Dip-a-di-do-da: Taking Your Table From Drab to Fab

They say necessity is the mother of invention. That was true when Myrf Bowry had surprise visitors pop up for a quick drink, with no time to whip up any appetizers from scratch, and nothing snazzy to camouflage the store-bought hummus container she had on hand. She wanted to be prepared for the next time, but after scouring the internet, and unable to find anything that fit her needs, Myrf decided to invent it herself. The “it” was a simple and straight-forward concept: a dip bowl, that you can drop a standard size, store-bought container into (and pop out of), with an attractive presentation, and a bonus of easy clean-up.

With the help of her business partner Leah Dodge, and a year and a half spent on product development, Dip-A-Di-Do-Da dip bowls were born. It’s no surprise that in 2017 against hundreds of other entries, Dip-a-di-do-da was voted winner of the HSN American Dreams Contest Customer Choice Award.

In between running Dip-a-di-do-da and her busy Virginia-based interior design firm, Decorum, Myrf kindly answered some questions I sent her way. Below is a snippet of the Q&A. The full interview is featured in our online quarterly magazine that accompanies our Spring box. 

Myrf, would you please take us through your journey from interior designer to pivoting to product development and product designer in coming up with the Dip-a-di-do-da concept? How is it the same or different? 

That is a good question and not one we have probably ever thought of before.  I would say in some ways the creative process is the same [with interior design]; you are coming up with a fun and attractive way to solve a problem.  I think the fact that we both have design degrees helped a lot with coming up with the designs for Dip-a-di-do-da.  We are familiar with how most people reach to color and know that scale is important.  On the other hand, I don’t think it was a conscious decision to pivot from interior design to product design.  During the whole creative process of having Dip-a-di-do-da made, we didn’t take any sort of break running our very busy design business.  It was just another part of the day and we figured it out as we went along.  We have had a design business now for 28 years, so making things happen in that business is something we can do in our sleep, however Covid is certainly throwing a wrench in delivery of products now days, but with Dip-a-di-do-da, we had no idea how to have a product manufactured so the whole thing was a learning process, but we reached out to friends who got us in touch with the right people to help, and I would say it went pretty smoothly. 

What are some of the examples of how inspiration comes through in your designs (whether it is with Dip-a-di-do-da or through interiors)? 

[My business partner Leah and I] both love color and pattern. We are constantly surrounded by beautiful textiles and wallpapers.

If money were no object, there would certainly be more complicated designs, but we try to keep our designs somewhat basic, so they appeal to a large audience. 

Given that the dip bowls are plastic, we assume that people are using them for more casual entertaining, so we just wanted them to be colors and patterns that make people smile.  We do love the champagne color, and that has always been a best-selling color, especially as gifts since it will work with any color scheme, or kitchen color.  

Thank you Myrf!