We have been watching with interest the development and progress of a patent application that was made by a Scottish based company called Beautiful Vending for a 'Payment Operated Hair Styling Apparatus'. We have always held the belief and view that, although it is a nifty idea to have the latest ceramic stylers attached to a coin timer, it certainly isn't novel or inventive to create one and indeed we have uncovered a coin operated hair styler going back to the 1920's. Plus we operate in a free market and to us the more people talking about and using coin operated hair stylers, the better
It was therefore very pleasing to read that the European Patents office have also taken this view and following an examination of their patent application they have now marked it as withdrawn due to it failing the key tests of patent-ability on just about every point.
Hopefully the marketing, websites and sales pitches will now accurately convey this position and not try and mislead people for commercial advantage. I did notice however that a website advertising Beautiful Vending USA was still pushing the line of "...We're now distributing the patented machine to all states in the USA...". Luckily all our customers saw through this!
Due to a massive level of interest and inquiries from the US, we've decided to develop a new GlideHair vending machine that accepts dollar notes.
This new vending opportunity will be available over the next few months and we'll hopefully soon see lot's of new GlideHair venues in the States.
We've recently manufactured our 500th vending machine and look set to continue our growth throughout the rest of 2009. The interest and feedback we receive has been incredible and we're now represented in many countries.
Back in the 1920’s a man called Wally Kalumenos came up with the idea of coin-operated electric hair stylers. That was a pretty novel idea back in those days – so much so that Wally applied for a patent for his idea, and this was duly granted on 7th July 1926 – more than 80 years ago.
We guess Wally’s idea was just a little bit ahead of it’s time, because we can’t find any evidence that Wally died a rich man!
In fact it wasn’t until more than 50 years after Wally’s patent had expired that ceramic hair straighteners become a ‘must-have’ for girls.