Young inventor markets cost-saving tie wire

Catanduanes Tribune

The Philippines’ youngest inventor, 22-year old Dexter Teope of Virac, holds the patent for a cost-saving construction material that he hopes would become as indispensable as steel bars.
Already, boxes of the prefabricated Galvanized Iron tie wire are being sold in local hardware stores at just P85 per kilo, saving the construction company or house owner more than 20 percent in labor costs. The Japanese contractor of the Gogon bridge construction project has, in fact, indicated its interest in purchasing the prefab tie wires.
What is now a promising business for Teope began as a worm of an idea when he was 12-year old Grade 6 student and playing at their neighbor’s house then being constructed. "I wondered why it took so long for a worker to cut and bend the wire when it could have been sold as a ready-made material," Dexter reveals.
He kept the idea at the back of his mind for the next several years, during which he graduated from a local school, the Catanduanes Colleges, as a computer technician. He then went to Manila to work as a waiter at the Shangrila Hotel in Makati. After a year he went back to Virac where he began putting on paper his ideas, some simple and some so complicated it required many moving parts.
In 2003, the tall and boyish-looking inventor established a computer shop at the house of long-time sweetheart Annaliza "Little" Garcia while she worked as a physical therapist for private clients.
In May 2004, he traveled to the United States on a tourist visa and worked as a photographer on board cruise ships for destinations as near as Mexico and as far as Alaska, trying to save money for his trip home that December.
It was in January 2005 that he finally filed his application for the Philippine patent of his invention at the Intellectual Property Office, paying a total of P2,500 in fees. While waiting for his patent to be approved, he exchanged wedding vows with Little on June 4, 2005, capping seven years of togetherness.
A year later, the couple were in Manila, following up papers for Little’s working visa for the United States, which would be issued by the embassy in May 2006.
On November 18, 2006, Dexter finally got Patent No. 2-2005-000060 for his prefabricated tie wire and began making the simple machine that would manufacture his invention.
He had already perfected the machine, built from P300 worth of small pipes, bearings and tire spokes, in Manila when he ventured to visit a 35-story condominium being constructed in España. His sales pitch to the contractor worked so well that the latter asked him to deliver 10 tons of the tie wire. Stunned, Dexter regretfully told the contractor that he had only 10 kilos available. Still, he took as a great inspiration the contractor’s instruction for him to come back if he already had the 10 tons ordered.
Dexter went back to Virac and had three more of the machines fabricated. Today, his GT Manufacturing provides employment to five households in barangay Rawis, with mothers cutting tie wire into standard lengths while watching TV.
At the house of his parents, Dexter employs four machine operators and one packer, who altogether produce 140 kilos of the prefab tie wire daily. Each box of 20 kilo-packs is sold for P75 per kilo to local hardware stores, which sell them for P80 on retail.
His 63-year old father, retired school principal Osias Teope, says his son, the middle of three children, probably in inherited his inventive streak from his grandfather Telesforo who did not finish schooling but was good at Math and even memorized every stanza of the Pasyon.
Osias’ wife Zenaida, now 61, continues to work as a Home Economics teacher at the Taytay Elementary School next door while eldest son Erwin runs a cellphone repair shop while youngest Maria Zenia has a job with Slimmers’ World in Manila.
Dexter remembers that as early as Grade III, he already exhibited his creativity. "We were out camping and we had no alarm clock. So I took a piece of "katol", lit it and noted the time it took for the "katol" to be consumed," he recalls. He took another piece, tied a piece of string to one end, looped the string to an overhead nail, and on the other end of the string tied a pebble, below which lay a cooking pot. When the "katol" was consumed, the pebble fell noisily on the pot, waking us up, he said.
Among his other ideas, about 80 in all and carefully drawn on paper, are a seatbelt harness for tricycle drivers, a multi-circuit connector to replace the junction box in electrical systems, and a head massager built from discarded electric fan covers. One particular invention, a safe fireworks igniter that was a finalist in an invention contest in Manila, got him featured in an ABS-CBN segment in 2004.
Dexter laments that he will have to leave the prefab tie wire business to his dad as he will have to join his wife, who left to work abroad last July, in the United States and finally have children of his own. But, he assures, he will continue to bring the rest of his 80 ideas to fruition, so he can help provide employment to his provincemates in Catanduanes.