WHO ARE WE?
In a nutshell, our founding team includes Fred and Natasha Ruckel: most recently inventors of the Ripple Rug. More about the founders can be read in biographies below.
However, we feel it’s important to address why we called this organization the ‘Randy Cooper Foundation’.
While we (Fred and Natasha), were trying to identify who had created a national TV campaign for a knock-off using our very own ‘Ripple Rug’ product, we uncovered several other knock-offs marketed by unscrupulous bad guys. One of the knock-offs in question was the ‘Spyder Sprinkler’. Further investigations led us to the original product, which is called the NoodleHead Sprinkler. We reached out to Noodlehead Sprinkler using the contact information on their website, and were very sad to learn that Randy Cooper, the inventor, had passed away. On talking more with Marlene, Randy’s wife, we discovered that they had been fighting knock-offs of their sprinkler for many years, bringing a significant degree of stress and financial hardship as a result.
The more we learned of Randy Cooper, the more we were impressed with his creativity, his determination, his courage, his professionalism and his dream of helping other inventors, while still creating his own inventions. To us Randy embodies the spirit of the American Inventor. We hope that through this foundation we can uphold Randy’s honesty, integrity, generosity and drive to make the world a better place.
WE’RE INSPIRED TO HELP INVENTORS:
We understand the difficulties and pitfalls faced by inventors. As inventors, we’ve been there. To this day, we still grapple with different disciplines daily. The biggest struggle is: not having enough hours in the day, not enough money to finance the invention and not enough expertise in every field. There are just so many facets of turning an idea into a million-dollar selling product.
Perhaps you’ve invented the best thing since sliced-bread. Or perhaps you’ve just discovered a better way to slice bread, Whichever scenario applies to you, you’ve still got a long way to go before having a successful product. It’s difficult to find a viable way to manufacture, distribute and market your product. That’s only half of the battle. You’ll need to protect your invention, your trademarks and your copyrights, to name but a few things. All of this boils down to you’re going to need help, because it’s very difficult to successfully control all of these aspects by yourself.
As we traveled down the road of invention, our discoveries unlocked: battles against knock-offs, unscrupulous infringers, spineless arbitragers, slap-dash manufacturers, fake-reviewers, entitled bloggers, unlawful marketers, deceitful production companies (the list goes on). We came to a realization – inventors need help, support, education, legal advice, funding and empowerment.
The idea for a foundation to support home-grown inventors was born. The Randy Cooper Foundation is a pro-bono help division of RuckSackNY.