Fueled by a Desire to Improve and Innovate
Sir James Dyson did not invent the vacuum cleaner. He became frustrated when his Hoover lost suction and the filter became clogged with dust. His motivation was to improve the vacuum cleaner so that it neither required a bag nor lost suction. We know what happened next.
Foldable hand carts are not a HandiWorld invention either. As outdoor people, we experienced an obvious weakness with the concept. They only work on smooth surfaces. As soon as the wheels meet an obstacle, rough terrain, sand or a step the load carrier becomes harder to pull, unbalanced – often with the load spilling causing discomfort and frustration for the person pulling.
As a business focused on making it easy to move stuff from A to B, our motivation was to improve the foldable hand cart so that it could be used on the beach, over rough terrain and up and down steps with less physical input whilst keeping the load balanced. The solution lay in finding a way of adding our innovative and advanced CAMBA wheel technology to a suitable load carrying frame.
Working with Therefore, a leading London based product design agency, we set about to conceive our own frame design and produced the first prototype – Moo #1 in 2010. We continued to develop the HandiMoova along these lines and further prototypes were produced – Moo #2 in 2011 and Moo #3 in 2012. The CAMBA wheels worked great and everything was going to plan until…
Product Design is never a straightforward process
In early 2013 we hit a snag. Two issues arose. Firstly we could not find a manufacturing partner who could produce the frame to the required tolerances and secondly it became clear that a bespoke frame would be very expensive.
Then we had our light bulb moment. What if we added CAMBA wheels to a load carrying frame that was already being manufactured?
After beating ourselves up for a couple of seconds as to why we hadn’t thought of this in the first place, we set about sourcing a folding kart to test our idea on which gave way to Moo #4. The results were immediate and so we then set about sourcing the right sized frame – Moo #5.
Nearly there
Finally in the autumn of 2013, we started to put our current prototype Moo #6 through its paces and found a great manufacturing partner who could do everything that we wanted. Now we are focused on preparing the HandiMoovas for production.
So it’s taken nearly four years, a lot of investment (both time and money) and pulling miles to get to where we are now. Have we achieved what we set out to achieve? Unquestionably the answer is yes. Has it been worth it? We will let our customers decide that.
Although this particular story finishes here, we hope that your journey with the HandiMoova has only just begun.
