Duped! Part 2 - The Design You Don't See

In August, I announced in this video and blog post that our Classic Unbelt had been duped.

After that, I collapsed for a full day. Apparently, I had feelings to feel? The next day, I packed those feelings up and brought them to work, visiting local steel fabricators, machinists, industrial designers...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Today, I shared a second video of me experiencing the awkward discomfort of doing a side-by-side comparison with our own imitator. 

Getting cozy with our dupe (left) - consider us flattered.

Here's my secret - it was actually kind of fun to show all those little details and remember what it was like to be 26, pre-biz-launch, and single-mindedly focused on getting a brand-new physical thing out into the world.

Of course it stings that another company is profiting from that work. Nonetheless, design-nerd me really wants to get into the weeds with you about the intention behind Unbelts' smallest details.

Every product has a thousand choices behind it, and a designer whose job it is to make sure you don't notice most of them. Let's get into it:

Case study 1: the Classic Unbelt buckle 

I launched the Classic in 2011 after prototyping in my living room and subjecting all my loved ones (and, to be honest, a good many loose acquaintances) to months of prototype testing.

The buckle was inspired by the cinch belt on my grandmother’s 1950s-era nursing uniform. The three-dot design was cute, but it needed a lot of refinement to become a functional, flat belt for jeans and pants. 

Classic buckle inspo - also, how gorgeous are those lapel watches? 

When you’re manufacturing something from scratch, every single aspect has to be specified to *very* fine detail. For the buckle, this included:

• All dimensions, including buckle thickness (to the millimetre)

• Edge radii (to the millimetre, because no one likes a knife-edge sharpness on their belt buckles)

• Core material (we chose recycled zinc alloy because it doesn’t beep in airport security)

• Coating material (we specified nickel-free)

• Finish colour/texture/shininess (our first buckles were distressed bronze; now, our most popular is matte silver)

Our buckle factory is woman-owned. Here's one of their employees, nicknamed "Mr. Handsome" because, well, he is. Here's him finalizing a 3D rendering of our design.

After my first year in business and three customer surveys about buckle form and function, I added extra curves and notches to make the buckle easier to close and less poky at the corners.

The new mold (below) cost about $1,500, but I thought it was worth it for an improved customer experience. This is the design version that our dupe uses. Gah.

Our second Classic buckle mold. Every edge in the mold is hand-filed to ensure smoothness; the inner zinc alloy pieces then get plated (below) with our chosen colour and finish.

Before plating (left), and after (right).

Case study 2: Intrepid Unbelt elastic

The fruit of my labours, and by labours I mean sprints across trade show halls, graphic design conversations about "upside-downy U chains," and midnight phone calls with Mr. Wang, our recycled elastic supplier.

When I was prototyping our more rugged stretch belt in 2018, I knew I wanted a sturdy, grippy elastic made from recycled materials. Unfortunately for me, rPET yarn (made from discarded water bottles) was very new on the market, and my original elastic supplier wouldn’t use it. 

I ended up getting on a plane and flying 13 hours to attend Intertex Shanghai, the largest textile trade show in the world.

I spent two jet-lagged, adrenaline-fuelled days jogging among thousands of vendors playing matchmaker between the few rPET yarn suppliers and the even fewer elastic suppliers willing to risk their time and machinery to try knitting with this unfamiliar material.

Moving so fast at Intertex that I'm actually blurry. In my backpack is SuperPen, my daughter's superhero lookalike that I photographed all over town and sent pics for the human Pen to wake up to. This is momming and working in action. Photo credit: the inimitable Amanda Wagner, who braved the trip with me.

The result, after four more months of prototyping, was the Intrepid elastic we still use today. I’ve never felt another elastic like it, and because it’s customized, we have to order literal kilometres at a time. Every metre is inspected by hand before it’s shipped to Edmonton to be cut and sewn.

Recycled PET yarn being knitted into elastic.

If you're curious, here’s the cost breakdown of the Intrepid elastic's development process:

• Plane ticket and travel visa for me - $1,450
• Plane ticket for my mom-in-law to come to Edmonton to help my partner with our kiddo while I was away: $800
• Mental health recovery from mom guilt (to the flight attendant who once said “You left your BABY?!” when I went to pump in the airplane bathroom - my therapist says thanks for the tropical cruises you financed) - TBD
• Boxes of Dare maple leaf cookie and smoked salmon supplier gifts so they’d like me enough to do business across very inconvenient time zones. It worked - $200
• Post-trip supplier video meetings to verify certifications, discuss quality standards, build relationships, assess “fit,” negotiate payment terms, and apologize for my Mandarin mistakes - many, many hours
• In-person factory visits by China-based colleague to ensure continued alignment with our Supplier Code of Conduct - $500/day, 1 day quarterly, ongoing - $2,000 for first year
• Prototyping fees for top two suppliers for 1.25” and 1.5” elastic in 3 different tensile strengths, with and without silicone (12 variants total) $2400
• Opening order from Mr. Wang, our chosen supplier - 4 colours - $15,000
• Total: $21,850

Remember - all that was just the elastic. Our Intrepid belts also required materials choices and sourcing (ie. trade show visits and supplier cups of tea) for the:

• Buckle

• Adjuster

• Thread (heavier-duty than we use for Classic)

• Care label

• Brand label - the cute little one that holds a key or dollar bill

• Packaging

And this isn’t even the design of the product itself for aesthetics and performance. Some of the details included:

• Stitch types - single straight stitch looked too wimpy for our rugged elastic. We tested zig zags and straight stitches of various lengths/widths before deciding on a bartack.

• Elastic width - had to fit inside belt loops, but not be so narrow it would pinch or roll

• Elastic length and size range - what was the broadest range we could cover without sacrificing product performance at either end of that range? How does the elastic’s performance change when it’s doubled back on itself vs. single-sided?

• Elastic tensile strength - how huggy is too huggy? 

• Buckle usability - do people intuitively know how to buckle and unbuckle it? Are there any uncomfortable corners (à la our original Classic buckle)? 

• Colour trend research and colour-matching (side question - why are Pantone swatch books $1000? BTW, if anyone wants to borrow mine, it’s from 2011 but works great

Plus! Pre-launch operational investments like:

• A lifestyle photo shoot (with friends and friends-of-friends modelling, but we paid them so they'd still like us), styling, location scouting, professional photographers - thank you, Cooper & O'Hara and Dallas Curow at Luminarie Creative

• A product photo shoot for web and catalogue images, plus detail shots

• Graphic design of silicone pattern, brand labels, packaging, and marketing illustrations - thanks, Andrew Benson at Studio Hazel

• Front- and back-end website updates to support new product and inventory category - Sonder Creative, love you

• Warehouse re-organization to accommodate new category of raw components, in-process goods, and finished products

Lastly - I can’t *not* count the years and Sunday brunch waitressing tips spent on my industrial design and Mandarin language education, without which I wouldn't have had the courage or skills to move to Shanghai and eventually start this business. It was a priceless foundation that I'll never take for granted.

My Shanghai home office. Cat not pictured (is probably drinking my water out of frame).

In my next post, I’ll outline exactly why it was so easy for our products to be copied - oof.

In the meantime, I invite you to wake up your inner industrial designer. Take a look at one of the most-used products in your home, ideally one you really love using. Does the brand design its own products, or is it incorporating elements of a competitor? Examine its details. How many design decisions can you see/feel/touch/hear and, yes, smell? (Ever unboxed a cheap plastic that’s offgassing in the box?) /hear? Which of those decisions make the product a pleasure to use? What problems does the product solve, and what’s the value of that solution to you on a per-use basis?

More soon -

Claire