A Whirlwind Year

It has been a good year for Nancy Tedeschi, who invented an eyeglass repair kit and patented the SnapIt screw. “I have gone gangbusters,” she says.

Tedeschi, owner of the Clearwater-based company Eyeego, has watched her sales soar as she hopscotches across the globe and opens new markets for the kit. She just returned from a trade show in Japan, where she found plenty of interest in her kits, which make repairing eyeglasses easy and inexpensive. “I'm going around the world, doing licensing deals,” she says.

Tedeschi has also discovered the wonders of offspring in the patent world. In addition to the original SnapIt patent, she is obtaining patents for different dimensions of the screw. Two new U.S. patents were issued this month, and more are coming.