The power of a deadline saw the entries flooding in at the last minute, with 92 entries and 783 people’s choice votes. Judges from both parties deliberated and narrowed it down to nine finalists with a diverse range of product ideas, as well as one People’s Choice winner.

The finalists then gathered in Christchurch at Studio ZQ on Friday – some by video call, and some in person – to pitch their idea in four minutes to the judges. To narrow it down to the very best idea, judges from P?mu, Studio ZQ and Idealog posed the following questions to the finalists:

1. The problem – What is the underlying problem that is being solved? What does the concept do that is fresh and valuable?
2. Viability – What is the market opportunity? How scalable is the concept? How will you make money?
3. Opportunity for wool – How will this benefit strong wool growers, e.g. volume, value, global positioning? What does wool bring to the idea to make it unique?
4. Market familiarity – How potent are the competitors?
5. Potential for impact – Wow well does the concept addresses an important social or environmental problem, how will this be measured?
6. Where to next – What are you going to do in the next week, month, year?
7. ZQ (X) factor – Judge’s discretion

While judges agreed that the diversity and depth of designs was absolutely brilliant, there could only be one winner. Motherload nappies and the Insulating Beehive Cover designs were given a highly commended award, while Becs Bartells’ strongwool coffins was crowned the winning entry.

Thanks to our friends at the New Zealand Merino Company, Bartells wins travel and accommodation to Christchurch worth up to $1200 to take part in a one-week immersion in Studio ZQ working with the team to develop her ideas over the course of a week, as well as a five-day all expenses paid trip to San Francisco, USA worth up to $6000, where she’ll be meeting with experts such as Professor Baba Shiv, professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Alex Castellarnau, a user experience and design executive who has led creative teams at IDEO, Dropbox and NIO. 

Bartells’  award-winning entry 

Mini-prototypes of the coffin design

“I was excited, and I wasn’t expecting it actually,” Bartells says. “I want to do some positive things in the funeral industry with the caskets. I think I’ll learn a lot from being down there [in Christchurch at Studio ZQ] and what you can do with wool, so I’m quite excited.”

Bartells is an industrial designer based in Auckland with her own studio. She says she left full-time work four years ago as she hated the corporate world, and has since been painting, designing and illustrating, as well as tinkering with a few start-up ideas.

“I’ve found what I love doing – creating stuff that ends up in the real world,” she says. “I’m poor as hell but very happy.”

A recent business idea she’d been working on went pear shaped, so she started focusing her efforts on developing the idea of coffins that are better for the environment than what’s available at present.

“It started with my grandma’s funeral – I thought, ‘Is there an opportunity to do something that’s affordable for people but environmentally friendly?’” Bartells says.

“The current coffins marketed as being environmentally friendly, but are they really? I’ve spoken to funeral homes and I think there’s a lot of opportunity there in the industry, it’s pretty archaic.

“They all do things the same way – there’s no innovation happening. No one asks questions because people are grieving, so they take what they’re given. For me, I see some opportunity.”

She says had been researching for about a year on whether cardboard coffins were a viable idea through marketing validation, prototyping and seeking investment, when she saw the Wool-ovation competition.

“I already had the idea but I saw the Wool-ovation competition and thought, that could actually work well with strongwool, as it’s tough and used in carpets, so I did some prototyping.”

The strongwool caskets design

Bartells’ design is a pitched as an eco-friendly alternative to Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) and wood caskets that are already on the market.

Seeing as one tree is needed to manufacture five caskets, she says cutting down a tree to make a casket that is just going to be buried or cremated again makes no sense environmentally.

“Wool is commonly used for the liners and dressings of caskets. But why not make the entire casket from this?” she says. “Wool has emotive attributes as it’s softer and provides a more comforting send-off to the hardened and rigid aesthetics of a timber or MDF caskets. So, a wool casket is not just a greener, eco-friendly solution. It has a more emotional appeal to the traditional caskets in the market, which can appear quite cold.”

