How many of us have at one time or another thought of a super idea for a product that would solve some great problem? Most of us stop at that point, at the imagination station.

But Sari Crevin of Bellevue did not. She is a manager at Microsoft as well as a mother, and she turned a simple idea she imagined into a business that is predicted to hit $1 million in sales this year.

Crevin’s idea for her first product, the SippiGrip, stemmed from her displeasure with how frequently her son, Jake, about 1 at the time, would be left with a dirty or lost cup after it had dropped or been thrown to the ground.

“I figured there’s got to be a better way. I couldn’t find anything out in the market that fit the need of solving that problem, so I just started kind of creating it,” said Crevin.

She confronted the problem by going out and buying an $80 sewing machine, and working on a solution. And that was the first developing stage of the SippiGrip, which is material that attaches a child’s cup to wherever the child is seated – high chair, stroller, etc.

“At the time it was a hobby, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is cute that I’m doing this,’ but I wasn’t really thinking how big it could be,” said Crevin, who handed out her invention to friends and family when she first began creating the product.

Crevin was living with her family in San Ramon, Calif., at the time, and was running her own recruiting and coaching company. Three years after she had started her first company, Microsoft came knocking at her door.

Initially, she was not interested, thinking they would run her into the ground, but with a free trip to Seattle on the table, she followed through with the interview.

“I was just blown away by how smart the people are that work there, how dynamic the organization is,” said Crevin.

Microsoft was building its new division, Zune, at the time, and wanted Crevin to recruit for the department. After her interview with the entertainment group, they assigned her to the Zune project.

Crevin and her family packed their bags and headed to Bellevue, where they have been for about four years now. Wanting to ramp up her career with Microsoft and establish herself at the company, her baby-product project was put on hold.

But about a year later, an opportunity for her product idea presented itself, and her friends and family persuaded her to go for it.

Oprah Winfrey, partnered with QVC, was holding a contest for product inventions, and was calling on people to pitch their inventions for a chance to win a deal with QVC. The closest contest location to Bellevue was Los Angeles.

“The project had been on hold, and I was like, ‘oh, and that’s a plane ticket to LA,’ and I was just kind of hemming and hawing about it,” said Crevin.

She ultimately was persuaded by a friend who was working as an actress in LA. Crevin had helped inspire her friend to quit her day job and pursue her dream as an actress, and her friend wanted to repay the favor.

Crevin didn’t win the contest, but the folks from QVC encouraged her to pursue bringing her product to market.

“And that was the moment that I went into full swing. When I came back I started finding a manufacturer and went through the whole process to try and really bring it to market,” said Crevin.

From that point on, Crevin, while still maintaining her job at Microsoft, began manufacturing her product and building up a business, now called BooginHead LLC.

“I’ve hit a lot of struggles. It’s been a long road,” said Crevin.

Starting with a simple idea, creating it, then figuring out how to manufacture the product and create a business around it is no easy task, and Crevin said she has received a lot of support and assistance along the way.

She said that she was very fortunate to have been able to attend the ABC Kids Expo trade show – the largest juvenile trade show in the country – where she essentially launched her business.

The trade show features booths set up by various companies across the nation, including big names like Playtex and Gerber. When compared to the big name booths, Crevin described her booth as “completely pathetic looking.”

Her dad suggested that she send out a mailer before the trade show, to allow retailers to get acquainted with her product. And it worked. At the trade show, Target came up to her booth and buyers started discussing her product with each other.

“And I was just standing there, almost frozen. I thought, ‘Oh my God, Target is standing at my booth.’ I had no idea what they were talking about,” said Crevin.

And about a week later, Target called Crevin, flew her out to their headquarters in Minneapolis, and put her on their parent-invented products program. This gives 16 parent inventors six months on the shelves in an aisle entitled, “Hey genius, what will they think of next? Parent invented products.”

Crevin paralleled the Target program with getting an MBA, because she learned a great deal about the process of launching a business and made helpful contacts through the program.

Getting great sales from Target, and taking in her experience in the program, Crevin was able to pitch her product to other retailers including Babies R Us.

And she found her current manufacturer online. Steve Lazarus of National Webbing climbed on board with Crevin from the beginning, when her business was very small.

“She came to us a couple of years ago, with a product idea that she was looking to develop. We felt that it was a good match between us,” said Lazarus. “It started out very small and we worked out a lot of details and it’s continued to grow to quite a business on her end. Her product line, the quantity exceeded our expectations.”

Crevin cautions would-be inventors that the journey will have its challenges.

“I mean, there have been times where things got really tough, like I got a really bad customer complaint that brought me down, or a retailer was upset with me, or I couldn’t deliver on something, and I thought, “This is it, I’m done, I can’t do this business anymore, I can’t do it along with everything else,” said Crevin.

But the person that pulled her out of those low times was her constant support system and “cheerleader,” her husband, who consistently pushed her to move forward.

“I know a lot of people whose husbands would be like, ‘Oh, sweetie, that’s cute you have a little hobby,’ you know and not support it. . . . [But] he never once said, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ or ‘I don’t want you to.’ He’s always tried to do what he could to accommodate me doing this because he has always believed that it would turn into something good,” said Crevin.

Crevin was quick to credit the people in her life that helped make her business possible, and she’s already stirring up ideas with how to help others who want to start a business of their own, and provide them with the expertise she has acquired over the years.

“I’m proud that I can say, ‘Wow, I started from literally not knowing anything to being in Babies R Us and Amazon.’ So, even if the business ended tomorrow, I feel really good about what I was able to accomplish.”

Wilhelmina Hayward is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.