The Coaster That Saved the World

Being a creative sort myself, I was lucky to have to have a special guest on this episode by the name of Bob Labbe who has a pet peeve with drink coasters and justifiably thinks you should too!  After all, drink coasters are meant to protect any surface from the water rings produced by cold beverages - but they aren't user-friendy.

Being a life-long engineer, he decided to put an end to these dastardly coasters that stick to the bottom of you glass or drip water on you and your furniture.  It is a fascinating story of how he designed the best coaster in the world.  Not to mention a best selling book on golf.   

Learn more about Bob's creation at https://ultimatecoasterco.com or find both his book "Putting by the Numbers" or ultimate coasters at Amazon.

Transcript

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The Coaster That Saved the World 

Announcer: You are listening to the Mastering Business Basics podcast, where we discuss how to build a solid foundation under your small business to improve your chances of success. And now, here is your host, Roger Pearson. 

Roger: Welcome back to the program. Today, we have a special guest. His name is Bob Labbe, and he's been an engineer most of his life. He's also been an author, and he's been an inventor. I think it should be an interesting conversation. Welcome, Bob. 

Bob Labbe: Roger, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to our discussion.

Roger: I am too. Could you give us a little bit about your background to where you got to today? 

Bob Labbe: Well, you know, I'm 82 years old, and I've lived a long and enjoyable life. I graduated from Georgia Tech in engineering 1968 and went to work in the air pollution control industry, which was... I spent some 55 years, working in the air PC business with three of my own companies, which I founded, developed, sold, and, retired finally in 2023 the third time. 

And so, air pollution control and engineering of air pollution control systems for power plants, steel mills, cement plants, pulp and paper, all these big plants, was, my lifetime's work, okay? And I thoroughly enjoyed it because it, it touched on every aspect of every discipline within the engineering community, and it was a very interesting job. 

I got to see all of how America works by going to all these different plants where they make different things. And so it was a fun... I never worked in my life. I just enjoyed having fun. 

Roger: The people I think that are the most successful in life are the ones that enjoy their work. 

Bob Labbe: Yes, I agree 

Roger: Unfortunately, too many people do not and have not found that. So that's great. And then you wrote a book I understand.

Bob Labbe: I did. I did. well, I, when I retired the second time in 1996, my partner and I, John Halligan, both of us were, loved to play golf, and at our sales meetings we always went out and played golf even though we didn't have time otherwise, at least we didn't think we had time. And we both have a little natural athletic ability, but to play golf you really have to practice and be good at the game. 

So we fumbled through the sales meetings golf, but we always said to ourself, "When the day when we retire, we're gonna go take golf lessons, and we're gonna join a country club, and we're gonna play golf." And that's exactly what we did. So in 1996, I went up to Maggie Valley, North Carolina at PGA school up there and took four or five days of golf lessons. 

And, you know, there's 14 clubs in the bag. Probably the most important club in the bag is the putter. So I got pretty good with the other 13 clubs. Went from, the woods, and the irons, and the short clubs, and I could handle the, all of them pretty good. And, and the reason I could is I would play 18 holes of golf three days a week and practice three or four hours the other three days of the week and then take Sundays off. 

So I got pretty good pretty quick, but where I really was having difficulty was with that 14th club, the putter. And that putter was killing me. Here I'm hitting 48 to 52 strokes with the 13 clubs, and then I'm scoring 40 to 44 putts, and putting me up in the 90s when I was a mid-80s player. 

But I, my putter was killing me. And so being an engineer, I started thinking, "Well, I gotta solve this problem or I'm not gonna be happy playing the game of golf." And that's what started me thinking and developing my system of... I wrote a book called Putting By the Numbers. It's a quantitative method of wag putting, long distance putting. 

And it really, really works. It... What's beautiful about it, it works on any golf course you play, and I've played over 100 golf course, courses worldwide now. It's accurate, it's repeatable, it's reproducible, it's linear, and it works on every golf course you play. And that will help you score. When I was scoring 40 to 44 putts a round and ruining my score, today at age 82, last year my average putts per 18 hole rounds was 30.5, and I'm a seven handicap at age 82. 

Which, and the only reason I'm a seven handicap is because of my putting. 