Becs with the miniprototypes 

Testing the cardboard casket structure to 240kg

The design is made from 100 percent New Zealand strongwool with a recycled cardboard structure and a padded wool layer lining the base, sides and lid.

When it comes to the funeral industry, the business of death is always booming. Figures from Statistics NZ show that there were 33,342 deaths in 2017, while New Zealand’s death rate is 7.55 per 1000 people. The market need is there, while trends such as the circular economy and more environmentally aware consumers are forcing traditional industries to innovate.

“Wool caskets solve a serious environmental problem in regards to the manufacturing of traditional caskets and the impact that current casket or coffin manufacturing has on our environment, including deforestation,” Bartells says.

Where to next

Bartells says the next steps to take in the design process are to continue product development at Studio ZQ by making mini-prototypes from cardboard and strongwool.

She has already created mini-prototypes with cardboard and wool felt to explore what they could look like, which she showed the judges during her presentation.

There’s also still room for other designs to explore, too. Bartells had a couple of different entries in the mix for the Wool-ovation Competition, and she says she’d like to further develop these.

“I have an ideas list, I wake up in the night with ideas and put them on my phone. This idea stuck with me because all coffins look the same,” she says.

“This is exciting and we’ll see what comes from what this, it’s a matter of not spreading myself too thin.”

Other than her own design, she says her favourite out of the bunch was the Wool Beehive Cover, which was highly commended by judges.

“It was quite tangible and could be implemented reasonably quickly. There was a lot of thought put into that.”

For now, Bartells will head down to Christchurch soon to develop her idea with the New Zealand Merino Company at Studio ZQ, and she also has her trip to San Francisco to look forward to.

And her advice for people quitting the corporate world for creative pursuits, like starting a product company?

“Get used to living life on the edge. If you want security, it might not be what you want to be doing – but it’s bloody fun,” she says.

The other finalists have also been offered the opportunity by the New Zealand Merino Company to continue to develop their ideas at Studio ZQ. Be sure to check back to Idealog for more updates on how these ideas – including the strongwool coffins – are progressing. 

Woollen speakers

The common narrative that underpins the value of woollen products is sustainability. In a world plagued by synthetic plastics, consumers and businesses have become increasingly keen to find an alternative.

In case you have been living under a rock, the 2.2 billion dollar textile trade represents the second largest industry polluter behind oil and gas, where by in 2050, it is predicted that there will be more plastic in our oceans by fish. 

For New Zealand, wool provides a very viable solution. Modern success stories – Allbirds, Icebreaker, and Firewire – are living, breathing examples of its commercial potential. 

From shoes to surfboards, these innovations have garnered huge interest from overseas, as well as large sums of investment. In April, Icebreaker was sold to VF corp, who owns Vans, The North Face, and Timberland, for a staggering $288 million, while Allbirds has stitched itself into national business prestige, currently valued at a whopping US$1.4 billion, a number that seemingly never stops growing.  

However, while both fine and merino wool have enjoyed renewed glory, strong wool has struggled to cultivate the same opportunities. But, those days could be over, as local designers, entrepreneurs, manufacturers and farmers rub shoulders to find new applications for strong wool. 

The product: 

The latest innovation, Floc 3D, harnesses the natural fibre to provide an architectural solution for acoustic panels. It’s locally sourced and manufactured, it’s renewable, and it’s 100 percent biodegradable. “It is a product that has been grown, not manufactured by fossil fuels,” says Brakenridge. 

The range of tiles are made from woollen fibres pressed into a 3D configuration to give acoustic and wellness benefits to the interior environment. They’re perfect for those stuck in sedentary office jobs or sterile urban dwellings, as they provide a window into New Zealand’s bucolic existence. 

T&R architectural manager and acoustic specialist Hedda Oosterhoff says, “It’s a no brainer when you think about it, we have a country full of sheep, they grow a fleece every single year, there is a glut of strong wool, and it has so many amazing properties, so it makes sense to bring those properties into an interior space.”

