Amy Schleicher

Warehouse Duties: Creative Director

I began my career as a child learning that if I wanted that Cabbage Patch Kid stroller, someone was going to have to pay for it. This is when I learned that a hard day’s work would pay off, whether it was picking up trash at one of my father’s construction sites or babysitting, I was always looking for ways to earn money. My family taught me the value of hard work and by age 11 I was babysitting full-time on summer break, and I got that stroller!

I went to College with the help of my family and basketball scholarships and while I took the first year off to concentrate on my studies, I was soon back to work…I just couldn’t stay away. After graduation I got an awesome job in sales with incredible perks. Working 60+ hours per week, averaging $500,000 in sales monthly and consistently being a sales leader moved me quickly into a management position. The hours got longer, the perks better and soon business grew to over $3 million in sales monthly. Yes, you read that right.

Closing in on my thirties I really wanted a family and knew that long hours along with working nights and weekends were not going to cut it. That’s when Kenny Durham introduced me to the world of Intellectual Property. I soon fell in love with the idea of a normal work week and with IP and the excitement of being creative and working with a bigger goal in mind.

My second year in the IP world I won the coveted Analyst of the Year award for bringing in more revenues than my coworkers and the following year I scouted several products that sold in auctions for hundreds of thousands of dollars each and the top one selling for $5 million to one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. I loved every minute of it, but simply could not accept the failure rate on the patents we were trying to commercialize. I saw so much good stuff come across my desk to accept the fact that so many patent owners never realize their own dream. I worked closely with inventors and saw first hand their struggles, and while I fielded a lot of homeruns, mostly I watched a lot of strike-outs as frustrated patent holders spent thousands and had nothing to show for it.

I found out Kenny felt the same way, and that’s when we decided to take a leap of faith. To try and do things our way, putting in a hard days work and leaving no stoned unturned, doing everything in our power to help our client partners realize their dreams. I am so excited about IW’s future and the opportunities it’s creating for our vendors, clients and the community. Here’s to proving the industry and naysayers wrong. Here’s to getting you your Cabbage Patch Kid stroller. So long failure rate.