Good ideas are borne out of frustration and Cathy Bennett's creation of her How Time Flies, 7 minute online scrapbook builder, was no exception. After a disappointing experience trying to create a scrapbook with paper and stickers, she found that she did not have the time or the energy to devote to the task.
"Bennett was guilt-ridden for being a self-described scrapbook dropout. But this former marketing executive figured out a better way. She started working on her idea about six years ago and launched How Fast Time Flies in 2007.
“We are a basically scrapbooking, 2.0.," Bennett said. “I founded the company shortly after that bittersweet ‘A-ha moment’ after trying to scrapbook when my son was 3 weeks old.”
How Fast Time Flies allows its 34,000 members to build individual scrapbook pages in one-tenth the time and half the cost of traditional scrapbooking, Bennett said. “Believe it or not, traditional scrapbooking is still as popular as golf, according to the Craft & Hobby Association. But there are an increasing number of frustrated defectors."
“We've become enormously popular with moms who like the idea of scrapbooking but want a more modern digital solution,” said Bennett, now the mother of Patrick, 6, and Elizabeth, 5.
The new chapter in her business was the recent announcement that New York-based MyPublisher Inc had puchased her company, taking this Mom inventor full circle.
“It’s an intense time for me emotionally,” Bennett said. “The business was always growing, despite the economy and (I was) always feeling like I was swimming upstream. I was part of a whole wave of mom inventors that started five or six years ago. Now to be selling what I started and moving on to the next level — that's intense.”
Read more here: Walnut Creek Mom Inventor Hits the Big Time
