Neighbours and entrepreneurs Stuart and Mike joined forces with award winning design graduate Dexter Wisby as they felt there was an unfulfilled gap in the market. 

Whilst eco-friendly lamps were available, they thought there was room for improvement and set about designing a sustainable, fully circular modular table lamp that looks great and functions brilliantly.

After many discussions, Dexter produced the first set of drawings for the base product –
essentially a sustainable light tube powered by batteries recycled from e-bikes.  The initial considerations for the lamp were as follows:

Well designed, high quality, environmental and sustainable modular lamps that can be
continually refreshed, updated and repaired during their lifetime with user changeable components that do not require specific tools.  All materials can be recycled and reused at end of life.

Key product features:

- Innovative, contemporary & timeless design, ideally attributed to the designer

- High quality

- Modular

- Made from recycled materials that can be subsequently recycled at end of life

- Fully repairable / maintainable by the customer (e.g. easy change of battery pack or LED)

- Dedicated LED

- No glue used in manufacture / assembly

- Rechargeable, dimmable & adjustable

- Touch sensor controlled (if feasible)

Given our strict criteria, the product was continually modified and improved until we were happy with the outcome. 

Now the hard part….

The initial aim was always to design and manufacture in the UK.  However, after a number of discussions with specialist UK manufacturers, we were repeatedly told “it can’t be done”, “the cost will be prohibitive”, or “that’s too complicated for us”.  Therefore, with reluctance, we had to spread our net wider….

So we sent the drawings to a producer we knew well in China.  Not only were they delighted to work with us on the product, they also gave input into design tweaks to make production simpler (some of which we took on board; others – including glue instead of screws – we would not compromise on).  Plus they could produce the lamp within budget.

The first sample of our one lamp arrived with us in late September and, whilst very good, there were a few tweaks required.

We continued work on the lamp shades.  The one lamp is to be launched with two shade variants – a “classic” lamp shade plus a “tot” variation with additional shades to be designed and added to the collection over the coming months and years (some in collaboration with other designers).

Finally, in December, we received the final samples and we're not far away from launching on Kickstarter.