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Bob Martin's daughter flew home from New York watching her cellphone ingloriously lose power and realized she had no idea how to use a payphone before she reached her dad. From this experience Martin was driven to create a better mobile charging solution. The technology behind Reeljuice, an unusually advanced charging system designed by Martin's local firm Lynktec, emerged, as many Chicago tech innovations do, from the hothouse of 1871.
That's where Martin encountered some industrial design employees from the Lake Zurich-based firm PDT (Product Development Technologies), an almost 20-year-old company founded by veterans of Motorola. One of PDT's co-founders also owns Telefonix, which made Martin's 1871 shop talk even more fortuitious.
“[Telefonix] are the inventors and hold over 60 patents for industrial and aerospace grade cord reels,” Martin said. “Their cord reels are used in over 80% of commercial in flight entertainment systems, and you have likely seen them in the aircrafts you have flown in. We combined Lynktec’s desire to expand our product offering into the charging space with PDT’s engineering and close cooperation of Telefonix to develop the worlds first charging pack with a totally integrated retractable charging cord.”
These hardcore tech connections gave Martin the juice he needed to make his idea a tangible reality.
The market for mobile chargers is likely to become much more competitive as more of the world goes mobile, and Reeljuice is prepared to differentiate. “Typical battery packs require you to charge them separately with a AC wall plug and charging cable, and they require you to carry the cable needed to charge your phone with you at all times as well,” said Martin. “Reeljuice integrates all of this into a single device that can recharge a smartphone up to 6 times, and has a 48” integrated charging cord so your mobile device can still be used while recharging.” The result is a gizmo that will make an iPhone or Android device behave like Popeye on spinach.
Right now, Reeljuice exists only as a booming Kickstarter project. Martin said the devices will go into production in early 2015, ship to backers during Q2, and continue to accumulate publicity along the way.
“We are hoping to make a splash at CES in Vegas in January,” said Martin. “We’re excited that it was just announced that Reeljuice was awarded a highly coveted CES 2015 Innovations Award for Portable Power, and we hope to leverage both the Kickstarter and CES success to quickly grow our business to well over $1 million in sales by Q4 of 2015. All the analysts continue to predict that portable power products will continue to grow rapidly over the next several years as many of us with modern on-the-go lifestyles continue to need battery back up. Reeljuice's full integration of charger, battery, and 48” cables should allow Lynktec to quickly gain market share and carve out a niche in this competitive and rapidly growing market.”