Roger: That's good. That's very good.  From the little golf I've played, I, I recognize those numbers. That's great. 

Then you've also become an inventor, and I think one of the things that's sometimes lost in the business world is that if you really wanna be successful, you need to find a problem and solve it, and you have done that, and it involves coasters. 

And when I read about this, I said, " that's fascinating," because I've been in this situation where I've picked up a coaster and it drenches me. You know, pick up a glass of... and it drenches me, and I've been there. I have leather coasters in my house, which are, I think, even worse, so, I tend to stay to the stone ones. They don't work as well. But you put your engineering to work, and you designed something about this. 

Bob Labbe: I did. I did. 

Roger: How did you solve the problem? 

Bob Labbe: Well, let me tell you a quick story. Back in October of 2023, I was at my daughter's house in Decatur, Georgia, right outside of Atlanta, and we were going to going to dinner, so we all got dressed in our best clothes and ready to go out and had a couple cocktails before we went out. 

And I was... She had given me a leather coaster just like you speak to, and here's one right here. And I had put my Manhattan down on the coaster and didn't notice that it was pooling condensate on it. Okay? I'm just... We were talking, you know? So I picked the thing up, and here I've got my nice suit on and my favorite silk tie. 

I picked the thing up, and this leather coaster stuck to the bottom of my glass. And just as I was ready to take a sip, the coaster fell with all the condensate on my tie, down my coat, onto my slacks, and onto the floor Unfortunately, cleaned up everything but ruined my beautiful favorite silk tie. 

And I got up and I was kind of perturbed about that to say the least. And I said to my daughter, I said, "You know, this has been a pet peeve of mine my whole life, these doggone coasters, they stick to the bottom of your glass, they get condensated, they get all over your furniture." And now that I'm about ready to retire, and I retired at the end of '23, I said, "I'm gonna solve this problem. 

I'm an engineer, I can figure out the solution to this problem." And so I set about to making hand drawings, and I came up with this product, which is an engineered coaster that really works. It works in every aspect. It's well engineered, and it's a standard diameter of a coaster. The beauty of this, the coaster, is that it has little one millimeter semicircles in the top of the grid. 

Okay? You set your glass on top of it, and by capillary action, the condensate's coming down your glass. By capillary action, these little half one millimeter capillaries pull your condensate into this pan, and it holds the condensate in your pan. Now, this can hold condensate on a glass that you're having, drinks all night entertaining your guests. 

And then you can just take these coasters now and you take them and chuck your dishwasher, throw them in the dishwasher and they're dishwasher safe because they're made out of ABS material, and they'll withstand, 210 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, whatever, else you're gonna use them for. 

And because of that, you know, these things really, really work. And, they're premium coasters. Four of these cost $24.99 with the holder, or sometimes we put them on sale for $19.95 around Christmas time. But, the beauty of these coasters - I have them all over my house now, probably 40 spread in every room in my house now - because we have some pretty nice furniture in my house, and I don't wanna mess it up. 

And you know I haven't had a coaster stick to my bottom of my glass since I invented these. 

Roger: Awesome. But the thing that I really wanted to ask you about is, it's one thing to invent something, but what's the process to actually take it from idea, and design like you did, to actual putting it on the market? I think that's gotta be quite a process. 

Bob Labbe: It is, and, you know, we're still working at it. I mean, the easiest part, for an engineer anyway, the easiest part is of problem-solving is to go through, define the problem, analyze the problem, create some alternatives, test your alternatives, then come up with the best solution. Kind of a five-step problem-solving technique that engineers normally use, and that's basically what I did with this 'cause I knew that what I wanted to do was create something that was really workable and usable in... as I say, this is a premier coaster. This is not like you get in a bar, like this cardboard coaster here or a paper coaster. This is, coaster is, will last indefinitely and, it works. There's not a coaster on the market. This is the best coaster on the market. There's not another coaster that functions to do what this coaster does, and I'm very proud of it. 

But as you say, that's easy, defining the problem, creating the solution. I made hand drawings. I gave those to my chief engineer at, Amer Air, my company that I lastly sold. Tony took the draw- my hand drawings, and he put them onto an AutoCAD format, and then we put them onto some, computerized patent drawings, and that was in October, November, December of 2023. 

