With only five more sleeps to the St Patrick´s Day Wellie Race up the Alps, I am a bit too busy with wellie race prepping to write a blog posting. So instead, for you dear blog reader´s edification and pleasure, I am enclosing a excerpt from an article published in the New York Times on March 2nd last about Sugru. If you don´t know what Sugru is, you will after you read the article.
- And check out the chicken with the foot way down at the end of the article.
New York Times:
Sugru, a Versatile Glue From Ireland, Gets Help From Web
Photo
Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh, inventor of Sugru, with her product at Sugru headquarters in London.
Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times
It
can fix a broken statue, repair a frayed iPhone cable, add a rubbery
grip to a kitchen knife, make those Bose earbuds fit better, repair a
leaky boat — and even create a prosthetic leg for a chicken. So, what is
this product?
It is Sugru, and it is being heralded as the product you never knew you needed — until you did.
Sugru
is a moldable glue. It looks like Play-Doh, can be shaped around any
object, sticks to almost any material, is waterproof, is heat-resistant
and dries to a silicone rubbery finish in 24 hours. Its ability to bond
to virtually any surface — wood, glass, metals and ceramics among others
— and its moldable nature make it unusual in the world of adhesives,
sealants and glues.
“I
wanted to design something that was so easy and so fun to use that more
people would consider fixing things again,” said Jane Ni
Dhulchaointigh, the Irish entrepreneur behind Sugru. Even the name is
taken from the Irish word “sugradh,” which means “play.”
Bridget Grunst, a buyer for Target Corporation stores, admits she was skeptical before meeting Sugru’s team in the fall of 2014. After all, Target already carried more than 40 glue products in its home improvement section alone.
“Did
I roll my eyes? Yes,” she said, laughing. “I mean, glue is not the most
innovative category out there.” But all of that changed when Ms. Grunst
met the Sugru team and watched in amazement at the myriad ways, both
practical and creative, that the glue could be used. The iPhone charger
repair was the clincher.
“I
have frayed cords at home, and it’s a unique way to fix it versus
having to go buy another charger for $50,” Ms. Grunst said. Sugru’s
rubbery flexible finish allowed it to repair charger cords, which
superglues, with their rock-hard finishes, cannot do, she said.
That
Ms. Ni Dhulchaointigh (pronounced nee-GULL-queen-tigg) would develop a
product like Sugru would not have been easy to predict.
Born
in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1979, Ms. Ni Dhulchaointigh grew up on a farm,
where her father, John, worked as a farmer, and her mother, Eilis, was a
teacher. As a youngster, she had an artistic bent, making paintings and
sculptures. She received a degree in fine art from the National College
of Art and Design in Dublin in 2001 and a master’s degree in product
design from the Royal College of Art in London in 2004.
It
was at college where she first started experimenting with clay, silicon
sealants and other materials for sculpting. She would bring them home
and soon started using them around the house — wrapping the putty around
knife handles to get a better grip, using it to fix a leaky kitchen
sink stopper, adding it as rubber “feet” to the bottom of a laptop and
repairing a mug handle.
Her boyfriend, James Carrigan, who is now her
husband, noticed her clever repairs and suggested she try to market it.
When
she showcased the prototype at a student product design exhibition in
2004, the response was overwhelming, she said. “The top two questions
were: ‘How much is it’ and ‘Where can I get it?’ ” she said. She knew
she had a potential hit..............
It took five years, 5,000 experiments and 8,000 lab hours to
perfect and patent the formula.......
In 2009, she took the social media route, sending samples to dozens of
technology bloggers, in the belief that if they saw its potential role
in repairing information technology equipment, they’d promote it.
The strategy worked. “It went viral,” she said. When the company introduced its website in December 2009, all 1,000 packages, which took two months to make by hand, sold out within six hours. An additional 2,000 were sold on back order. “It was incredible; it changed everything.” Photo Credit: Andrew Testa for The New York Times.
Suddenly,
“investors were reading about us all over the Internet, and they
started coming to us asking how they could help,” she said. Time
magazine listed Sugru, alongside the iPad, as one of the top 50
inventions of 2010. (note from moi: Sugru came in on the TIMES list 3 places ahead of the Ipod!)
Sales
topped $5.5 million in 2015, up from $3.4 million in 2014 and $250,000
in its first year in 2010. Ms. Ni Dhulchaointigh expects sales to exceed
$10 million this year and $60 million by 2020.
It
is now sold online to more than 160 countries and through 19
brick-and-mortar retailers in 6,050 stores in four countries. In the
United States, 10 retailers carry the product in 4,500 stores.
Sugru’s ability to bond to virtually any surface and its moldable nature make it unusual in the world of adhesives, sealants and glues.
If
a user makes a mistake, a sharp knife can be used to cut through
Sugru’s rubbery surface, removing it without damaging the surface of the
repaired item. With other two-part hard-core glues, “once you put them
on something, you can’t go back. They’re on there forever,” she said.....
A motorcyclist has used Sugru to mount a camera to his helmet, and then went on a ride down the highway filming his journey.
Lauren
Richardson, an aerobatic pilot in Britain, used Sugru to strap a camera
to the outside of her plane’s wing, so the camera could capture her
flips and turns.
“There were some really clever fixes and really wacky ones that made us laugh,” Ms. Ni Dhulchaointigh said.
And
then there’s the chicken: When a fox attacked a pet hen at a family’s home in Cork, Ireland, the hen lost a leg. So, the owner, a retired engineer, built a fiberglass prosthetic leg and used Sugru to add chicken feet to the prosthetic.
The chicken now walks on two feet. Credit
via Sugru ---------------------------------------------------------
You may think I am enclosing this piece because everyone loves a great story with an ´ahh factor´. Especially me. But there is more to the story than that.
And that story is how I found out about SUGRU.
My
friend Susan in
Canada sent me an e-mail here in Germany with good ways to budget etc. One tip came from a site called the Everday Cheapskate based in Los Angelos in the U.S. The Everyday
Cheapskate has been telling America on T.V. and in print media how to
live cheaply for 20 years. And the Cheapskate´s plug for the 1st of July 2014 last was SUGRU.
SUGRU struck me becuse it is the Irish word for ´play´. I recalled hearing some years earlier in the coming and going of life at home in Kilkenny that one of the Delehantys up the road, ´had invented a great thing for sticking things together´.
The idea came to me that this might well be the great sticking together product that one of the Delehantys up the road had invented.
And I was right! I found the SUGRU website, and could see that the Jane in the
video on Sugru was the spit of Mrs. Delehanty up the road. Jane could have easily been a Delehanty from up the road. And she was. And so there you are!
See link to more articles on Jane Delehanty and her Sugru below.
- So now go out and buy some and have fun with your Sugru all day!
P.S. For the alert, confused and frazzeled Ní Dhulchaointigh (pronounced nee-GULL-queen-tigg) is the Irish form for the surname Delehanty.
P.S. For the alert, confused and frazzeled Ní Dhulchaointigh (pronounced nee-GULL-queen-tigg) is the Irish form for the surname Delehanty.
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