"I should have called it the Marriage Saver instead of the Step Saver," laughs Roger Hansen of his invention, a method of delivering salt to residential and commercial water-softener systems.
Parts of the nation have "hard water," which contains undesirable minerals that infiltrate clothes and clog plumbing. Water softening exchanges calcium and magnesium minerals - which cause the hardness - with sodium.
To eliminate the need to haul and dispose of 50 pound bags of water-softener salt, Hansen of Wood Lake, Minn., envisioned a system where bulk salt would be transported on a truck and blown into a bin in a home basement through a hose connected to an external coupling.
It would save homeowners from a backbreaking task, and for those who hired salt-delivery companies, delivery personnel would no longer have to enter homes. Sure that he had a marketable idea, Hansen applied for a patent that was granted in 1995.
"I didn't have the time or money to invest in the idea so I approached the board of the company I worked for, Equity Elevator & Trading Co., to see if they wanted to develop it," he recalls.
Equity Elevator is a farm cooperative that manufactures and sells grain to livestock producers and provides a variety of other services to its co-op members. Hansen served as a general manager at the company. "The board believed in my idea," he says. "They might not have gone along with it without the patent."
He sold his patent rights to the Equity for $1, which set up a sister company, Step Saver Inc. Equity Elevator continued to own the patent rights and issued a license to the new business.
Step Saver raised $350,000 in seed money by selling shares of stock. The board hired Chuck Steffl, a member of Equity's sales staff, as Step Saver's general manager.
Promoting Step Saver to the local community was a priority. Hansen and Steffl decided to exhibit at the 1996 Minnesota Inventors Congress in Redwood Falls. "We thought we might find investors or people to license the idea," recalls Hansen. "That didn't happen, but we learned a lot there. It's a good show." The invention earned Hansen a gold medallion and was featured in local newspapers, which helped build the fledgling business.
One of Step Saver's first challenges was to retrofit a truck so that it could be used to transport and deliver the salt. The goal was to go to existing salt-delivery companies and license trucks to them, says Hansen. But salt-delivery companies weren't interested. Regrouping, the team changed its sales focus to homeowners.
It cost about $200 to install a filter and the connection so that salt could be pumped into a house. "That was a hard sell," Hansen says. He suggested Step Saver rent equipment to homeowners. "That way the company had equity - the hook ups. So that's what they did; they gave away the hook ups."
Growth was slow. But customer retention was strong. "Once we sign people up, they stay with us," Steffl says.
Sales expanded to commercial customers, such as food processors and manufacturers. Customers include Jennie-O Foods, Kraft, Land O' Lakes, 3M and Boston Scientific, says Steffl.
"In 1996, we delivered 200,000 pounds of salt," Steffl says. "This year, we'll deliver 20 million pounds, and sales will be close to $2 million. We have licensees in seven states."
In 2004 Bixby Energy Systems bought Step Saver. Bixby produces pellet-type fuels that make it a "good fit for Step Saver," says Steffl.
As Hansen looks back on the development of his invention, he's gratified that nearly 12 years after getting the patent, the company is still going.
"I'd advise other inventors that if they have a passion to get their products into production, find a way to hang on...don't let it go."
-- Patent #5,445,192 issued to Roger L. Hansen, August 29, 1995
For more information about Step Saver, go to www.stepsaverinc.com Don't miss the 50th Anniversary of the Minnesota Inventors Congress
June 8-9-10 , Redwood Falls, Minn., www.inventhelper.org, 1-800-468-3681
"I didn't have the time or money to invest in the idea so I approached the board of the company I worked for, Equity Elevator & Trading Co., to see if they wanted to develop it," he recalls. 
