Bottled Up

Bottled Up

ENTREPRENEURS by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

A Gulf Coast entrepreneur hits the bottle, with the hope of grabbing a piece of a billon dollar-plus industry.

Good thing Steve Klein thinks big.

The retired New York educational-toy store entrepreneur and inventor will have to as his latest concept, or as he calls it, KleinCept, is aiming to take a chunk of profits from the billion dollar-plus plastic bottle industry. Klein, who now works out of his Lakewood Ranch home, has created what are essentially toy blocks from plastic drinking bottles.

"I've taken something that would normally be trash," he says, "and I've given it educational value and environmental benefits."

The patent-pending system works similar to Legos, only the pieces are empty bottles of Sprite, water or any other bottled beverage. With the caps removed, says Klein, the bottles can be screwed together end-to-end and locked in place. Throw in a few plastic accessories and the possibilities, Klein says, are as infinite as a child's imagination: It can become a tiny village, giant alphabet letters or even an oversized ring toss game.

The benefit to the bottling company, says Klein, is that instead of consumers tossing bottles into a trashcan or recycling bin, they keep them - and the company's logos. Considering the millions of plastic bottles used yearly, Klein is potentially tapping into a gigantic market.

Klein, a relaxed 64-year-old with a graying ponytail who looks like he would be more comfortable behind a drum set than a business desk, got into the bottling business through his son, who was thinking about working for a bottling company a few years ago. The elder Klein started tinkering with some empty bottles around the house until the idea to make a toy out of it came to him in the middle of the night.

Still, Klein, whose past life includes public schools; tech companies; and founding the Learning Store, Ltd., a Long Island, N.Y., based chain of 15 toy stores catering to blind and deaf children, isn't looking to become a bottler.

Instead, he's trying to license the technology and product to big bottling companies, such as Pepsi or Nestle. He showed off the bottles, and some toys he built with them, at the International Bottled Water Association's annual trade show late last year, where he said the response was all positive.

And Klein hopes his timing is perfect, too, with the green trend percolating in nearly every business and companies looking to capitalize with environmentally friendly-products. In the near future, Klein predicts, consumers "will choose the beverage not only because of what's inside the bottle, but because the bottle has a second use."

'I've taken something that would normally be trash and I've given it educational value and environmental benefits.' Steve Klein, president, KleinCepts, Inc.