks as it work on a new principle. There is an inner hose and the outer hose has expandable material ("non elastic, soft tubular webbing" such as nylon). The pressure of the water in the inner hose causes the outer hose to expand both outwards and lengthways so that it grows to three times its length (says the TV), or six times (says the patents). It is also very light -- just over a pound in weight.

It is the invention of Michael Berardi, who thought of the idea while working out in the gym back home in Florida. While using an "elastic resistance tube", whatever that is, he wondered what would happen if you ran water through it.

In 2011 he filed for what became four US granted patents. Here is a drawing from one of them, US8291941.

Patents have been filed in numerous countries. Blue Gentian LLC is the company that has applied for the US patents and for the US trade mark, but in Europe the owner is F. Mishan and Sons, a New York company.

There is a video available from this site where Berardi is interviewed,which claims that in a year 25 million hoses were sold at a value of $500 million. He began experimenting in his house and in his backyard. In March 2012 the first commercials appeared on "direct response TV", and there was a huge response. Things looked good. Then his wife saw a similar commercial for a very similar product by a large company. She told him not to look, which of course meant he had to look. They were both shocked.

Berardi says that there are imitations by many companies available for sale, and it makes him feel ill and angry. Once his first patent was granted, in October 2012, he began filing patent infringement suits.

British firm Wilson Gunn explains that they successfully took a company, Tristar, to court over an infringement of the UK patent owned by Blue Gentian. The court case can be seen here. It shows that the owner of the European trade mark, Mishan, is working with Blue Gentian, which cleared up for me a small mystery.

Telebrands is being taken to court in the USA.

What I'd have liked to know was how the whole enterprise was financed as, when I had one hours talks with inventors in my British Library job, how to finance and manufacture the product was a big problem to resolve.

Below is an enthusiastic video about the product.