About Daynin J. Dashefsky

Daynin Dashefsky, president, chief executive officer and founder of marketing and promotions firm GFI Associates, is an accomplished inventor and entrepreneur who has turned her creative ideas into breakthrough new products. Her product lines have been featured in catalogues and sold at elite boutiques, toy specialty stores, drugstores, membership warehouses and mass merchandise retailers worldwide.

Having successfully brought her “2 Kids” and “2 Cool Fashion” storage Care'rousels and No Fly Zone inventions to market, she has single handedly solicited and secured contracts for her products to be sold at Wal-Mart, FAO Schwartz, Sam's Club, Zany Brainy, Toys-R-Us, Military Exchanges (AAFES), Watson's Drug Stores (Hong Kong), Long's Drug Stores and Framacia El' Amal (Puerto Rico), and Lillian Vernon catalogs to name a few.

Capitalizing on her experience in taking a concept to fruition and then launching that product to retailers and consumers, Daynin leads international seminars to teach inventor hopefuls how to utilize do-it-yourself materials from her Inventor's Tool Kit. She also consults with entrepreneurs who desire her expertise and guidance to help them avoid the pitfalls she faced marketing her new products in a competitive marketplace. Her private clients include established and up-and-coming entrepreneurs, small business owners, doctors, housewives, students, realtors, chiropractors and mortgage brokers, and many others.

Now 43, Daynin divorced at age 37 with two young daughters – Kylee, now age 10, and Briana, age 8. As a single parent with a knack for woodworking and auto mechanics, Daynin put her creativity to work and built a new career inventing products so she could be her own boss, work from home and spend more time with her daughters. From the start, it was clear that she was meant to be a “mompreneur” as she was often lauded for her incredible vision, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking behind ideas for new products.

Her first product, the No-Fly Zone, came to be after her mother complained about having to use a palm leaf at an outdoor family barbecue to keep flies away from the food. Her practical solution was the creation of a battery-operated canister with swirling streamers to shoo insects from the picnic table. Patenting and marketing the No-Fly Zone taught Dashefsky the complex process of being an independent designer, manufacturer, distributor, saleswoman, promoter and finance planner.

Raising $100,000 from family and friends to finance her first venture gave her the start she needed, and Daynin has never looked back. She then successfully secured nearly $1 million in investments to create and market a complementary product line for young girls and ‘tweens: the Hair, Nail and Jewelry storage Care'rousels introduced in 2002-03.

Born and raised in Nanakuli, Hawaii, Daynin is the third eldest of seven children whose humble beginnings growing up on welfare planted seeds for her desire to succeed as an internationally recognized entrepreneur. Graduating with only a high-school degree from Nanakuli High School, she pursued both corporate and creative careers working as a legislative aide, kitchen & bathroom designer and executive assistant to the president of one of Hawaii's largest architectural firms. Having spent seven years creating, launching and marketing new products, she has earned the equivalent of a four-year college education through what she calls the “School of Hard Knocks.”

In addition to being an entrepreneur, Daynin is an award-winning competitor in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and is also a contributing writer to regional and national publications, including Pacific Edge magazine which runs her “Mother of Inventions” column about inventing and TapOut magazine, an international martial arts magazine that features her monthly column, “The Stronger Sex.”

She and her daughters currently live in Kailua, Hawaii.