Just imagine what life without zippers would be like. It’s hard to envision because zippers are integral to daily life but something we don’t really notice and often take for granted.
Well, one clever design student did take notice and the seed of a company was born.
ZIPIT began when a 24-year-old Israeli student named Ishay was tasked with a design school project that involved making a 2D item into a 3D creation. While sitting at home working on this project, Ishay came up with the unique idea of creating a pouch made from a single strip of zipper.
Several young entrepreneurs heard about Ishay’s creation, and immediately felt there was commercial potential behind the idea. As a result, ZIPIT was established in 2006. Two years later, Itamar Cohen, the current CEO of ZIPIT, came on board after a stint in the IT world with a bigger vision for this clever zippered creation.
Cohen shares, “In my few short years in the Israeli High-Tech industry, I worked with world class creative and passionate people who followed the highest standards. When joining ZIPIT in its very first stages as a company, my goal was to bring those standards to a ‘low tech’ company and create something different.”
Under Cohen’s direction and guidance, ZIPIT has become a multimillion dollar company with $140 million in retail sales over the past five years. Cohen shares, “When we visited the stores and their stationary aisles, all we saw were dull and uninspiring products with low price as the main product attribute. This is when we knew that we wanted to change this equation and introduce cleverly designed, high quality products that would still be affordable for everyone.”
Equipped with a clever idea and a lot of passion, they thought long and hard about where to sell the product. Cohen knew that to achieve their goal, they had to mass produce, “We had no investors or backing, just our own money and determination. We understood that to keep product costs low we needed to mass produce them and sell our products in the mass market.”
ZIPIT took its first steps into the American mass market in 2009. Cohen shares, “Our VP of Sales, Ronen Kapon worked closely with a few U.S. mass retailers and was successful in getting Office Depot on board. They were the first to give us the opportunity to test our basic pencil cases in all stores. Sales that summer were great, and it opened the door for us to more and more retailers. The expansion to Target and Walmart came when we had proven sales and much broader lines of products.”
ZIPIT changed the product category by creating new price categories that were higher but still very affordable while maintaining originality, innovation, and quality.
A believer in nonconformity Cohen says, “In a world with almost no borders and super easy access to production facilities, the power of truly original and clever design became more and more important. This is probably one of the only effective ways for retailers today to compete. Fresh, original designs, and not just cheap prices are what customers are looking for and consider valuable.”
ZIPIT has grown by leaps and bounds in the past five years not only generating $140 million in retail sales but producing over 23 million products. They’ve worked with at least 100 retailers directly and distribute to more than 60 countries. Their Grillz Case is a top seller and became popular in Japan, Chile, Germany, and the United States demonstrating the wide appeal of their products across gender, age, and location.
Always looking to innovate, ZIPIT has achieved their goal of high tech standards and innovation integrated into a product. ZIPIT designers took the Augmented Reality (AR) technology and applied it to their iconic Monster Pencil Case which is part of the Talking Monstar line allowing the user to communicate with the product in a unique way. Cohen says, “We are constantly looking and testing new technologies. Felix Fridman, our head of Development introduced the AR technology to the team after studying it for quite some time. We immediately started to think about unique applications to our products. This was a few years back when AR applications were new in the market.”
Cohen goes on to say that the challenge they faced was how to apply AR technology to a soft, 3-dimensional item. “We had not seen any similar application in the market (and to the best of our knowledge still none exist). This was the type of challenge we liked, and we partnered with very talented programmers in Israel and developed an app that enables people to interact with their pouch,” Cohen shares.
As with any company, creative ideas aren’t the only ingredients necessary for success, there are practical steps involved too. Cohen shares five main things that helped ZIPIT move the needle to the next level:
- We stayed loyal to our mission statement to be a real alternative to me-too licensed and unlicensed products and along the way we refused to license deals, promotional deals etc.
- We are always working to develop new, exciting products that are truly original and elicit an emotional reaction. Our products make us laugh, we can tell stories with them, and they will be amusing and surprising to the customer.
- Quality and affordability. By offering a lifetime warranty on every ZIPIT product, we’re showing our commitment to the customer and our dedication to producing a high-value product.
- We came closer to our customers by opening physical offices and joining local team members in Europe and the United States engaging them in conversations that allowed us to better understand their business needs.
- A stellar team. ZIPIT includes one of the most talented, committed, hard-working and passionate group of people I have ever worked with. With a winning team, everything is possible.
ZIPIT now employs five full time designers in their Tel Aviv Studio and work with half a dozen more in several different countries. Cohen shares, “We’re always looking at and testing new ideas since we are first and foremost a design house with great passion for truly original products. We believe that there is nothing more important than original thinking to make significant change in our world and our mission is to encourage as many people as we can to celebrate their originality and believe that everything is possible; and I think that our story, while we still have a lot more to do, can demonstrate that.”
For more information or to see ZIPIT’s full catalog please click here: http://www.just-zipit.com/
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