Alex Fees: I’m Alex Fees on Small Business Television. We are coming to you from Cleveland, Ohio at the 2008 COSE Small Business Conference. COSE, that’s the Council of Smaller Enterprises. And Deby Cowdin is here. Deby, good to meet you.

Deby Cowdin: Good to meet you.

Alex Fees: Deby is what, the founder, president?

Deby Cowdin: Yeah, chief, cooking, ball washer.

Alex Fees: All of the above.

Deby Cowdin: All of the above. Yes.

Alex Fees: For a company called From the Blue Bag. Do I have that right?

Deby Cowdin: You have it, absolutely correct.

Alex Fees: Help me here Deby, is there evidence in the title of what your company does?

Deby Cowdin: Yeah, where do you put your recyclables?

Alex Fees: Okay.

Deby Cowdin: In a blue bag.

Alex Fees: Okay.

Deby Cowdin: Blue bag is like the universal recycle bag. My product comes from the blue bag.

Alex Fees: Okay.

Deby Cowdin: So, I take other peoples garbage and create gifts out of them.

Alex Fees: Create gifts out them.

Deby Cowdin: Yes, food functional yes.

Alex Fees: Like what kind of garbage in particular?

Deby Cowdin: Well, what we do is we put up like this facility right here at the IX Center.

Alex Fees: Right.

Deby Cowdin: We put them on a recycling program. Bars and restaurants do not recycle their glass products. If you sit in a bar and a restaurant over the course of an evening, watch how much goes into that garbage can. That garbage can then goes to landfill. Glass does not biodegrade under normal landfill.

Alex Fees: Oh yeah.

Deby Cowdin: You know, the way, a normal landfill, it’s plastic bags, it’s everything else, things only biodegrade when they have animals and dirt and water and things to make them biodegrade.

Alex Fees: Right.

Deby Cowdin: So, they don’t. If you dig down in a landfill or if you’ve ever dug in your garden and found a bottle, it could’ve been there for 20, 30 years, it’s still the same.

Alex Fees: Okay.

Deby Cowdin: So, if you look at what bars and restaurants throw away on a regular basis, landfills get fuller and fuller and fuller so what I do is I take these bottles and I make dishes out of them. We make cheese trays, we make serving dishes, we make ashtrays, we make awards, we just—we’re nominated for the number one eco-friendly wedding gift in the United States.

Alex Fees: Really?

Deby Cowdin: Made out of a flattened champagne bottle.

Alex Fees: Okay, so you break it, this is broken glass.

Deby Cowdin: No.

Alex Fees: No?

Deby Cowdin: No, no, no, no, we keep the bottles in their shape, we put the caps back on and so when you look at it, it’s like, okay, that’s the—bottler, that’s a Jack Daniel's Bottle but what we do is we take that bottle and we reform it so it still keep its outer shape.

Alex Fees: Right.

Deby Cowdin: But it’s the center that is reformed. So, like a Jack Daniel's Bottle, I’ll take it and I manipulate it to make a dish out of it and then when I do to be fun because Jack Daniel's is boring, it’s a clear bottle, I put liquid back in it so when you move it, it looks like there is Jack Daniel's left in the bottle.

Alex Fees: Wow.

Deby Cowdin: So now, you can take this and you can make, you know, a dip out of it. Say you take and make a sour cream dip. Now, in an 80º to 90º a day, that dip is going to spoil rather quickly, right?

Alex Fees: Okay.

Deby Cowdin: I take my dish, put it in the freezer.

Alex Fees: Nice.

Deby Cowdin: This dish will stay ice cold for two to three hours on an 80º to 90º day so you can put your dips and sauces in it and keep it cold.

Alex Fees: So Deby, help me here, do you somehow melt the glass, remelt the glass to shape it?

Deby Cowdin: They are fired in a can.

Alex Fees: Really?

Deby Cowdin: It’s all done with timing and temperature. It took me a year and a half to develop my method and nobody has figured out how I do it. There are people that are trying to do it.

Alex Fees: Really?

