Startup’s wares to be featured on ‘ The View’
David Farnworth had a few ideas about what people might find appealing about the flat blue disks he started peddling 18 months ago at The Cook’s Nook in Wilton — mainly usefulness and environmental friendliness, with a dash of whimsy.
But as an additional layer of PPE? The Norwalk resident never saw that coming, but he’s now selling his OnTopz beverage lids to hospitals and colleges with that relevance in mind.
Farnworth also expects the product to be featured this spring on ABC’s popular daytime talk show “The View,” and is now lining up distribution into multiple mass retail chains.
OnTopz lids create an instant vacuum seal along the rim of cups and containers to protect the contents inside, secure enough that one can lift up a full vessel by the knob embedded on top.
He said the lids are engineered to last 20 years, a key consideration for households looking to cut back on their use of plastic wrap and foil for leftovers as well.
“I think of us as an environmental-impact, socialimpact kind of business,” Farnworth said. “Our aim is to be the No. 1 brand within this particular category, as it starts to really accelerate.”
From its debut knobs featuring a duck paddling in a blue pond and a penguin chilling on an ice floe, OnTopz has expanded its motifs to include nautical images like anchors and lighthouses, as well as coffee mugs and wine bottles.
Farnworth has also created larger OnTopz lids up to a foot in diameter for kitchen storage containers and pots. The rubbery silicone material can handle oven temperatures of up to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, with the devices safe to use in microwaves, dishwashers and freezers.
It’s not easy locating the small warehouse on a back street in South Norwalk where Farnworth stages OnTopz shipments, but the widgets are getting easier to find, whether on OnTopz.com, Amazon, a booth set up outside Bloomingdales at The SoNo Collection mall, or some 350 independent retailers like The Cook’s Nook.
OnTopz may become ubiquitous before long in
congregate settings as well, including college dining halls and hospitals as a way to protect drinks from airborne pathogens like the coronavirus.
Farnworth said he saw bug defense as one selling point early on for OnTopz, but the backyard variety rather than threats like COVID-19. He endured a
monthlong bout with the virus himself and has yet to recover fully his senses of taste and smell.
On its website, the company solicits photos and video from customers who come up with new uses for OnTopz.
The idea came to Farnworth after seeing a similar device in the United Kingdom, but that lacked the colorful designs of OnTopz.
The company has started marketing a knob in the shape of a seaside pebble that can be imprinted with corporate logos and teams, opening up a major new sales channel. And it is readying a line of mugs and highball glasses as well, and bottle stoppers for wine.
Farnworth grew up north of Manchester in the U.K., joining Duracell and eventually coming to the company’s research headquarters in Bethel where he focused on specialty batteries for medical devices. From there, he joined Fairfieldbased Acme United, leading its Westcott scissors division to exponential growth.
He started the old-fashioned way with OnTopz, going door-to-door in the early days in an attempt to interest stores in carrying the line, while bootstrapping the purchase of more than $20,000 of inventory with his own cash.
The company has a halfdozen employees, with Farnworth projecting he will hire anywhere from 50 to 100 more within the coming five years if sales match his projections. After the holidays, Farnworth and sales chief Chris Myers are readying for the tour of trade conventions in preparation for next Christmas, to include the Dallas Gift Show in early January followed by the AmericasMart Atlanta.
“I was confident,” Farnworth said. “I just didn’t know how quickly it was going to catch on.”