Stop by the Zelco booth 3549 to wish this family-owned business—best known for the Itty Bitty Book Light—a happy anniversary: it’s been 35 years since Noel and Adele Zeller began the company .
It’s been almost that long that they’ve been attending BEA, according to their daughter Nicole Zeller, a v-p of the company. “We’ve been attending since the 1980s,” she says. She will be at the booth, together with her sister and co-v-p Gabrielle, and their mother, Adele, who is Zelco’s president (and the inspiration for the Itty Bitty Book Light).
“The company started in 1976, out of the basement of our home,” Nicole explains. “My mother thought that since women were going back into the workforce, they needed a small, inexpensive light for their purses, so they started out by selling a small flashlight.”
The success of that purse flashlight motivated the Zellers to design their own products. “My father designed and engineered a fluorescent lantern—the smallest ever made. We called it the Pocket Fluorescent Lantern. That was the first item that put us on the map, and MOMA put it in their permanent design collection.”
In 1982, Noel Zeller created the Itty Bitty Book Light so that he could read in bed without disturbing Adele. Surprisingly, bookstores weren’t interested. “It was a hard, tough sell,” Nicole Zeller recalls. “There were so many independent bookstores at the time, and nobody wanted to take it; they all told us, ‘We only want to sell books.’ Then a Barnes & Noble buyer decided to take a chance. She brought it, and us, to Lenny Riggio and they gave us a chance when no one else would. They were the first ones to take it, and it sold. It still is sold in Barnes & Noble. ”
At the show, the company is showcasing two popular new items: the E-Reader Book Light and the E-Book Cradle. The E-Book Cradle, Nicole says, “actually stemmed from last year’s Book Cradle. We all use e-readers. So we changed up the Book Cradle and made it an E-Book Cradle. It’s comfortable for reading and becomes a bookstand. It doesn’t matter what age you are, holding a book—or e-reader—becomes cumbersome after awhile. So this takes the weight off. It’s ergonomic.”