After decades of making wine at his Elk County farm, Angelo Segalla figured there had to be a better way to clean the sediment from empty bottles and jugs. So with a bit of tinkering in his garage, he put some cloth on a metal rod and attached it to a hand-held drill, creating a powerful scrubber.

Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Angelo Segalla demostrates how to clean a jug with his Turbo Scrubber. His nieces have sold about 3,000 scrubbers since May. Click photo for larger image.

Segalla, 68, who lives on 100 acres in the tiny village of Weedville, never thought about selling the homemade tool until earlier this year, when his niece, Mary Meredith of Du Bois, Clearfield County, mentioned that she wanted to start her own business.

Rather than hunt for a new product to market, Segalla's daughter suggested that Meredith take a look at her father's cleaning invention. Within weeks, Segalla and Meredith launched A&M Manufacturing to sell what they dubbed the Turbo Scrubber to wine and beer makers around the world.

Since May, the upstart enterprise, based at Meredith's home, has sold about 3,000 scrubbers. Many discovered the product, which sells for $24.95 to $45 depending on its size, on the company's Web site, www.turboscrub.com.

The scrubber looks like a miniature mop, with chamois fabric attached to one end of a stainless steel rod and a standard power drill on the other. After it's inserted into an empty bottle or carboy -- the jugs in which wine and beer are made -- the drill quickly spins the rod and fabric around the glass. It's recommended that only plain water be used with the scrubber because soap and chemicals leave deposits that can spoil future batches of wine or beer. The fabric, which A&M imports from Europe, can be replaced as it wears out or becomes soiled.

A&M, which has applied for a patent for its scrubber in the United States and Canada, is doing all it can to keep up with orders that far exceeded expectations. Orders took off after Meredith and her twin sister, Margie Wilderoter, of O'Hara, introduced the scrubber at a trade show in March.

"Originally we wanted the product to go nationwide in the first year, but we got that in the first five months," said Meredith, 35. The mother of two young children oversees production and distribution from her home office and shares administrative duties with Wilderoter, a mother of 2-year-old triplets who focuses on marketing and e-commerce.

	Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Angelo Segalla with nieces Mary Meredith, left, and Margie Wilderote. Click photo for larger image.

The twin sisters grew up in DuBois and spent summers swimming, riding horses and hanging out with their cousins at Segalla's Weedville farm. Their uncle, they say, is a self-taught inventor who has always solved problems by coming up with whatever gadgets he needs.

Take his working garage. On one side there's an old school bus with a diesel engine that he reconfigured to spread cinder and gravel on icy, snowy roads.

In the rear, there's a greenhouse where plants are fed with water recycled from the furnace he built on his own.

And next to the garage is a log splitter where he cuts his own wood.

Segalla grew up on the farm and learned some of his skills working in the construction and logging businesses. "Whenever someone needed something, I made it."

Now retired, he spends much of his time in his garage and was the chief engineer and tester for the scrubber when his nieces wanted to modify the prototype to make it more customer friendly.

The owners put up about $30,000 in savings to launch the business, Meredith said. They wouldn't disclose sales but maintained that the venture had started to turn a profit.

The potential, it would seem, would be significant as more and more people pursue wine- and beer-making as a hobby. One trade publication, WineMaker magazine, said its 100,000-plus readers spent $68.5 million annually on supplies and equipment. And that's only a fraction of a market whose members number in the millions, said Dee Roberson, executive director of the Home Wine & Beer Trade Association.

Production of the scrubber already has expanded from Segalla's garage. Though Segalla mills some of the rods, most of the processing is now done at Florio Tooling in St. Marys, Elk County. The fabric is cut and scrubbers assembled, packaged and shipped at Brookville Glove, Jefferson County.

Besides direct sales from its Web site, A&M sells the product through several wine- and beer-making equipment distributors and in specialty retail outlets.

"We put it on the shelf and it started selling in about two days," said Alexis Hartung, an owner of Country Wines, Ross.

Hartung said her customers liked the scrubber because it's fast and doesn't spray them with water as they pull it out of the clean containers.

"It's a good concept. They've taken solid materials that are going to be there for the long haul."

Dennis Narcisi, owner of La Casa Narcisi Winery, West Deer, bought four scrubbers for his wine-making operation, including a large one for containers that hold 1,000 liters.

"They are fantastic. Most brushes don't get into the necks and bottoms of the vessels to clean that well."

The market for the scrubber use isn't limited to wine- and beer-making. A&M also has sold it to a couple of local sewage authorities and laboratories that use it for water testing containers.

Meredith, who holds bachelor's and master's degrees in business from Duquesne University, worked in public accounting and in business development for Hughes Electronics and PrimeStar, the rival satellite television service Hughes acquired in 1999.

When her husband accepted a job transfer from Texas to New York in January, the couple stopped in Du Bois to stay with family while they sold their Texas residence. After she saw the potential for the scrubber, Meredith wanted to stay in Du Bois, and her husband convinced his employer that he could work from home.

Wilderoter, who has a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Notre Dame and a master's in science and industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University, worked for DQE and Allegheny Energy Solutions and most recently as a market analyst for PNC Financial Services Group. She put in full days at PNC and helped manage A&M from home in the evenings until September, when she left PNC as part of a corporate downsizing.

With young children to raise, the women say, the business suits their desire for flexible schedules.

They don't miss the corporate cultures in which they worked for years.

"We're not about optimizing our profits for the shareholders," said Wilderoter. "They wouldn't let us just sit around in the shop and invent things."