He's the daddy of the Scrub Daddy

At age 41, Aaron Krause, a husband and father of 6-year-old twins, most certainly is old enough to speak for himself.

Yet, it was his father who best explained why his son - frequent wearer of orange sneakers in honor of his beloved Philadelphia Flyers - has 10 patents and three more pending.

"He's very clever and creative," Robert Krause, a retired cardiologist from Wynnewood, said of the middle of three children born to him and wife, Marilyn, a retired pediatrician.

That's the child who, at 13, rewired telephone lines to get phone service in his bedroom when his parents wouldn't buy it for him. The child who, while still in high school, transformed the family garage into an auto-detailing shop.

That venture grew into a post-college detailing business in Bala Cynwyd, which led to a manufacturing business, Dedication to Detail, that developed buffing pads and related accessories. It made Aaron Krause and a partner millions of dollars when 3M Co. bought it in August 2008.

"He just keeps getting ideas," Robert Krause marveled about his son.

Aaron Krause's latest is a yellow circle of highly engineered polymer measuring 4 inches across and 1.5 inches thick, its center carved into a smiling face. Called Scrub Daddy - because guess who has dish duty at home in Voorhees? - the scratch-free sphere of essentially rough foam is Krause's answer to the kitchen sponge and more.

Callus removal, exfoliation, and grill cleaning are among the other uses the Scrub Daddy can handle, says the orange box it comes in, the color another nod to the Flyers.

For home games, Krause, a season-ticket holder, is regularly seen in Section 102, Row 14, at the Wells Fargo Center holding a bobblehead doll of himself holding a bobblehead doll that looks like Krause. (Yes, you read that right.) He usually is wearing a Flyers jersey with the name Kricker - a blend of two nicknames - across the back.

But back to Scrub Daddy. Its texture adjusts with the water temperature - hard for cold, soft for hot. Its head is a series of ridges (spiked hair, if you will) for more scrubbing power, or, as Krause put it, to give the otherwise inanimate object "a radical look which adds to the personality of him as a cool dude, as in Daddy's the Man."

The eyes accommodate two fingers to eliminate slippage while in use. The mouth is designed to clean both sides of a utensil once inserted. And because the material doesn't cling to debris – although coffee grounds do find their way into pores - a Scrub Daddy has gone at least a couple months without becoming smelly, Krause said.

"I know this is the best thing out there to scrub your dishes with," he asserted from a conference room at a factory in Folcroft, Delaware County, where Scrub Daddy is made.

Funny thing is, Krause wasn't out to improve the dishwashing experience. He had wanted to find a more effective way to clean machine grease off his hands.

In coming up with what were unique double-sided, beveled-edge auto buffing pads and attaching systems that wound up capturing 3M's interest a few years ago, Krause and colleagues had developed equipment needed to make those products.

That meant Krause - a psychology major at Syracuse University because he found business classes "boring" - spent hours each day tinkering with and fixing machinery. That left him with dirty hands he couldn't get clean.

He started experimenting with a variety of materials, creating a hand scrubber much like Scrub Daddy that Krause started marketing in 2007 to car washes, auto-body shops and other customers he had cultivated through the buffing-pad business. Demand was not high, and Krause's interest waned as he focused on closing the deal to sell Dedication to Detail to 3M.

As part of that transaction, Krause agreed to continue working as a consultant for 3M, developing new buffing pads, as well as manufacturing techniques and attaching systems for the pads. He also continued to run a separate business doing much of that same work.

Cleaning up after dinner one night, he came across the circle of foam he had designed as a hand scrubber. He had used it to clean a pot of tomato sauce and was impressed by how "bright and clean" it looked afterward. That's when Krause concluded: "We're missing the boat. It's not a hand scrubber. It's the best pan scrubber."

In August, Scrub Daddy was introduced to the buying public through another Krause enterprise, Innovative Accessory Products Inc. Nearly 400 have been sold since then for $3.99 each through the company's website, www.getiapstuff.com, and at a friend's ShopRite stores in South Jersey, where Krause has been making pitches once or twice a week from a homemade double-sink display he sets up in the stores. His goal is to get it on retailers' shelves.

John O'Brien, 29, of Folcroft, started working with Krause more than nine years ago and is now operations manager of the multiproduct company with nearly $4 million in annual revenue and 60 employees. He described his boss as "a genius" whose creativity "makes you . . . see things from a different perspective."

Krause's "office" is a cluttered corner of the Folcroft factory/warehouse. It consists of lots of Flyers paraphernalia, artwork by his son and daughter, and a desk. On that sits a 36-inch computer screen and airplane-simulator controls. The never-still Krause intends to get a pilot's license as he continues to invent.

He says he has four more inventions he can't talk about yet. Perhaps more impressive than that is that Krause has yet to encounter a day that has felt like work.

"This is like coming to a giant playground," said the daddy of Scrub Daddy.

Aaron Krause explains his latest invention, the Scrub Daddy, at

www.philly.com/scrubEndText