By January of 2024, I took my drawings and claims to a local patent attorney. he searched the patent for me and said, "Hey, you have something that nobody else has, so we can patent your product." I said, "Fantastic." So by March 6th of 2024, we had a patent pending with the US Patent and Trade Office in the United States, and then we proceeded on to getting an international patent pending that we still have going today, and we were awarded a utility patent on this product 12 months later in March of 2025. 

So we have a patented product, for the United States, and we have a patent pending internationally speaking. And, then of course, the most difficult part about any business is, of course, the sales and marketing of the product. And that's what we're making progress. It's slow. It's growing. 

Our growth is logarithmic now. It was very slow in the beginning. But what we're finding is that this product is usable for promotional companies, promotional charities, the NRA, Dollywood, Disney World, all these different places where you might pick up a product, as a gift. They're great Christmas gifts. 

They're great holiday gifts around here. And what's cool about this, everybody in the free world, in the developed world, statistically has 24 coasters in their house. And if they don't have this one in, they probably don't work, but mine works. So there, the market for these coasters, and there's a $2.2 billion market worldwide for coasters. 

Roger: Your kidding, that's huge! 

Bob Labbe: No, I'm serious as a heart attack. And the thing about it is 80% of the market is for paper coasters like Heineken's, cardboard coaster you get in a saloon, or a cork coaster. That's 80% of the market. So basically, you take 40% of the 2.2 million, you got about an $800 million market for coasters, worldwide. 

And here in the United States, we have about half that for these premium coasters. So, I mean, basically what we're trying to do is create a business, that is a domestic business in North America, US, Mexico, and Canada, and market the product accordingly, and then license the product worldwide. So that's kinda where we're at. 

We're making progress. we've gotten sales to lots of golf courses, lots of sports teams. we've made some headway with the various, places like national parks and, we have proposals out to the brewery companies and to Dollywood and Disney World. We have lots of proposals out, and we have orders trickling in. 

But we're still growing the business and it's, like I say, it's logarithmically increasing in sales. And it'll be a several-year process before we get to our real objective. 

Roger: When you got the design, when you got the patent, how did you figure out the manufacturing part of it? 

Bob Labbe: Well, that's a good question. And, you know, everybody and, having been in the industrial world and having seen what happened in the United States back in the '80s and how we took all of our industry and transformed it to Southeast Asia because of the cheaper labor prices, I knew that was a likely place that we were gonna have to manufacture this thing if we were going to be competitive in the marketplace. And so we set out to, to look to places like China and India and Vietnam and Cambodia and all those kinds of places, only to find out that if you wanna get a product manufactured, the Chinese have it over every, every other Southeastern country because they can deliver it, they can really manufacture precision and deliver it on time. 

So we started out with a good-- with a great intent. We went to every known manufacturer in North America, including the US and Canada, and we solicit bids on this thing, and we could not get a bid that would make this product competitive in North America. And then that's when we went to Asia, and we had a, a conduit of a company that would take us to Asia that had a familiarity with manufacturing in Southeast Asia. 

So by June of two thousand and, twenty-four, we located a company in China, and we proceeded to develop the gold standard final product over a several-month period while we were developing our website and doing all the die, die can... We have a injection die mold construction tool to do this with, which we've worked, on then. 

And by November of two thousand twenty-four, we had a go to market commercial product developed. And so we actually began the sales and marketing the product January first, two thousand twenty-five. And lo and behold, three or four months into the, into that time, as you know, President Trump came on with all these tariffs that he was going to charge the companies shipping things in. 

And that lit up a light bulb in our head and say, "Hey, well, if President Trump is putting these tariffs on products coming into this, and we've gotta pay sea freight and all, all the packaging and everything we do now, why don't we go out and see if we can find now a US manufacturer that can compete with this new pricing structure?" 

And lo and behold, right in our backyard, we found a US manufacturer that can compete with the Chinese manufacturer. So now these products are manufactured in the USA almost solely. Now, we do sell internationally out of China, our product, but ninety percent of all the product that we sell in the United States is all manufactured in the USA, and we're proud of that, and that's why I'm wearing my America shirt today. 

