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A Step in the Right Direction

Inventors can be inspired by anything. Usually, a problem that begs for a solution gets an inventor thinking. For Jeff Zinger, necessity was truly the mother of invention. He had just undergone back surgery, but his 10-month-old daughter, Faith, didn’t understand that. She wanted to pull herself up and walk. Faith really didn’t care that her dad couldn’t keep bending over to help her. What was Jeff going to do?

He saw Faith’s nanny use a towel to hold Faith and Jeff thought there has to be a better, safer way. The former plumber went to a fabric store and made the prototype for the Walk-O-Long. His first prototype was his last. It worked.

The Walk-O-Long is a spongy fabric tube that fits around a child’s chest and under his/her arms. It allows a parent to stand up tall and still have a firm grasp on the child. In fact, Jeff says that he used the prototype Walk-O-Long for thirty to sixty minutes at a time, and in about five days, Faith learned to walk. As people started to see Jeff and Faith using the Walk-O-Long at restaurants, Disneyland, shopping malls, and grocery stores, he would get questions about where they could buy one.

Ding! The lightbulb was on. Jeff realized that his Walk-O-Long might not only help his daughter walk; it could also help this plumber with a back problem take the first steps toward a new career—and get him back working. So he started the process of filing the patent paperwork for the Walk-O-Long. His parents and his wife’s parents were very supportive. Even though his brother and sisters and his wife’s brother and sisters made fun of the idea, that didn’t stop him.

Jeff spent the next year working on packaging and advertising. He thought it was only appropriate that he use his daughter’s face as a logo. After all, it was because of little Faith that the Walk-O-Long was invented.

In its first four months in stores, Jeff tells me he sold about 2,000 Walk-O-Longs. They sell for about $25 each, so you do the math. Despite the sales, Jeff says he is still in the red.

Once the Walk-O-Long got placement in stores, a funny thing began to happen. Jeff found his product had more uses than he could have imagined. Parents could use it to help their children down a playground slide; it could help a child get used to being on ice skates; it could even help when caring for kids with special needs. Recently, Jeff has been in talks with child disability educators at the University of California, Irvine, Children’s Hospital of Orange County, the Foundation for the Junior Blind of America, and many parents of children with cerebral palsy.

Who would have guessed that material wrapped around a foam tube could be so handy? I guess you just have to have a “little Faith.”