Aki Barber
Kelvi Carrying System
During my time at RCd consultancy, on of the major clients I worked for was Kelvi, Hypothermia Devices Inc. Kelvi creates Cryo/thermotherapy devices for physical therapy and sports medicine.
Their flagship product is a set of wraps or “HEM”s that fill with temperature controlled water, which comes from a unit about the size and weight of a toaster oven. I was tasked with developing several different carry cases / luggage systems to intuitively, and safely house the individual HEM wraps as well as the temperature controlling unit.
I decided to dive head first into rapid prototyping to get a real understanding of how products would fit. Once a prototype was approved, I moved into CAD (Rhino/ Autodesk 360/ Illustrator) to refine product designs and manufacturing details. This product went through many iterations as I worked with our client to create a solutions that reduced individual SKUs.
Our client wanted to produce these cases/ luggages with a 400 minimum order quantity and at a relatively low cost. This meant I had to find a Chinese manufacturer with a modifiable luggage that they were willing to produce in low volume. After finding and negotiating with several manufacturers, our CEO went to see the facilities in person. Once selecting a vendor, I then worked directly with the manufactures to modify open market products to create a unique solution with reduced tooling and development costs.