Roger: That's great. It's been great just the last couple years to see so much manufacturing coming back to this country because we really needed it. You know, to 
be a great country, you have to have a great manufacturing base, or you're just a consumer, and, that's not good. So that's great. So, what other adventures have you done? 

Bob Labbe: The adventure of my life was pollution control systems, and that was a lot of fun because, every one was different. You had to get a clean piece of paper out every time you designed a new one. Every plant was different. It was doing a lot of the same things you do over and over, but every one was different. 

And that's what made it exciting because you never could... You could never use the drawings from a previous job on the new job because it was a whole different can of worms or a ball of wax, whatever you wanna call it. So it was always a challenge. And yet it was fun because you could use your, creativity, your intuition on what might work well, and then you put those thoughts on paper and then deliver them to customer. 

And, you know, all the hundreds of jobs we did from 1972 through 2023, we never had an unhappy customer, and I was so proud of that. I mean, obviously you have some disputes along the way, and as long as you resolve your disputes and you make the customer happy, that's what we always did. But there was very few disputes, and at the end of the day, after all those years in business, we had nothing but happy customers, and that made me very proud and very happy 

Roger: That really is something to be proud of because, I don't think there's very many businesses that could say that. 

Bob Labbe: That's kind of my life story. But then having this product, the coaster, and my golf book has been kind of a really good hobby. I never say I'm retired. I'm quasi-retired. And these, this is, these are hobbies. And, my golf book here, I got one right here. it's not very long. 

It's an instruction manual actually is what it is. And it's only 82 pages long, and it's in soft cover, hard cover, e-book, and audio book. So you can just plug it into your car and listen to it going down the highway. And, so I've had a lot of fun with this. And, my daughter and son-in-law run this company. 

So, I spend a, a goodly portion of my time on the book, and they spend a goodly portion of their time on the coaster 

Roger: It sounds like it works out very well. I know, I'm one of these people also. I'll probably never officially retire. I just can't imagine. I'm not a rocking chair type person. I've gotta be designing something. I just finished designing my company’s website, and, and got into using AI for the first time to help me write all the code, and it was... 

That's an amazing experience, which I'm gonna have to talk about on an episode sometime. So, that's good. Do you have any projects coming up beside these two, or are you just... 

Bob Labbe: Yeah, I think this is the, kind of the end of the road for me. I really, I'm wanting obviously my daughter and son-in-law to develop the coaster company, and I've handed the ball off to them to do that, and they're doing a, a good job of it. It's a challenge, and it's a day's work every day. 

But they're making progress, and I think they're reaching out to all those companies and entities. Whether it's the Democrat Party, the Republican Party, the NRA, the Parkinson's, or the Cancer Center, or St. Jude's, or whoever they're reaching out to sell these promotional products and get these products in the hands of the public. 

I can assure you, once you use one of these, one of these coasters, you'll get a whole bunch of them for your house because they work. And so I think that, 

Roger: They solve a problem.

Bob Labbe: and they solve the problem and people love things that work. But my side of the coin, see, I think I've been... Initially, when I invented this method of quantitative putting, I thought it was just for me. And then at 1996 to 2021, it took me basically 25 years before I was willing to put what I had notes on into a book. 

I had to be sure. And, Roger, I use this book, I use this methodology on courses all over the world, from Scotland to Ireland to California to Florida to Georgia to, Missouri, where I live. And I, and, honestly, the method works and makes you a better golfer on every course you play. And so my, my position right now is I want to see this methodology created in the golfing academy, academies domestically and around the world. 

And I want to get this book into everybody's hands. We've sold over 10,000 copies of this book. We've had number one bestseller rating internationally, number 13 on Amazon. We have 4.1 stars and 92 reviews of this book. And the sales right now are logarithmically increasing. Now I want to say, can we teach, can we take this methodology? 

We're designing another edition of this book to simplify it a little bit. Doesn't need to be much simpler because I made this all in to be down to arithmetic, okay? But I'm even making a simpler copy of this book right now to appeal to everyone regardless of their background or where they come so that they can do this. 

