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A PRODUCT hitting shelves this week at New York area motorcycle
dealerships has a surprising history: It was created at the
New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library.
The product, Detail Devils, is a portable kit for $39.95
that provides ''everything but the bucket'' to clean a motorcycle,
including five types of cloth and eight two-ounce bottles
of potions like tar remover, bug remover and leather conditioner.
In auto lingo, ''detailing'' means a thorough cleaning to
make a set of wheels look like new.
Sean Sabol, a former bartender and the man behind Detail
Devils, credits the library and its staff for steering him
to the resources and research materials he needed to turn
his big idea -- one of dozens he's had over the years -- into
reality.
''I designed it all myself, all with the help of the library,''
Mr. Sabol said on a recent morning at the library, which is
housed in the rear of the former B. Altman department store
building, at Madison Avenue and 34th Street. ''You have no
idea what they have here. I'm not the college-educated guy.
I'm the street-educated guy. This has been my college.''
Mr. Sabol, 49, is one of more than 63,000 entrepreneurs,
investors and small-business owners who have been trained
at the business library to search its thousands of print and
electronic resources for real-life business applications.
The library is one of four specialized research centers operated
by the New York Public Library.
The $100 million library, planned with New York's businessmen
and women in mind, opened a decade ago with a research collection
of 1.2 million books, millions of patent documents and more
than 110,000 periodicals. Since then, it has evolved into
a dynamic, industry-focused learning center that takes advantage
of modern technology with databases and classes tailored to
New York industry sectors, said Kristin McDonaugh, the director.
In its first years, the library offered eight classes on
topics like how to use the Internet for research. Last year,
it offered 100 evening seminars taught by industry professionals,
including garment business executives and real estate brokers,
as well as 22 classes during the day. Topics for the 75-minute
classes last week included patent research, creating customized
lists for companies and contacts, and finding company and
industry information for career transition. The classes are
taught in rooms equipped with a computer for each attendee.
All classes and services are free.
''Accessibility is not just about giving someone a card and
letting them in the door,'' Ms. McDonaugh said. ''We are training
people to discover, exploit and use our riches.''
To expand its reach, the library offers how-to business videos
on its Web site. The latest, taught by Chuck Hunt, executive
vice president of the New York City chapter of the New York
Restaurant Association, gives tips on how to open a restaurant.
Mr. Sabol, who was born in the Bronx above his grandmother's
bar and now lives in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan,
first visited the library in 1999 after he and his three brothers
lost $252,000 on another of his ideas, a humidor in the shape
of a golf club called the Puffer Putter. It was designed to
protect cigars in a golf bag.
''We did everything on trust,'' said Mr. Sabol, who has been
a motorcycle enthusiast since he was a teenager. To avoid
another painful mistake, he sought professional help at the
library for Detail Devils. He ended up spending entire days
tapping into databases and attending classes, some of which
he took more than twice. Miguel Velez, 25, a college student
and part-time technical assistant, has been helping Mr. Sabol
use the library's electronic resources for several years.
''He was quite nervous at first,'' Mr. Velez said. ''I started
showing him one of our company directories. He came the next
day to do another search.''
Mr. Sabol's library visits are paying off. Last summer, a
venture capital firm he learned about at the library led him
to a business partner that is manufacturing and distributing
the kits. This is the first such venture for the company,
American Banknote Corporation, a $220 million international
printing business in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., that specializes
in printing stock certificates and manufacturing credit cards.
The deal with American Banknote gives Mr. Sabol a share of
the profits, $2 per kit. According to Pat Gentile, American
Banknote's chief financial officer, if the product is a success
in the United States, distribution may expand to Australia
and Brazil.
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