“I’d put a lid over the meat and try to pour grease into a can where the meat would fall out or you couldn’t drain all the grease,” Bell said. “It was frustrating. I kept thinking, ‘Of only I could have something placed over the meat to hold it in place and have a funnel to easily drain the grease, it would be helpful.’”
Buuble launched on QVC with 3,500 units in November 2023 and December 2023, selling most of its units during the airings with its remaining units sold out on the QVC website in early 2024. Bell also launched the product on Amazon in November 2023 with 1,500 units, where it sold approximately 5,000 units to date with sales steadily increasing.
In early 2024, the product started garnering 5-star reviews and quickly became an Amazon’s Choice and Amazon Overall Pick, badges that indicate that a product is highly rated, well-priced and available to ship quickly.
Bell, who grew up in Kettering, moved to California after graduating from Fairmont East High School and earned a business management degree from Pepperdine University. She returned to Ohio in 1996.
Bell said she became a “serial inventor” 10 years ago when she was senior IT project manager at data analytics and consulting firm AIMIA and companies were starting to outsource IT jobs overseas.
“Our entire IT department was outsourced in 2015 and I decided to become a full-time inventor,” she said.
Bell’s first invention was Coach’s Stool, an adjustable seat with a spring that was for catchers and coaches to use.
“It took the place of an uncomfortable bucket that was commonly used,” she said. “It was actually the brainchild of my husband, who’s an ex pro-catcher. However, I brought it to market, sold it for a year ourselves and then sold it to Schutt Sports. They eventually discontinued it.”
Bell’s next product was passwordsFAST, which she invented in 2010 while an IT project manager at Reynolds & Reynolds. She said the invention came to her at a time “when passwords were just starting to be a big problem to remember” because an increasing amount of things required them. Because of that, people were making weak passwords and writing them down, she said.
“We had an ethical hacker come in and he was able to get 95% of the company’s passwords, including the CFO’s,” she said. “I thought there must be a way to have strong passwords all in one place offline, but only have to remember one.”
She brought the product to market in 2015 and it was one of only 10 products chosen out of thousands of submissions to be on the Today show in its “Next Big Thing” segment. Bell then appeared on QVC with passwordsFAST three times and the product sold out every time, she said. Available on Amazon, it has amassed worldwide sales for nine years, but Bell said when inventory is gone, she will no longer sell it.
When Bell was inventing Buuble, she looked for similar products online and discovered there were none. In 2020, she worked with a company to create a 3-D model and created a prototype she showcased during the “Inventors Corner’ portion of the Inspired Home Show in Chicago.
Bell said her main focus these days isn’t on inventing anything new.
“I have something in mind, but right now my main focus is growing Buuble ... because it’s got huge potential,” she said.
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