Firm’s Belt Clips Expand in Popularity

About a year ago, Terry Ward-Llewellyn, president of Quick Draw & Machining Inc., manufactured what he termed a “dumb idea”--a belt clip that would hold a camera.

These days his idea doesn’t look so dumb.

The camera clip and related clips suitable for holding cellular phones, pagers and other portable electronic devices generated about $500,000 in sales in 1994, and seem headed for much bigger numbers, said Ward-Llewellyn.

Ward-Llewellyn showed off the product line, dubbed the Quick Draw Clip System, at the Invention Convention in Pasadena last weekend.

“In America we’ve probably sold less than 10,000 [clips], but in Europe we’ve sold 40,000 to 50,000 and we have orders pending on a half million,” said Ward-Llewellyn, whose Ventura company specializes in manufacturing parts for the aerospace industry. Aerospace parts accounted for $1.3 million in sales last year.

Ward-Llewellyn said he recently signed a two-year-contract with Marketing Systems of Germany, which will market the Quick Draw line to warehouse distributors in Eastern Europe. The contract calls for the sale of at least 5.5 million clips over the next two years, primarily through catalogue sales.

The Quick Draw products consist of buttons, approximately one inch in diameter, that attach on one side to a camera or other portable device, and on the other side to a stainless steel or plastic clip hooked to one’s belt. Suggested retail price is $29.95 for the stainless steel clip sets, $5.95 for the plastic.

Ward-Llewellyn said his company’s clips are being used at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard to transport doctors’ telephones and by security officers in Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley School District to carry walkie-talkies.