While living in a small town in Finland without any public transportation whasoever, our CEO Olavi has been experiencing the Finnish cold at its finest.
Everyone would always ride bicycles anywhere they went. Olavi and his classmates would ride to class, leave their bikes at the front door, and walk to class. At the end of the day, they would swipe the snow off their bikes and ride home on the wet or icy and always cold seats. It was unpleasant and hard to tolerate at the end of the day, every day.
That's how the idea for our first product came about - heated bike seat and handlebar cover.
Olavi and his friend took the idea seriously and tried to produce a prototype in China, but it the result never came out as they have been intending. They kept thinking and experimenting.
Friends moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, where it was much easier for them to work on their idea. Several months of changing fabrics and techniques followed, searching for the perfect solution that would give a product that wouldn't get wet, blow through, or overheat. Olavi always stayed close to the production facility and one day on his commute he noticed the building of ITMO University He thought it would be great to combine his entrepreneurial spirit with a master's degree, and enrolled in The Master's of Innovative Entrepreneurship program.
ITMO offered much support for the project and Olavi shared the idea with the Dean of Faculty and got the necessary contacts and resources. The project began to be develop and the first prototypes to our liking were created.
We received our first recognition! - we won the "ITMO University - Gazprom Neft Grant" competition in the Prototype category.