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The first company she approached offered to use their tools to create the boxes, then backed out. The second manufacturer Mateer called ( Plano Molding, though she doesn't name the company in her book) was interested, and hired her to launch Caboodles. ' initially hired me as a consultant to create the line, market and develop the brand, set up the rep force and sell the product to the retailers,' Mateer writes.

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'As I didn't have the capital required to launch a full product line, this manufacturer immediately took ownership of the brand and the products and invested all the capital required to create, market, and sell the product. I became an employee of this company.' Later in Blueprint, she acknowledges that she gave the idea away: 'I was given something that money cannot buy-hands on experience … I often say that Caboodles was my college education.' Mateer left Caboodles in the early '90s to start a competitor, Sassaby, that was purchased by Estee Lauder she did eventually return to Caboodles as a consultant.

SHE CAME UP WITH THE NAME IN THE BATHTUB. 'I knew that the name needed to be colorful if it was to appeal to my target audience-teens,' Mateer writes in Blueprint, and she wanted it to be a C word. 'I was sitting in my bathtub reading a huge Oxford English Dictionary,' she recalled. 'I came across 'Caboodles,' which had a definition of 'a collection or clutter of things.' How perfect, I thought, for an organizer box.' 5. Just as the name had to be colorful, so did the boxes themselves. To come up with just the right ones, Mateer and the manufacturer visited 'a local discount store where I chose four brightly colored plastic hair dryers in peach, yellow, pink, and purple,' she writes. THEY HIT THE MARKET WITH THE TAGLINE 'THE WHOLE KIT 'N' CABOODLE GOES INTO A CABOODLE!' As she was checking out, she told a clerk who was curious about why they were buying so many hair dryers that they were for her new product, Caboodles-it was the first time she had named her idea out loud. The first boxes, called 'on-the-go organizers,' hit the market in 1987. They were a runaway hit, selling 2 million units in the first two years. In 1992, The New York Times reported that an official at Plano said the company 'now sells far more makeup boxes than it does tackle boxes,' and that 'nearly 80 percent of the teen-age girls in the country are aware of Caboodles.' Eventually the line grew to 70 products, which retailed between $5 and $40. THE ORGANIZER'S FIRST COMMERCIAL WASN'T EXACTLY PROGRESSIVE. In the ad, which came out in 1988, two sisters hear from their brother that his friend is coming over 'in his Porsche.' The girls quickly run upstairs to get dolled up. The sister with the Caboodles case is ready in a snap her sister, not so much. The friend with the Porsche? He turns out to be a nerd. One 13-year-old fan from a suburb of Minneapolis told the Times that 'she and her friends would make fun of any compatriot foolish enough to show up at a slumber party with a rival brand.' Way harsh. 'Little ones can use the Caboodles Playsets for fantasy play,' Meredith Moss wrote in the Dayton Daily News in 1993.

'The cases come with a little fashion doll and have themes ranging from a beauty spa and beach to a workout gym and a wedding.' There were also necklaces equipped with tiny Caboodles 'that open to reveal an accessory inside.' 10. In the early '90s, Caboodles partnered with Mattel to release a Caboodles Barbie. The doll retailed for $12.99 and came with 'a real makeup case and glitter beach makeup,' according to a 1993 ad. DEBBIE GIBSON APPEARED IN A CABOODLES COMMERCIAL.

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