Today we’d like to introduce you to Phuoc Nguyen and Matt Gerpheide.
Phuoc and Matt, please share your story with us.
We are San Diego guys with a love for technology, design, and brand activation. LUMAFI has been our world for several years. Lumafi is a San Diego-based wearable technology company.
Translation: We make awesome light-up hats to help businesses engage their customers in their brand better. More about this further down.
Matt and Phuoc quit their day jobs to breathe life into LUMAFI. They wanted to inspire creativity with wearable technology like the LED Light Up Hat. Their goal to inspire others then became LUMAFI’s motto, ‘Be Creative’. The LED hat is an artistic medium and a fun way to interact with others.
Our first wearable tech idea was the Versa Prima. Versa Prima was a simple, yet adaptable LED strip designed to let the wearer build the lights into an existing outfit. For example, the strip could be fashioned around the waist and covered with fabric to accentuate the inherent design of the original piece. Or simply worn like a sash as a safety precaution on a nighttime run. And when not in use for fashion, it could still function as a way to light up your closet.
-The Launch
September 2015
Software development: Done!
Hardware development: Done!
Design: Done!
It was now or never. It was time for…. The Kickstarter Campaign. We were psyched and we were sure that we would be on the cover of Entrepreneur within the year. While we planned the Kickstarter campaign, we were perusing the La Jolla real estate listings for our next home.
The result: meh… So…. yeah…. that’s awkward. Cue the sounds of crickets and the rolling tumbleweeds. The result of our Kickstarter campaign was lackluster. Needless to say, it was heart-breaking to see our baby, the Versa Prima, get no momentum. No magazine cover, no house in La Jolla, sad face and heartbreak.
The Pivot: We weren’t giving up. In fact, we couldn’t — we didn’t have jobs anymore. It was all or nothing, and nothing wasn’t an option. We set Versa Prima to the side and started brainstorming.
Cue: The gears in our head start spinning… We reached out to our good friend Tony Hsieh, CEO at Zappos in Las Vegas. We had a feeling he appreciates technology.
Tony flew us out to Vegas (Baby!) and booked our rooms at the Gold Spike. (Of course, it’s one of his hotels as part of the Downtown Project in the old Las Vegas on Freemont Street.) Tony was genuinely kind to us and talked about innovation in the current corporate environment and how technology advances incrementally.
We discussed the Versa Prima with Tony at Atomic Liquors. In short, Tony said we were headed in the right direction. He suggested an intermediate step, allowing technology to grow incrementally. He mentioned that he needed a light up hat for Life is Beautiful.
Our creativity kicked in…
…incremental technology
…innovative growth
…light up hats
…whisky sours and airplane peanuts
What’s the basic design? What material? How will we incorporate our current technology? How would it be assembled? Who will produce it?
The Light Up Hat Concept Genesis and Brand Activation. Creativity is a process that is equal parts skill, science, and luck. We started by studying an acrylic exit sign — like the one below.
Acrylic exit signs glow because of total infinite internal reflection. We could geek out here, but in short, the light only exits the acrylic shape on specific surfaces (like the edge). And when the light leaps out of the acrylic is super excited and spreads out vividly. Thus, the glow. Wait… there is more! With specialized pens, you can draw on the lid and the art glows.
Our friends, Mike and Allyssa, owners of Freedom Rave Wear, thought the light up hat was ‘LIT’ and immediately wanted to carry our hat as part of their line. Little by little other brands start taking notice and asked us if we can make hats for them because the uniqueness of the hat brings so much attention to their brands. Orders started coming in by the 10s, then 100s, and now 1000s.
We immediately recognized that our hat is not just an artist medium, it’s a brand-building asset. Lumafi will be partnering with GranDesign, a local Experiential Marketing company in town to bring unique ways for brands to engage with their customers and build brand loyalty. One of the activations in the discussion is for the Padre players to draw on the hat with the kids on kids’ day.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Every step of the way there are challenges. With the Versa Prima, our portable LED strip, we learned the following lessons with working with China.
Size: You are small. Let me take that back. Small is an overstatement. You are very tiny. If anything, you represent an annoyance. Chinese manufacturing companies are not in the business of helping no-name businesses finalize the design.
Language: We didn’t speak Mandarin. And our sourcing agent grew tired of playing the middle-school telephone game. The end result was a communication breakdown and several product samples that looked nothing like our design specs. (Matt, did you ask for green plastic?)
Distance: Did you know that when it’s Monday afternoon in San Diego, it’s like… next Sunday in China? The sheer distance between San Diego and China made everything move at a glacial pace. We needed a manufacturer nearby. The hat offers different challenges, one, in particular, is how to connect a plastic brim to a fabric hat.
With some deep breathing and a little Zen thinking, we got through the emotional hurdle of feeling like schmucks. We FORGED AHEAD with GRIT and DETERMINATION. Finally, we resolved the problem with some creative and tactical engineering. (It’s a good example of when you can actually use 11th-grade math in real life.)
We were ecstatic. Honestly, it was a milestone for us to solve and developed a process to attach an acrylic bill to the crown of our light up hat. Thank you Dr. M. Cobanli, Italian designer: Great design is great complexity presented via simplicity.
When it came to production, because of our lessons with China with looked South, 18.6 miles South to be exact, from San Diego to Tijuana. This opened a floodgate of opportunities for us. At that moment, we didn’t have updated passports and our Spanish skills could get us a cerveza, but not much more. We needed a manufacturing assembler. A few trips to Mexico, a few tacos along the way, and some unexpected adventures led us to a wonderful shop where our hats would be made exactly to our specs.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Lumafi LLC – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
At Lumafi we encourage and emphasize you being free and creative. Our hat is an artist medium and a brand-building asset. We have created a large community, #Lumafia, across the US consisting of artists, dancers, DJs, and musicians. We interact and know each and every one of them, in a way they are our family.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
The future is bright for Lumafi, no puns intended. We are looking to expand into different products that are fun and assist in creating an awesome experience for people. We look forward to partnering more with brands and helping them design ways to engage with their customers to ensure the customer has a unique and memorable experience with the brand. This leads to many benefits such as increased customer loyalty, more referrals through word of mouth, and increased in exposure through social media.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1855 1st Ave Suite #101 San Diego, CA 92101
- Website: Lumafi.com
- Phone: 858.842.8095
- Email: Phuoc@lumafi.com
- Instagram: Instagram.com/lumafied
- Facebook: facebook.com/lumafied
Image Credit:
Axel Wadlund, Veronika Grechman, John Sanchez, Lauren T
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