U-M Researcher Designs Bookcase

U-M education researcher Dr. Richard H. Ross has launched an enterprise to market nationally a cardboard bookcase he designed himself out of frustration over sprawling textbooks.
Ross' Insta-Bookcase Co., Inc., has been test-marketing the one-piece folded book boxes for the past year at a number of Meijer Thrifty Acres stores.
The test was part of a new product demand survey sponsored by the U-M Graduate School of Business Administration, division of research.
Ross says he is now selling the $2.29 and $2.49 (legal size) bookcases in 25 K-mart stores in Southeast Michigan and hopes to interest fund raising groups in marketing the boxes.
He anticipates sales of up to hall a million a year and is negotiating with Owens-Illinois and other paper processing firms to manufacture the items.
Ross patented his bookcase in 1972 after being inspired by the collapse of a-stack of papers and books he was using on a research problem.
Last-year Ross and his partners, primarily other minority investors, got a loan from the Small Business Administration to develop the project.