We’ve all been there, that embarrassing moment as you knock over your half-full drink, spilling it everywhere and then having your head hung low as you retrieve something to clean up your mess, and this embarrassment is only doubled when in public.
“Spilling your tumbler is, well, just not fun, and a case of the spills can be devastating!! Sip Savor is the last lid you will ever need to cure all cases of the spills!” reads the first line to the lids story on Kickstarter, but there is way more to the story than what the crowdfunding sight tells you.
Sip Savor is the first crowdfunded project by a new product innovation and design company based out of GoCreate called Shift 4.
The year-old company is made up of 4 GoCreate members: Max Atefi, Brady Sherman, Hessam Vali, and Eddie Smith. The four of them met through GoCreate and bonded over their love of designing and creating, causing them to create Shift 4.
“We propose everyday problems and throw out those problems and ideas that we have [to each other] throughout the day,” said Atefi, one of the three engineers in the group. Going on to say that this particular idea came from a friend of the group, and fellow GoCreate member.
The Sip Savor was one of thousands of ideas that Shift 4 has come up with and for the fledgling company it appeared as the most likely to survive on the market.
“We have a process,” said Sherman, the lone marketer in the group. “How much does it cost? What is the market value? What’s the manufacturing time? Is it manufacturable?”
It was the spill-proof lid that survived through out all that criteria and had even progressed past the initial prototyping stages with the final product being used by Atefi. This iteration of the Sip Savor was 3D printed by the National Institute of Aviation Research (NIAR), a luxury that can be afforded GoCreate members because of the two companies’ close relation with each other.
Now the company is on the hunt for a manufacturer to mass produce their product, a new experience for Shift 4.
The Sip Savor has been entirely new ground for the year-old product company, they said that normally they come up with ideas, flesh them out and then try to pitch them to companies to license the product. Instead the group decided to drum up support first via Kickstarter.
Before taking the Kickstarter approach the company said they had produced concepts for somewhere between 10 to 20 products.
The group laughed that it was difficult to get in contact with companies to pitch their ideas.
“But since we launched our Kickstart and [the Sip Savor] we have gotten in contact with companies that are what we needed but didn’t know before,” said Smith, a longtime member and mentor at GoCreate.
“It’s better that we start our own companies, or even development, then there’s more interest that we attract, because they see we are the real deal and they understand that we aren’t playing around,” Atefi interjected.
Currently the Kickstarter only has 10% of their $10,000 dollar goal, but the team remains optimistic of succeeding in getting the Sip Savor off the ground. Especially since they partnered with Fight for the Forgotten a nonprofit that seeks to provide potable water for areas that safe drinking water is scarce.
“Our main goal is to create products that help people solve their problems,” Atefi said. “When you talk about problems people always sometimes think of something crazy that is out of reach, but problems could be very simple that hasn’t been tapped ye. We try to find those problems that can be solved within our capabilities, and our current goal is to solve as many problems as possible.”