“My personality brings people here,” said Mr. Quintero,

N.Y. / Region
The Arbiter of Invention
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/nyregion/the-arbiter-of-invention.html
Character Study

By COREY KILGANNON FEB. 26, 2016

Robert Quintero works out of a tiny office overlooking West 34th Street that is filled with big ideas, and bigger dreams.

Mr. Quintero, 53, is a regional sales director for InventHelp, which helps clients get their inventions licensed, manufactured and marketed.

Gizmos and widgets are brought in every day by inventors who dream of hitting it big.

One day, someone comes in with a device to automatically keep rows of bricks level as they are laid. Another day brings an alphabetized Hebrew keyboard for a computer, or an alarmed car seat to prevent forgetting a child in the back seat.

There was the snow-melting electric blanket someone brought in for laying on walkways or cars, and the parachute for jumping out of an apartment window in case of fire.

“That didn’t fly,” Mr. Quintero said.

The dream is that these products may wind up like the slickly marketed ones displayed proudly on Mr. Quintero’s shelves that InventHelp helped get licensed and marketed — like the Snap Jack Pancake Cutter, or the Side Sleeper pillow.

He pulled out a white plastic computer table with telescoping legs, a prototype by another client, “a Ukrainian scientist who drives a cab,” Mr. Quintero said.

“I got a product going now — it involves banana peels,” he said vaguely, since confidentiality is critical in this business.

Mr. Quintero is InventHelp’s entire operation in New York, and during his 14 years with the company he has become a top performer.

The spiffy crystal Individual Excellence Award trophy behind his desk celebrated being the No. 1 seller of services last year among the company’s 70 sales offices and 80 representatives across the country and abroad.

“My personality brings people here,” said Mr. Quintero, who accepts only clients whose inventions are “something physical, tangible” — no concepts, no apps. They must also have a desire to spend some serious money trying to take them to market.

Roughly 300 people call him each month, but far fewer come in to see Mr. Quintero, who lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, Carola, and has two children.

He was born in Cuba and moved to Miami with his family in 1967 on one of the so-called freedom flights. After some marketing jobs, he moved to New York in 2002 and was hired within days by InventHelp, which seemed a perfect fit for his affable personality, he said, because “people have to trust you enough to share their baby with you.”

The trick, he added, is to be encouraging but still level with the client about how slim the chances are for an inventor seeking to turn an idea into a marketable product. InventHelp’s services require a sizable investment, usually ranging from $1,000 to $18,000, for a range of services that includes researching and preparing product and patent information, conducting market research and submitting the product to manufacturers.

Mr. Quintero said he admitted freely to clients that in all his years with the company, very few of the inventors he had signed up had products that got licensed.

“You have to tell them how hard it is,” he said.

Customers sign disclosure agreements acknowledging those slim chances. Of the roughly 6,000 clients who have signed agreements with InventHelp in the past two years, only 153 have successfully obtained license agreements for their products, company officials said, and only 27 have wound up making enough in profits to recoup what they paid for InventHelp’s services.

Jasmyn Martale, 38, a client in the office on Wednesday, said she knew the odds were long for her invention, an accessory to help children tie their shoes.

It had a catchy name and a low price, and Mr. Quintero seemed excited about it. Still, he reminded Ms. Martale, who lives in Brooklyn and has two jobs and a young child, of the risk.

“It’s a long shot,” she said, “but I believe in my product and I believe in my dream.”

Mr. Quintero said some of his drop-in visits were strange. There was the homeless woman who tried shopping a set of sex toys shaped as figurines of police officers, construction workers and the like.

One of Mr. Quintero’s regulars is Ozzie, a homeless man who for years has been talking up the spaceship he is designing.

Then there was the time a huge man showed up with numerous plastic hospital bracelets on his wrist and a sales pitch that was interrupted by voices in his head, he told Mr. Quintero, who immediately started planning a getaway.

“I got one question,” Mr. Quintero recalls saying. “Are the voices saying anything bad about me?”

EMAIL: character@nytimes.com

THE PARTICULARS

Name Robert Quintero

Age 53

Who He Is Invention consultant

Where He’s From Cuba

Telling Detail When his clients ask him, “Am I going to make a million dollars on this?” he says, “No, you’re going to pay for a chance to make a million dollars.”