My wife and I came back from the International Houseware Show on cloud nine, it seemed to us that the show couldn't have gone any better. We made connections to get on QVC, got introduced to some overseas manufacturers, attracted television coverage and struck a deal with an established company, what more could we have hope for from our first show.

Over the next few weeks I had several conversations with the CEO/ Inventor of the company that wanted to partner with me to bring my Hotdog Ez Bun Steamer to market. I believed we had a deal, after all we shook on it, but with each consecutive phone call I sensed diminished enthusiasm. One day six weeks after the show I got a phone call from the company's CFO that they decided not to go forward with the verbal agreement. It was like someone punched me in the gut, all the air was let out of the room and then a sinking feeling came over my body. As it happened I received that phone call on my way to spend the day with my son riding dirt bikes, one of our favorite things to do. That turned out to be a real blessing, I had to keep a stiff upper lip for my son and riding all day helped keep my mind off of the bad news. Had I been home alone when the call came in I'm sure I would have spent the day crying in my beer and I don't drink. Bottom line, it's back to square one, now what!

Once again I had to pick up the pieces, formulate a plan and get moving. My mom always told me "when the going gets tough the tough get going!" I couldn't produce my product with my US manufacture profitably, I wasn't in a position to start manufacturing overseas and I needed to design and build a bigger version before QVC would give me a shot, but other than that I had this thing licked. Looks like my hopes to find a company to license my concept to was going up in smoke and its time for plan B!