Shoe ID Tags -- RoadID, SmartID and Who's Shoes ID?

The following caption to a picture on the front of Wednesday's City & State section of The Houston Chronicle caught my eye: "Shoe tag is not a game. After seeing the thousands of children separated from their parents after Hurricane Katrina, Mary Lynn Fernau reacted by inventing the shoe ID tag, soon to be worn by 5,600 Galveston school district children."

My first reaction was (thinking about both my RoadID and SmartID shoe tag) "She didn't invent anything!" Especially if she marks her invention date to after Hurricane Katrina.

Well, as it turns out from reading the story on page 2, it is the writer (Ruth Rendon) that gets the timing of events a little out of order.

The story leads off, "After seeing the thousands of children separated from their parents after Hurricane Katrina, Mary Lynn Fernau knew she had to help in some way."

But it is divulged later in the story that it was the Galveston school district officials that found Fernau.

"Last year after Hurricane Katrina, we had meetings, and one of the things that came up early on was the city wanting to work with the school district to provide some sort of ID for all of our children," Christine Hopkins, spokeswoman for the Galveston school district, said.

"At that time I did a little bit of research and found Who's Shoes ID."

The web site and the article stress that the idea for the ID kit "evolved after Fernau's son spent three hours in a hospital emergency room without her knowledge. Her son could not remember her cell phone number and was not treated until she, as his legal guardian, gave consent."

The article continued to explain that her son "had spent the night at a friend's house and got a fishhook caught in his finger. Fernau had given her contact information to the friend's parents months earlier, but when her son was hurt, the friends could not find the information."

So you ask, "It is a worthy and noble proposition so Jon, "What's your rub?' "

I think it is the fact that she actually makes the claim that she invented it when the RoadID advertisements had been running in the national magazines that I had at the end of 2003.

In fact, an Internet search actually turns up a November 1, 2001 Inside Texas Running product review of both the RoadID and SmartID products!

I checked the "Who's Shoes ID" web site and found that "Who's Shoes ID" is a trademark of The Fernau Group, Inc. and has a US Patent 6,684,543 B2.

I continued to check the U.S. Patent office and pulled up the number to find that Fernau filed the application on June 11, 2002 and it was granted on February 3, 2004.

Here's a section of some of the language of the description in the patent: "Preferably at each end of center region 25, such as at connections 54 and 56 as shown most clearly in FIG. 6, glue, ultrasonic welding, or other means may be utilized with the hook and loop connectors to form an extremely strong and durable interconnection of upper strip 12 and lower strip 14. Although not the presently preferred embodiment, connection 24 could conceivably be connected along its length, if desired. Interconnection 24 and center region 25 are positioned midway or at least approximately between ends 30 and 32 of shoe mounted identification assembly 10."

If you look at the RoadID web site, most, if not all, of the media examples that they provide is of their metallic "dog tag"-like ID chains. However, one of their varied products is a steel-inscribed shoe tag version (I have one). The SmartID version, which I think is produced by Houston-area runner Gail Sabanosh, has been given out to Power In Motion participants (at least the fall 2004 session that I attended).

It is noble that Fernau donated 6,500 "kits" to the Galveston Independent School District and the story of the contribution is currently on a media blitz throughout the state of Texas. A web search on Wednesday pulled up a Galveston Daily News story that went on to state the following:

Fernau designed a tag that could be attached to a shoe using a Velcro strip.

She then lined up a company to produce the tags.

In the three years since producing its first tags, Who’s Shoes Inc. has sold about 250,000 identification kits. It has distribution points in England, Australia and Canada, and the kits have gone to 20 countries.

“In our second year, we were in the black,” Fernau said.

Fernau said she had seen statistics indicating that 4 percent of patented inventions manage to cover their costs.

“So we’re in pretty select company,” she said.

The idea, though, isn’t to make money.

“If it was about the money, I’d be doing something else,” Fernau said.

In fact, both Fernau and her husband do something else. Fernau works in marketing, primarily in the oil and gas industry. Her husband is a news producer for a Houston television station.

Hmmm .... 250,000 at $7.99 a pop (from the company's web site) is about $2 million! Granted the per piece profit margin has to be low. However, if you weren't making money why would you publicize such a contribution?

For me, I think I'll stick with RoadID and SmartID as the identification products that I would recommend to other runners as well as any of the other practical uses for such a product.