Industrial Design + Product Development
Gerber Legendary Bades came to FUSE to get industrial designs for what they called their clip knife line. These are the almost ubiquitous every day carry in almost every Oregonian’s pocket. All have a pocket clip on the back. We created 100’s of designs internally and presented 15 named knives that we felt were the best. 3 of them made it to production but the TRUSS was the most beautiful.
If you’re a skier or snowboarder you know how frustrating it is when everything is right but your goggles are fogged. It was this problem that client Dave McCullough expressed to his friends Howard Russell and Jack Cornelius. These two friends were sort of the dynamic duo of Patent Atty, Howard and Engineer, Jack. The two did some research and came up with a solution that could address this problem: Heated ITO film. ITO is a transparent conductive material that is sputtered onto a clear substrate. By applying a a voltage across this film, the surface heats up and decimates the fog. Having a firm grasp on the physics of fog, Jack correctly theorized we only needed to get the temperature above dewpoint.
Jack built a quick proof of concept with a couple of large lithium ion batteries and a piece of of ITO film. Next, Jack and Howard came to FUSE with the plan to build a ski goggle and challenge the industry. Long story short, FUSE did the industrial design, brought in the electrical engineer, built two generations of prototypes and completed the database for the final production version goggle. We also found the manufacturer and key suppliers and creatives along the way, named the colorways and even named the the company founded to deliver this new piece of equipment. Abom sold out of their first years production.
After the missing in action Crane Chair prototype, Herman Miller contacted FUSE to participate in a design competition to design a furniture line or system that fell somewhere between Office Depot and the more expensive Contract furniture. We were told it need to be flat packed and Ready To Assemble (RTA). After that, the requirements were up to us. FUSE said “yes” and was given 3o days to come up with something to present at HM headquarters. Our design focused on what we thought all start-ups, fast moving design firms needed. That is: what we needed. We knew we wanted wheels and adjustable work surface heights. We had built our own MDF work surfaced desks and knew how heavy they were. We used this super light structural material called PEPCORE for our work surfaces. We also noticed that all images of all furniture never showed the cords that ran the CPU’s, monitors and equipment that every knowledge worker used . We made our vertical structures into cable ways with multiple access point for cords to enter and exit.
Our design was one of the winners and went on to be prototyped by HM. Ultimately, we lost the PEPCORE work surface as the supplier could not make enough of it, cheap enough, but our design was being manufactured.
Orp was developed after a spate of fatal right hook vehicle vs. bicycle accidents here in Portland, Oregon. It seemed like there had to be a way to make bikes more visible to drivers. It seemed a a loud horn could make this visibility happen. Also with this digital platform we could design our own sounds and have multiple sounds. We were really excited and started with just a dual tone horn but got a big “meh” from targeted users. When you look at the circuitry it got us thinking, it would be really easy to add LEDs wyhout adding a whole lot of volume.
Adding the lights made Orp much more intriguing. You ve got to have a light, right? With a slew of positive feedback we launched a Kickstarter campaign and it did fairly well. Our media coverage during the campaign and after production was amazing. Highlights included the TODAY show, Wired and the Wall Street Journal.
It took a year to get us to production Orps. We went to the factory twice during that year. About a year later we introduced the REMORP-Orp’s Remote. All Orps were built Remote Ready. First year sales were amazing and included the Museum of Modern Art Store. There are around 35,000 Orps in the world and still its growing.
Furilla started life as a gift for a friend but then that friend’s friends also wanted Furillas. Next, FUSE had several projects to enter into the IDSA IDEA competition and we thought Furilla would be a welcome reprise from the more serious ID products the judges would evaluate. Unexpectedly, Furilla won a Bronze. With this small bit of notoriety it seemed like an OK idea to launch Furilla.com, a website that would sell Furillas. Soon enough Furillas ended up all over the world. Furilla was fortunate to slide into then unknown to us blossoming designer toy trend. Furilla got picked up by several media outlets and was sold at KIDROBOT and even had a premier at Chicago’s ROTOFUGI. Above is totally a cover story. The real story involves invitro fertilization and a freak accident.
Late in 2005 KIDROBOT decided they wanted to license Furilla and build production in Asia. We were on board but then the project hit a snag when the pricing swelled beyond feasibility.
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