Kyle
A startup based in Boston and Rochester is tackling the personal energy harvesting market with gusto. This new way of generating energy for the purpose of recharging your personal electronics has taken many forms. With Energy Harvesters the form is the “Walking Charger”.
The Walking Charger allows the user to charge their mobile electronics anytime and anywhere just by walking.
Energy Harvesters is building their charging products into OEM branded footwear and to insoles for shoes that allow the energy from walking to be converted into real power for dead phones. As they tell us in the interview below their technology is also able to power things like foot warmers and GPS locators without the need for traditional batteries.
A while back we brought you the story of some South Carolina engineers who were working on a way to charge your cell phone via your t-shirt. While that technology is still some time away, we could see the ability to charge your phone through your shoes in the next year or so.
Check out this interesting Boston Green (but possibly not so clean since it’s shoes) startup below.
What is Energy Harvesters?
Energy Harvesters LLC is commercializing a personal electronics mobile power source called the Walking Charger™. The Walking Charger allows users to charge the batteries in their mobile electronics devices anytime, anywhere – just by walking. You can charge your Smartphone battery, for example, by walking for just a single hour wearing the Walking Charger device.
What is the Walking Charger exactly? It is a small device that is embedded within OEM branded footwear products. Markets include consumer, commercial work boot, recreation and military applications. With the Walking Charger, consumers have an off-the-grid capability to charge portable electronic device batteries as they walk. Alternatively, the Walking Charger can also be used to provide direct and immediate power to a wide range of electronics such as footwear heaters or GPS locators without the need for batteries.
The Walking Charger has powerful environmental appeal. It gives users personal electric power without depending on the grid and without the waste management problems associated with battery disposal or recycling. Accordingly, the Walking Charger will be an important gateway product that foreshadows the trend toward wearable electronics.
Nowadays, people depend on their portable electronic devices for information, entertainment, guidance and sometimes for survival. In those circumstances, running out of battery power is not an acceptable option. That is why Energy Harvesters created the Walking Charger to give people the ability to Charge Mobile Electronics Batteries Anytime, Anywhere™.
Personal energy harvesting is not a new idea. Interest in the sector will continue to grow as the technology evolves. The Walking Charger has technological and practical superiority in terms of cost, power output, motion and reliability over other energy harvesting methods including dielectric elastomers, embedded electron charges, piezoelectrics and magnetos.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Energy Harvesters was founded by Lawrence “Larry” Grumer and Sherry Handel.
As CEO and President, Larry Grumer is responsible for providing Energy Harvesters with vision and leadership, as well as forging partnerships and making sure the company executes against its commercialization goals.
An expert in technology commercialization and strategy, Grumer earned a MBA in International Finance and Marketing and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University. He brings prior energy harvesting startup experience with a Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) packaged electronics company, and has 25-years of experience with large corporations, small companies and startups.
Over the course of his career, Grumer has launched six companies, built teams and advisory boards, negotiated licenses, raised seed capital, established corporate partnerships and scaled operations. Grumer has worked on government projects and secured funding from Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). He has also held a Top Secret Security Clearance.
COO Sherry Handel is primarily responsible for startup operations, infrastructure, policies and branding. Sherry graduated from Northeastern University with a B.S. in Business Administration and a concentration in Marketing. She subsequently earned a Certificate in Sustainable Business Practices from the Global Sustainability Institute at the University of Vermont.
Handel has founded and launched consumer brands both in the United States and internationally. She secured U.S. and international distribution and signed foreign licensing agreements. Two of her prior startups, Blue Jean Magazine, Inc. and Blue Jean Media, Inc. brought her national and international media exposure.
Energy Harvesters benefits from Handel’s experience in operations management, startup marketing, product launches and brand development. For her entrepreneurship, Sherry received an award from the Greater Rochester, NY chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She was also given a national award in leadership from the American Association of University Women. Handel is the author of Blue Jean: What Young Women are Thinking, Saying, and Doing (Blue Jean Press), an acclaimed book that has been published in the U.S. and in several other countries.
Where are you based?
Energy Harvesters has operations in Boston, MA and in Rochester, NY. Our founders selected these locations due to the high quality of life, the vibrant ecosystems for entrepreneurs and startup companies, the access to highly skilled workers and educational institutions, as well as the proximity to our manufacturing partner.
What is the startup culture like where you are based?
Co-founders, Larry Grumer and Sherry Handel are both experienced entrepreneurs accustomed to having P&L responsibility while motivating and incentivizing virtual teams of employees around a shared strategy.
Our New York and Massachusetts-based team is comprised of highly competent professionals. All of our team members have been entrepreneurs and company founders themselves. They know and understand how to build and grow businesses. Several team members also have experience building or creating brands in the footwear industry and/or starting companies in the energy harvesting industry.
