{"id":22513,"date":"2018-09-24T18:50:28","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T18:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikkwit.com\/?p=22513"},"modified":"2018-09-24T18:50:28","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T18:50:28","slug":"ashtray-tower-hits-the-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ikkwit.com\/en\/2018\/09\/24\/ashtray-tower-hits-the-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashtray tower hits the market"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

 <\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n

ds could make them revenue generators<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Sylvain Bourdeau had his Eureka! moment when he spotted the ground littered with cigarette butts outside a Boucher-ville bar on the eve of Quebec’s ban on smoking in
\npublic places. “It hit me like a flash what people do with
\ntheir cigarette butts,” Bourdeau said yesterday, recalling his May 30 epiphany.<\/p>\n

The image also reminded him of Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay’s pledge to clear city streets and sidewalks of unsightly cigarette butts.<\/p>\n

Marcel Tremblay, the mayor’s brother and city councillor in charge of the clean-up program, referred to a billion butts discarded in public yearly. “I had a vision and two days later, I got to work on it,” Bourdeau said of his subsequent invention – the patent-pending I Kkwit Ashtray Tower.<\/p>\n

Bourdeau, an Ecole des hautes etudes commerciales marketing graduate, said he added the second K to the name because a search found that the word “kwit” was already taken for another product. <\/p>\n

“Besides, the letter K has strong business association to companies like Kodak and Kellogg’s,” he added. The St. Jean-sur-Richelieu entrepreneur – he and his father, Jerome, started up Jer-B-Syl Inc. and the younger Bourdeau continues to operate the manufacturer of polyethylene baskets and trays for fruits and vegetables – spent $1,200 on a prototype of the 1.4-metre-tall ashtray.<\/p>\n

Bourdeau is marketing the aluminum ashtray to three levels of government (350 Quebec municipalities alone), bars, restaurants, hospitals and companies. The price, a few hundred dollars each depending on the quantity bought,
\nincludes installation, a choice of 400 colours and a 10-year guarantee even though Bourdeau suggests the ashtray will last at least 25 years without rusting.
\nTwenty-five are now being built on order at a subcontracted hometown company he said is capable of producing 50 to 100 a week.<\/p>\n

The plan is also to rent the ashtrays for events and eventually sell advertising on them, making them revenue-generating. Bourdeau claims he refused an offer of $250,000 last week for 30 per cent of the company “because I think my business will be worth a lot more than that
\nbefore long.”<\/p>\n

He said he also turned down a potential partner who wanted to have the ashtrays made cheaply in China.<\/p>\n

“I insist in staying in Quebec,” Bourdeau said. “I’m already creating local jobs with this project and I’d like to see something made in Quebec that will eventually be exported worldwide.”<\/p>\n

Although he hasn’t yet officially contacted them, Bourdeau wants to donate $10 from the sale of each ashtray to the Canadian Cancer Society.<\/p>\n

For more information: 514-823-7919.
\nmking@thegazette.canwest.com<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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