And then this book comes with a 11-minute video in-house and a 23-minute video on the golf course to show you how it works. So you get all that, and, you can buy this book right now for 99 cents on Amazon in eBook form. And, I've got it on sale right now because I want more people to review it for me and give me... 

I want to get over 100 reviews. I'm at 92 right now. So I'm trying to do that, and then I'm trying to incorporate this into the PGA world, to try to get this into a teaching school. Because, you know, motivationally speaking, Edward Stimpson, who invented the Stimpmeter back in 1935, which for the speed of greens, which didn't get used by the USGA until 1976, 1977, was the, the original idea that caused me to say, "If you can relatively determine the speed of the golf club and give it a Stimpmeter reading, then you should be able to quantitatively do it." 

And that's what set me off on my idea. 

Roger: That's amazing. So is there anything that we haven't discussed so far that you'd like our audience to know about? 

Bob Labbe: Well, I didn't mean to get off on the tangent on this golf thing, but, that's kind of my real baby even though, this ... I have two babies, this one and this one. 

Roger: It seems like you're prouder of the golf one. 

Bob Labbe: Well, I'm more invested in the golf one. I spend more of my time because I play golf and, you know, I talk about putting and all this all the time. And, you know, there's only so much you can say about a coaster. 

Roger: Right 

Bob Labbe: The only thing I say about, to people about, this is the only coaster in the entire world that works. 

And if you have nice furniture and you want to protect your clothes and your carpet or your wood floors, you need this in your home, and you need this in your office because... Matter of fact, I had somebody two or three years ago, no, it was probably 19- or 2021, that set a drink on one of our nice pieces of furniture as you walk out the door after a Christmas party, and it put a terrible blemish on this antique piece of furniture. 

It cost me $750 to have that dang thing fixed, and I... Just think how many coasters you can buy for that. 

Roger: An awfully lot. So if people wanna know where they can get your coasters, where are we gonna send them to? 

Bob Labbe: Okay, well, they're available on Amazon, first of all. It's a great location, great pricing there. And then you can go to ultimatecoasterco.com. That's the website. And there's constantly... They run kinda different sales depending on the holiday. I think they had a Labor Day sale. But you can also, you don't have to call any type of, bot. 

You can actually talk to a human being by calling 314-691-2669, and you'll have one of the salespeople answer, and answer any question or take your order, whatever you wanna do. They'll send you samples, whatever you need, and you'll be talking to a human being directly. Not that I'm against bots, 

Roger: That's unusual now a days with all these bots. 

Bob Labbe: It is. 
 

Roger: Bots drive me nuts. So a company that actually picks up the phone is very refreshing to hear about. 

Bob Labbe: yeah. So you got the website, you got Amazon, and you got a direct phone call. And, I just love to service your needs. And like I say, I'm really proud of this coaster because, well, it solved my problem and it really works. And, I just would like to have everybody have one of these and then they wouldn't have the problem with the leather coaster, the ceramic coaster, the cardboard coaster. 

I mean, I got them all here. And , here's a pretty, pretty, colored, flower coaster made out of fabric. And this one actually absorbs the water a little bit, but the problem is the water runs through the back of it and gets condensate on the top of your desk. So it doesn't work either. 

So, but I've tried them all 

Roger: You know, engineering I think has a wonderful background. I always said if I had to do my life over, I would like to be a mechanical engineer because I love inventing things. I mean, I think that's why I love creating websites and things so much. I'm always building something or doing carpentry or, do technical stuff on the computer. 

I'm always building something. I've had a lot of different occupations during my life and, as I look back over it now, the last 50 years of course, I'm going, at every single one of them, when it stopped being creative, I went and did something else. And, so I can definitely understand where you're coming from there. 

Well, Bob, it has been fun talking to you today. I appreciate it, and I hope people will go out and get your coasters. I definitely need to go get your coasters because I have that same problem here. And that will definitely solve it, so thank you very much for attending the podcast today, and good luck on your endeavors. 

Bob Labbe: Roger, I so appreciate you having me and, I know I rambled on a little bit there, but, I wanted to tell you everything that, I thought was important 

Roger: And, it was enjoyable. I learned a lot, and I thank you very much. 

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