Floc 3D taps into “the invisible side of architecture”, according to Brakenridge, which is connected to how we interact with an interior space. One of the problems the acoustic tiling sets out to solve, or at least improve, is sound absorption. 

Oosterhoff says: “The number one complaint in offices is noise, the number one complaint in restaurants and bars is noise, it’s a huge litter on our daily lives, it’s not only annoying, but it affects our mental health.”

We are not talking about noise that gives you hearing damage, we are talking about background noise, which increases your heart rate, increases your stress levels. In restaurants it makes you eat faster, and drink more, which are stress responses to the noise. If you can only understand 30 percent of what is being said, your brain is working overtime to fill in those blanks.”

If you’ve ever had a meeting and come out with a headache, that is why.” 

To fix the blight of noise on our daily lives, Floc 3D enables extremely high Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) to reduce reverberation time. In layman’s terms, the woolen acoustic tiling helps to block out irritating background noise and controls acoustic indoor surroundings by helping maintain indoor temperature and reducing energy consumption.

Another wellness benefit of Floc 3D is indoor air quality, which has been highlighted as a generational challenge. 

Wool could be a tonic to poor interior air quality, according to Oosterhoff, who estimates that the use of wool in interiors can help purify the air for up to 30 years, and is allegedly a resistant to bacteria, mould and mildew that can trigger allergic reactions. 

Brakenridge says these multiple benefits allows Floc 3D to bring nature into an interior space – perhaps a modern ailment, with recent statistics suggesting ‘the average child in the US spends more time indoors than a prisoner.’

The timing: 

The original concept – to harness the thermal and acoustic potential of wool – was originally mooted 25 years ago, according to Oosterhoff. She says, “It was never commercially viable then because we were on such a good wicket with carpet, there wasn’t the drive to test new products and try new things, but here we are 25 years later and it has come around again, the market is now ready for it.”

Currently, the majority of existing acoustic products are imported from overseas, which Oosterhoff says has a huge carbon footprint and is absurd considering our access to natural materials. 

Although the Floc 3D wool acoustic panel is only one product, it provides a vision for both strong wool and the textile industry. 

Brakenridge says, “We work on bringing on the farm right through to the value of brands. Our growers reckon they’ve got something special in wool and we’d like to connect them with designers and architects.”

This is echoed by Oosterhoff: “New Zealand is a prime place for this obviously with our huge exposure to wool. We’ve got this amazing resource, the question is how do we use it.” 

As patriots (or unashamedly big fans of local business), Idealog has done its bit to pedal the wool renaissance, by teaming up with The New Zealand Merino Company to unveil the Wool-ovation competition. To find out more read the link here, but be in quick, it’s the last week to enter! 

The brief:

While wool used to be more closely associated with your grandmother’s knitting needles, the natural, renewable fibre is soaking up renewed interest from a new generation of conscious consumers who want to move away from synthetic plastics, thanks to a slew of innovative new companies emerging out of New Zealand.

Companies like Icebreaker, Allbirds and Firewire? Surfboards have paved the way for new, innovative uses for wool. The New Zealand Merino Company is the wool partner to these companies, and now, it is helping fast-track the revival of this material with an innovation space in the heart of Christchurch City called Studio ZQ, which helps develop creative business ideas and encourage more wool and fibre-based businesses to arise in Aotearoa.

CEO John Brakenridge says the business community is just skimming the tip of the iceberg when it comes to new uses for wool.
 

Studio ZQ

“If you look at the innovations that have come out using a natural product like merino wool – they’ve been some of the more exciting out of this country and if you take Allbirds, out of this world,” he says.

Brakenridge says to put it simply, New Zealand needs more companies harnessing the power of the agriculture industry to create ethical products, like Allbirds.

