The coldest days of the year are upon us! Sure, we have hot chocolate, stocking stuffers, presents, and decorations to look forward to. But there are also the puddles of slush, frigid air, ice, and dark skies that test our patience during the winter holidays.
Thankfully, there are ingenious inventors like our client Jeannelle Mckenzie who help others get through the harsh winter months with their innovative winter product inventions. She’s the owner of DolceDog and the visionary behind the Leash Mitten – a simple yet brilliant product that keeps your hand warm while you’re taking your dog out for a walk!
Using the Leash Mitten and other winter product inventions as fantastic examples, we’re going to share with you the top three features you should focus on to ensure the success of your next winter product.
1. Keeps You Warm Without Interrupting Your Day-to-Day
Sounds obvious right? Making a product that provides warmth seems quite easy. Gloves, hats, and even portable heaters are widely popular go-to winter products. But sometimes, these product inventions impair our ability to perform certain actions and make it difficult to do day-to-day tasks – like walking your dog, for instance.
You might realize that you’ve forgotten your gloves halfway into your walk. Or maybe you can’t get a strong enough grip on your leash with your gloves on. The Leash Mitten solves these problems by providing a toasty mitten that is embedded in a dog leash, so you can get a strong grip on it while keeping your hands warm. No more frozen fingers!
2. Helps You Stay Dry
What good is a winter product that provides warmth if it soaks up the rain and snow too easily? Being cold and wet is a terrible situation to be in – point blank. This is another reason why choosing the right materials for your product is so incredibly important.
If you want to develop a novel winter product that makes waves in the market, consider designing a product that is waterproof or water-resistant. By the way, these two terms are not interchangeable!
Waterproof materials act as a shield against rain and snow.
Water-resistant materials can only resist water up to a certain degree.
This means if you leave a water-resistant product in contact with a wet surface for an extended period of time, it’ll eventually absorb the water due to the pressure. The Leash Mitten’s exterior is made from waterproof Oxford fabric, which protects the plush fleece lining that ultimately keeps your hand warm.
3. Takes Care of the Ice
When we’re not worried about the cold or trying to stay dry, we’re trying to get rid of the masses of ice that the winter brings and trying not to slip or fall on it.
Sure, there are plenty of products that help us remove ice from devices we need to use daily, like the typical windshield scraper. But there’s always the opportunity to make those existing products better.
In fact, we wrote another blog recently about why familiar ideas are often great ideas. This unique winter product is proof: a heated snow and ice scraper that includes a flashlight for easy visibility during the night.
If you’d like to develop a new winter product, make sure to take these three characteristics into account. As a leading product design and development firm, we’ve helped our clients develop a wide range of inventive products that can be used for specific seasons or throughout the year.
So, if you have a great new invention idea and you’d like to learn more about this process, get in touch with MAKO today and visit our website to find out more. Or feel free to give us a call at 1-888-806-MAKO, and we can set you up on a call with our product strategist!
About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!
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