Rubber Bandits
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Rubber Bandits are rubber bands with tear resistant attached labels. They are designed to aid tasks involving labeling, bundling, and documenting of items.
Rubber Bandits were conceived by Adrian Chernoff during a trip to Boulder, Colorado to visit his brother. He had earlier promised his mother that he would enter a Staples, Inc. invention contest. He devised the concept while riding on a shuttle bus en route to Boulder. Once in Boulder he made a one-page sketch of the idea and submitted the idea to Staples. About a month later he was informed that he was a finalist, one of 100. At this point he began work on actually making prototypes. After about six weeks of spare time doing research and development he had completed the prototypes. He then made a presentation to Staples in Cincinnati, Ohio, which placed him in the top ten contest entries (of 8300 submissions), and eventually the product was put into mass production.