Retired Utah gardener begins entrepreneurial adventure with invented garden tool
A shot of Wilson Svedin's backyard, provided to the Daily Herald on May 3, 2019.
A section of Wilson Svedin's carefully thought out and groomed backyard and garden, provided to the Daily Herald on May 3, 2019.
A shot of Wilson Svedin's large, thoughtfully planned out vegetable garden, provided to the Daily Herald on May 3, 2019.
A section of Wilson Svedin's carefully thought out and groomed backyard and garden, provided to the Daily Herald on May 3, 2019.
A section of Wilson Svedin's carefully thought out and groomed backyard and garden, provided to the Daily Herald on May 3, 2019.
A section of Wilson Svedin's carefully thought out and groomed backyard and garden, provided to the Daily Herald on May 3, 2019.
Wilson Svedin poses with his invented tool, the Kwik Edge, now available in local garden centers, as well as IFA and Steve Regan stores. Provided to the Daily Herald on May 3, 2019.
A picture of Kwik Edge tools on display for sale. Kwik Edge tools became available to purchase in IFA and Steve Regan stores in early March 2019, as well as a handful of Ace Hardware stores across the country in April 2019. The product is also available to purchase on The Grommet and KwikEdge.com.
When Wilson Svedin moved with his wife to their Riverton home in 1974, he said the first thing he started working on was their backyard.
Now, 45 years later, Svedin’s backyard can be described as a lush oasis, with a large expanse of green grass, several garden areas with flowers and flowering trees, and a large vegetable garden. Svedin event built his own greenhouse a few years back, so as to keep certain plants alive during the winter to be replanted in the spring and summer, such as succulents, basil, tomatoes, and flowers of all kinds.
Svedin gained his love for gardening at an early age.
“I grew up enjoying my grandpa’s garden because of the flowers,” Svedin said. “My dad’s vegetable garden was just work. But in the process I think I gained an appreciation for it.”
A lot of what Svedin learned about gardening was from watching his dad and helping him out. Counting those early days as a child, Svedin estimates he’s been gardening for 60 years. None of his five kids seem to have inherited his green thumb, or at least, they don’t have the space to apply it in, but Svedin said, “they all appreciate it.” Thursday, he said one of his daughters was bringing over a group of young women to take a gardening class from Svedin.
As a gardener, one of the things Svedin takes the most pride in is having neat edges around his flower beds and vegetable garden, something that can be a struggle when dealing with grass continually growing into the flower bed. Svedin used to use a shovel to trim the edge of the encroaching grass and throw soil back onto the flower bed, which is an awkward way to use a shovel.
“I just thought, there’s gotta be … an easier way than using the shovel in a way that the shovel is not designed to be used,” Svedin said.
His dream tool for maintaining his edges, he decided, would include a vertical blade to trim the edge, a horizontal blade to cut out encroaching roots, and a curved part to groom the soil back into the flower bed.
Svedin took his idea and the rough draft of a design to the foreman of the machine shop at his place of work — Svedin himself has no experience welding or creating tools. Svedin said there were several prototypes, but eventually, the foreman was able to craft Svedin’s dream tool: the Kwik Edge.
Svedin was happy to just use the tool to maintain his own garden, but after he retired three years ago, he decided to see if his tool could be marketable to fellow gardeners.
“I thought that I would give it a shot and see if other people like it as much as I do,” he said. “Turns out, they do.”
Working as a production and purchasing manager for most of his career, Svedin stepped into the totally new world of entrepreneurship. One of the first things he did was apply for a patent on the Kwik Edge, which he now owns. Then, with the help of his son, a son-in-law and his wife, Svedin connected with Ensign Group International, a company that provides global management solutions such as sourcing, manufacturing, quality control and logistics.
The company helped Svedin find a manufacturer in China, and right away, Svedin invested enough to purchase 4,000 tools.
“I think we got the cart ahead of the horse a little bit,” Svedin said. “(We didn’t have) a market plan or anything because I didn’t know how to do that … once we got the tools, then it was serious.”
His son developed a website where the Kwik Edge could be sold, and almost exactly a year ago, Svedin said he scheduled an event on Facebook just right in his yard and sold 125 tools. After that, he continued to do all of his own fulfillment — selling the rest of the 4,000 tools in a matter of months via his website. Svedin said he was shipping anywhere from 50 to 120 a day before he decided he needed to “get his life back” and contracted with a warehouse fulfillment center.
Working with Ensign Group International however, Svedin was also able to connect with companies like Ace Hardware, which in turn connected him with The Grommet, where the tool has sold ever since.
On his own, Svedin approached IFA Country Stores to see if the company was interested in selling the product. Last year, Svedin brought the Kwik Edge tool to an IFA trade show, where several garden centers placed orders for the tool, as well as IFA itself. Now, Svedin said, the Kwik Edge can be found in all IFA stores — except for the one in Las Vegas.
“There’s no grass in Las Vegas,” he said.
Svedin also approached Steve Regan, another company that sells farm and gardening products, about selling the tool in their stores and said the company also placed an order and now sells Kwik Edge. The retail price of the tool is $32.95 and it only hit stores like IFA and Steve Regan at the beginning of March 2019, and a handful of Ace Hardware stores across the country in the month of April.
It hasn’t exactly been the restful retirement he planned for.
“I’m not sure I was prepared for any of it,” Svedin said. “It isn’t something that I want to continue to do, (it) wouldn’t bother me at all if someone else did it and I reaped the reward. But how to get to that point is a process that’s a little bit unclear.”
Svedin said there are new opportunities for selling the tool sprouting up all over the place, so there hasn’t been a lot of time to consider his own path to a second retirement.
“We’ll just have to see. I’m pretty confident that opportunities will present themselves and we’ll be able to work it out one way or another.”
In the meantime, he’s at least reaping the rewards of having people truly enjoy his product.
“It’s quite satisfying to see people liking something that I’ve developed.”
The Kwik Edge is available to buy in IFA, Steve Regan and a handful of Ace Hardware stores, as well as online at https://thekwikedge.com. On his website, Svedin also keeps a blog where he gives gardening advice.