Stuart Saunders

by Dr. Iain Corness

It is not every day that you get to save a young girl’s life, but Stuart Saunders from EsDesign has done just that. And he did it with dental floss! And having seen the suicide note myself, I can vouch for the statement.
Stuart, who hailed originally from Australia, spent 21 of the last 23 years in Taiwan before coming here permanently two years ago. Stuart is not just a manufacturer, but is also an inventor, who has won the prestigious ‘Inventor of the Year’ award in Australia.
As an inventor, Stuart was not obsessed with just one new innovation, but would work on more than one concurrently. “I invented another four wheel drive in 1982. At the same time I invented a wireless, cordless stereo, and I thought that I would get the stereo into production quickly, then use the profits to develop the four wheel drive. Ha ha ha! I went around the world twice showing all consumer electronics manufacturers the stereo, all loved it, but not one (manufacturing) response. Which is why I ended up in Taiwan.”
It was while traveling around the world, demonstrating his patented stereo, that Stuart began to apply his creative thinking to humble dental floss. “I was carrying around this bulky dental floss dispenser when I decided I could design something better. I decided that credit card was the optimal size, but it had to carry the industry standard of 50 meters inside it.”
So Stuart the inventor sat down and began to make his prototypes. Not only did he have to design the credit card sized dispenser, but he then had to design the equipment that would fill the dispensers. His initial manufacture rate was 1-2 dispensers an hour. Hardly economically viable, but Stuart is not the kind of person to give up easily, and he continued to refine both the product and its manufacture and can now produce 700 of his patented dental floss “credit cards” in one hour from each machine.
By the way, if you think the hard part is in the invention, think again. The hardest road to hoe for the budding inventor is the patent system. Despite this, Stuart has not lost his passion for inventing over the years, but has developed another passion as well. That is an extreme distaste for the patenting system as it is applied throughout the world. Many people (me included) have often thought how nice it would be to “invent” something and have manufacturers beat a pathway to your door waving endless fists of money. Unfortunately, it appears that is just a dream. The actual process is long, involved and exceptionally expensive, including patent attorneys and the like. You want your patent to cover Japan and the US as well? Then you go through the process again!
He had been producing the dental floss dispensers for three years when he began to see the potential for advertising that the credit card could give. “I noticed that the back had a picture frame effect, and it was a natural progression from there.” This unique feature is now being used by many dentists and chemists to produce a dispenser that advertises their business as well as flossing teeth. In fact, a special run was done for the recent Skål International World Congress that was held here last week, and every delegate has taken home a unique memento of Pattaya (and better dental hygiene)!
It was while he was in Taipei that he came across a deeply disturbed young girl. She had no self esteem and wanted to die. Stuart sat down with her and noticed that she had very offensive halitosis (bad breath). From his research of the flossing subject he knew that he could reduce or eradicate this problem through thorough flossing. He taught her how to do it and gave her a floss dispenser. “Within 60 minutes, 80 percent of her problem had gone,” said Stuart. He then directed her to a dentist to have her teeth scaled and cleaned, and who also backed up Stuart’s dental “flossify”. The change was instantaneous. Her self esteem returned and all thoughts of suicide were rejected. She was so grateful, she even came to work for Stuart after that episode!
As the business built up in Taiwan, Stuart began to employ part time manufacturing assistants to help his full time girls. These came from a nearby factory and were Thai girls from Isaan. He found them to be very hard workers and when they had finished their contracts in Taiwan and returned to Thailand, Stuart literally came with them! This was not his first experience of Thailand, however, as he had come here many times doing his ‘visa runs’ from Taiwan!
Four years ago he began to look seriously at shifting his whole manufacturing plant to Thailand, and the choice of Pattaya was through its proximity to the Laem Chabang port and the new Bangkok airport. The cost of labor was one quarter to one third that of Taiwan, and he already knew how industrious the Thai girls could be. He commuted between the two countries for 24 months, while he went through the bureaucratic processes involved in setting up business in Thailand. This was the hardest part, though there are other problems in Thailand, such as the lack of a ‘Yellow Pages’ and the chaotic numbering system for houses and factory buildings. “One of Bangkok’s traffic problems,” says Stuart, “is caused by people driving around lost!” And it sounds as if Stuart has been one of them!
He now has his factory up and running, after finally bringing his machines over from Taiwan and is still employing the Isaan girls. “I have four full time and up to ten part time when I have urgent orders.” He has no regrets at coming here, but does regret the time it took for him to make that transition.
If you want to contact Stuart, you can do this through email floss@flos sfirst.com or mobile telephone 086 138 8654.