Deby Cowdin: And haven’t figured it out.

Alex Fees: And you’re not going to tell them?

Deby Cowdin: No, I’m not. I’ll tell you for a $10,000,000. That’s my going rate today.

Alex Fees: Alright, thanks Deby. I appreciate that.

Deby Cowdin: No problem.

Alex Fees: So, what’s your background? How did this come about?

Deby Cowdin: I’ve been an artist my entire life. The past 15 years, I’ve devoted to glass. I used to do stained glass windows. One year for my birthday, my friends brought me a kiln and on a drunken joke, they dared me with all these left over wine bottles that we had to do something of it.

Alex Fees: To make something out of it.

Deby Cowdin: You know, you’re always professing your recycling stuff; do something with these, don’t throw them away and that’s how it started.

Alex Fees: So, there was alcohol involved in your career choice, pretty much.

Deby Cowdin: Oh yes, yes. I’ve learned how to justify my alcoholism.

Alex Fees: Well Deby, what about your participation here at COSE, is this new for you?

Deby Cowdin: I’ve been aware of COSE before. This is my first year that I’m a member.

Alex Fees: Oh yeah.

Deby Cowdin: Because COSE has what’s called, a COSE Arts.

Alex Fees: Oh yes, right.

Deby Cowdin: So, they have specific needs for artists because being an artistic entrepreneur is a little bit different than a regular business entrepreneur. We run into a few different things that most people don’t run into so it’s been extremely beneficial.

Alex Fees: What about that? What are those things you run to? Am I being any kind of a small business entrepreneurs or difficult enough if you’re an artist, is that a very special niche if you will.

Deby Cowdin: Yeah, because you create a lot so you run into a lot of IP issues which aren’t usually really standard issues in a lot of business. It’s you know, especially because I’ve created something that nobody else is doing. You know, if you open up a restaurant, well there is a formula for a restaurant.

Alex Fees: Oh I see, right.

Deby Cowdin: You know, there is no formula for what I do so I have specific needs that wouldn’t be under your general business practices.

Alex Fees: So Deby, where can people go to get more information about your products? Do your products have a name?

Deby Cowdin: Well they all have different names.

Alex Fees: Right.

Deby Cowdin: We actually have 52 different products that we make out of specific bottles but we have a website, it’s called fromthebluebag.com.

Alex Fees: Fromthebluebag.com, common spelling.

Deby Cowdin: Yes or they can go to the COSE I Buy NEO and we sell at 70 stores throughout the United States so they can go to COSE.

Alex Fees: Really?

Deby Cowdin: And find out where to find us. They can go to my website and find out what stores carry my product. They can go to my website and find out what stores and restaurants are being ecologically friendly and recycling.

Alex Fees: How many products do you have?

Deby Cowdin: 54 I think.

Alex Fees: Are they all recycled? Are they all alcohol bottles?

Deby Cowdin: They are all, no because we do have an olive oil bottle for the non-alcoholic people. Well, we do fund raising with high school kids and they don’t, you know—doesn’t was us to.

Alex Fees: Right.

Deby Cowdin: So, even though it’s an empty bottle, they don’t want us to encourage drinking.

Alex Fees: Sure.

Deby Cowdin: So, we have an Italian chain that recycles their olive oil bottles and we make olive oil dipping trays out of them and then what we do is any of the kids that want to do fund raising and do something different besides the candy bars and magazine and popcorns.

Alex Fees: Oh yeah.

Deby Cowdin: They sell these, for every $20 bottle they sell we give them $10.

Alex Fees: Well, it’s different than the candy bars, the magazines and popcorn, I’ll say that much for you.

Deby Cowdin: And they do very well at selling them.

Alex Fees: Yeah, I would think so.

Deby Cowdin: Yeah.

Alex Fees: All right Deby Cowdin, Deby thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Deby Cowdin: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.

Alex Fees: Her company is From the Blue Bag located at fromthebluebag.org. I’m Alex Fees on Small Business Television, we’re at COSE 2008, the Council on Smaller Enterprises; small and name only, I might add.