What problem does your startup solve?
You can break free from relying on wall power to charge your smart phone and other mobile devices. With our Walking Charger, you’ll be able to recharge your device batteries just by walking. With Energy Harvesters’ Walking Charger, you can Charge Mobile Electronics Batteries Anytime, Anywhere.
We have identified a number of promising target markets. For the average end user, the Walking Charger may be simply convenient, economical and beneficial. For certain specialized groups – the military, outdoor workers and first responders – the Walking Charger could be a critical addition to their tool kit, enabling them to have reliable off-the-grid power.
To reach these end users, we plan to win customers from among the major brands of footwear companies including, but not limited to; New Balance, Adidas, Vibram, Dayton Boots, LaCrosse Footwear (ABC-MART), Nike, Wolverine and Timberland (VF Corp.). These companies serve footwear and work boot end users across the consumer, commercial, recreation and military markets.
What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?
As a pre-revenue and pre-investment startup without the ability to offer competitive salaries, it is incredibly challenging to recruit experienced industry professionals with the right domain knowledge and expertise. Thanks to the leadership of our CEO along with our compelling business model, Energy Harvesters has been able to overcome this challenge and has recruited two footwear industry experts to fill critical executive positions:
- Herb Rothstein, VP of Sales, is a 35-year footwear and international trade industry executive specializing in sales and global supply chain development. He was SVP at the world’s largest athletic shoe manufacturer and EVP of a major brand footwear company.
- Dan Ellis, our VP of Product Management built and sold his brand-name footwear company to New Balance. He brings 25 years of global experience in product development for Sperry, Adidas, Reebok, Saucony and New Balance.
Who are your mentors and role models?
As a semifinalist in the Cleantech Open Northeast Competition, we are privileged to have a superb four-person mentor team advising us in the following focus areas:
- Lisa Lillelund – Sustainability
- Orlando Lopez, Ph.D. – Patents and IP
- David Barbash – Corporate Governance
- John Ireland – Finance, Operations and Scaling
Larry Grumer, CEO and President of Energy Harvesters considers Lawrence Kaufman, Ph.D. to be an exemplary role model. Dr. Kaufman served as an advisor in Grumer’s previous energy harvesting company and was co-founder of four companies and principal in an additional eight high-tech startups.
In addition, Larry Grumer acknowledges the inspiration provided by Paul Zavracky, Ph.D, who serves as a fellow colleague and board member of the EntreTech Forum. Dr. Zavracky is a serial entrepreneur, company founder, and educator. He currently leads a publicly held company.
What’s one thing the world doesn’t know about you or your startup?
We are committed to preserving and enhancing the environment and leveraging the social impacts of the Walking Charger and our other future products.
Energy Harvesters LLC is helping to define the trend of wearable electronics and bring a mobile charging system to market for on-demand battery recharging.
Our product’s innovative design yields significant environmental benefits. The Walking Charger creates no emissions in its energy delivery and it directly recharges mobile device batteries, so consumers will no longer need to purchase extra backup batteries. If consumers purchase fewer batteries, this reduces demand on the grid, lessens the disposal risk associated with toxic battery components, lowers the need to mine the hazardous materials for battery production and ultimately saves energy that would have been spent on extra battery production.
Energy Harvesters plans to offer consumers a Walking Charger recycling program. Since we anticipate that the Walking Charger device will outlive the footwear in which it is embedded, we want to responsibly reuse, refurbish and recycle the Walking Charger’s component parts as needed. We also plan to work with our footwear brand partners, their respective retailers and third-party vendors to recycle discarded footwear from which the Walking Charger device has been extracted.
Our plan is to partner with the footwear brands to offer consumers a recycling program. We hope to provide our corporate partners with a value-added service that helps them to mitigate product end-of-life issues, thereby shrinking their own eco-footprint and increasing consumer brand loyalty.
The World Bank reports that of the 6 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, an astounding 5 billion subscriptions are in developing countries. But in these developing countries, the spread of cell phones has outpaced the growth of the charging infrastructure. According to the Green Power for Mobile report by the GSMA Development Fund, “nearly 500 million people worldwide do not have a means of charging a mobile phone at home.”
As our production volumes increase over time, we hope to be able to offer the Walking Charger at an affordable price for consumers in developing countries. For these consumers, having a personal power-charging platform embedded in their footwear could be a truly life-changing improvement.
What’s next for your startup?
Right now, we are focused on moving forward with integrating our technical components into a fully-functional working prototype that we can demonstrate and show to the footwear brands that expressed interest.
Based on prior meetings and discussions with leading Brand footwear companies, we know they are eager to see a fully functional, footwear-integrated product. Once we have demonstrated these functional prototypes, we anticipate securing significant development and supply contracts.
