Product design that earned CES honors and Best Buy's private label.
Kara Lineal turned a common customer complaint, losing the cleaning cloth or finding it moldy under the sink, into a screen-cleaner bottle with a vented cap that stores the cloth and lets it dry inside.
She designed the bottle, packaging and a how-to video series. The result was a CES Innovations 2010 design honor, a lead video with more than 307,000 YouTube views and a bottle design Best Buy now uses for its Insignia private label.
Digital Innovations | Director of Marketing | 2008 - 2011
-
CES Innovations Design and Engineering Honoree
-
YouTube views on her TV screen cleaning how-to video
-
Best Buy locations selling StorDry design for Insignia screen cleaners
Challenge
In 2008, screen cleaning was a $32 million category growing 22% annually, and Monster owned 63% of it, according to NPD. Digital Innovations ranked fourth, with $1.8 million in sales and a 6% share. Its 9 oz screen-cleaning kit generated about $840,000 a year at roughly 70% gross margin, making it the company’s third-largest product.
But on the shelf, the kit looked much like every other option: a spray bottle paired with a loose cloth. Digital Innovations could not beat Monster on price. It needed to give shoppers a reason to pick up its product instead.
“While product development was focused on the cleaning solution, end users were complaining about the cloth. They lost it, or found it moldy under the sink. Through reviews and surveys, customers told us the problems they wanted solved.”
What she did
Start by listening to customers.
Consumers said they kept losing the microfiber cloth, or finding it damp and moldy under the sink.Be the answer to the problem.
Kara conceived a vented cap that stores the cloth inside the bottle and lets it dry between uses. She designed the bottle, including the piano-black cap with a swirl of drying vents, so it could sit next to the TV instead of under the sink. Company engineers built the 3D models and material specifications, and the design was filed as patent pending.Design the package to grab attention in less than 3 seconds.
She designed the retail packaging to show the cloth-in-cap idea at a glance on the shelf.Educate the consumer about the problem.
She directed and produced a how-to video series for YouTube, one video per device (TV, laptop, tablet, phone, monitor, GPS, camera and MP3 player), showing why household cleaners with ammonia or alcohol damage screen coatings and how to clean each screen safely. The videos answered the question shoppers were already searching for, rather than advertising the product.Expand the concept into a complete product line.
Launched 2 oz version for phones and cameras (airline-approved, $6.99), 5 oz version for laptops and tablets ($9.99), 9 oz version for TVs ($19.99), branded as the StorDry system.
“The self-contained design maintains company branding while keeping the cloth protected and your cabinet organized.”
The results
The Consumer Electronics Association named the kit a CES Innovations 2010 Design and Engineering Award Honoree in home theater accessories. An independent panel of industrial designers, engineers and media judges the program across 36 categories, and the Industrial Designers Society of America endorses it.
"How to Clean an LCD Television or Plasma TV," part of the video series she directed and produced, has more than 307,000 views on the Digital Innovations YouTube channel (as of September 2026).
The bottle was featured in Brand Packaging magazine's Design Gallery: Packaging that Sells (Volume 8, 2010).
Design sold on Best Buy's own shelves: Insignia screen cleaners are sold with the "StorDry bottle design" named in the product description.
Digital Innovations still sells the StorDry ScreenDr line today, more than 15 years after launch.
Why it worked
The product’s cleaning formula was similar to the competition’s, but the packaging stood out. The idea came from consumer feedback and turned into a new bottle design, merchandising and videos that explained it, so the product, the shelf and the message were consistent. The winning strategy (solving a customer problem) captured both market share and shelf space at a national retailer.
Accelerate your marketing engine.
Hire a fractional CMO who has built the channels, the teams, the AI-assisted automation, and owned the results.
