OLD

Dorel Juvenile makes great children’s products, and they wanted to take back market share in a competitive space. Numerous manufacturers have patented every high chair folding mechanism they can imagine, to hamper the development efforts of other companies. In Dorel’s case, the situation was even more delicate: their production factory owned the patent for their folding mechanism, essentially forbidding them from seeking other options for manufacturing (& forcing them to use the factory’s limited design capabilities). Dorel challenged us to innovate an entirely novel folding mechanism that didn’t violate any existing patents, & lower their production costs in the process.

In just 9 weeks, we developed a mechanism that didn’t just satisfy Dorel’s requirements, but exceeded them. As desired, we delivered a new folding mechanism that didn’t infringe upon the intellectual property of their factory’s old design, freeing them to switch to a less protective manufacturer & create completely new designs.

However, our new folding mechanism also decreased the chair’s folded size by 20% (resulting in enormous savings on shipping the product in bulk from overseas) & allowed the product to stand upright while folded, drastically improving the chair’s usability.

Applicable Patent: US9561816B2 - Compact foldable stroller with one-handed fold control