Sylvain Bourdeau had his eureka moment when he spotted the ground littered with cigarette butts outside a Boucherville, Que., bar on the eve of the province’s introduction of its ban on smoking in public places.<\/p>\n
“It hit me like a fl ash what people do with their cigarette butts,” Bourdeau said, 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 cleanup program, referred to a billion butts being discarded in public yearly.<\/p>\n
“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, a streamlined, 1.4-metre-tall hollow aluminum post that can customized in a variety of colours.<\/p>\n
Bourdeau said he added the second K to the name because a search found 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.<\/p>\n
The St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., entrepreneur spent $1,200 on a prototype.<\/p>\n
Bourdeau is marketing his ashtray to all three levels of government (in Quebec there are 350 municipalities alone), bars, restaurants, hospitals and companies that have employees who smoke.<\/p>\n
The price, a few hundred dollars each depending on the quantity bought, includes 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.<\/p>\n
Twenty-fi ve are now being built on order at a subcontracted hometown company he said is capable of producing 50 to 100 a week. The plan is also to rent the ashtrays for events and eventually sell advertising on them, making them revenue-generating.<\/p>\n
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 before long.” He said he also turned down a potential partner who wanted to have the ashtrays made cheaply in China.<\/p>\n