“We used to talk about this [the potential for wool] and it was all hypothetical, but now we have proof points, so the simple answer is we need more Allbirds, we need more Icebreakers, we need more Firewires. There’s real evidence there of rewards for the entrepreneurs so I think in so many ways, it helps to engage the young, so they see they can be entrepreneurial and make a difference.”

So what is strongwool? The benefits of wool is the same, fine or strong, but Merinowool is finer – it’s the soft stuff that winds up next to skin. Strong wool is a thicker, hardier type of wool that usually winds up in carpets – so let your imagination run wild in terms of the products it would be useful in.

Has that sparked an idea for a strongwool product that could make you the next Icebreaker or Allbirds? Then read on.

The process:

The Allbirds design process 

To enter, submit a brief description of your idea and any photos, visuals, media or prototypes that support your concept, considering:

• The problem – What is the underlying problem that is being solved?
• The description – How would you explain it to a child? How is wool being used? What stage of development are you at?
• The right to win – Why does it have a right to be successful?
• The impact – What social or environmental impact will it have? How will this be measured?
• The dream team – What is your dream team of partners that would make success easier?

When completed, upload your design here to the campaign page (thanks to our friends at Shuttlerock!) where it will be displayed for all Idealog readers to see. Please include some sort of visual media such as a photo, a sketch, or a prototype with your entry to illustrate your idea. You will also need to include a short description of the thinking behind your product.

Entries close Thursday 5pm July 11 2019 (now extended to give people more time to enter!) A panel of judges with representatives from the New Zealand Merino Company and Idealog will look at the desirability, viability and scalability of each product. 

A shortlist of finalists will be notified by email, and the winner will be announced at an event at Studio ZQ, Christchurch at the end of August.

The prize:

As well as basking in the success of developing a product from New Zealand that harnesses the power of wool and joins the ranks of Firewire Surfboards, Allbirds and Icebreaker, the winner will also receive:

• A one-week immersion in Studio ZQ, including:
  – Working through the Studio ZQ design process to assess the potential of the idea with the Studio ZQ team and experts over the course of five days.
  – Travel to Christchurch and accommodation in Christchurch for the duration of the Studio ZQ immersion, up to the value of $1,200 NZD.
• A five-day all expenses paid trip to San Francisco, USA, including:
  – A meeting with Professor Baba Shiv, Sanwa Bank Ltd., professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
  – A meeting with Alex Castellarnau, user experience and design executive, who has led creative teams in the domain of user experience at IDEO, Dropbox and NIO.
  – A site visit to a leading innovation company in San Francisco.
  – International economy class return airfares, ground transport, accommodation and meals whilst in the USA up to the value of $6000 NZD. ?

The rules:

This competition is open to New Zealanders only. To travel to the US, the winner must have valid documentation (passport, visa and travel insurance) to enter. View the full terms and conditions here.

We look forward to seeing you get down to the knitty gritty and sharing your wooly brilliance with the world. 

Port-A-Cloud:

Designers: Tony Bradbourne, Heath Lowe, Stu Mallarkey, Zofia Seymour, Jack Gravatt, Till Dittmers, Gavin Le Claire, Carolyn Ihaia, Madeleine Smart. 

Introducing Comfort Felt. It takes the idea of providing warmth and comfort to the person and to the home. By the active and hands-on process of transforming wool into felt, a person embarks on a therapeutic and cathartic, de-stressing experience either personally or with friends. Once the felt is made, it’s used in a number of ways: wristbands (close to the skin), door handles (changing the touch of an everyday surface) and stair rails (changing the look and feel of what’s usually a cold and hard surface).

Instead of stripping our homes bare, perhaps adding a new layer of Comfort Felt helps insulate us from the stresses of the outside world, giving an extra protective layer of comfort to help us build our resilience in today’s fast-paced world. 

Designers: Jotaro Tokunaga, Sophie Fisher, Andrew Norris, Tessa Bradbury, Simon Button, David Irwin, Paulo Costa, Iva Llanera, Abi Hilario, Sam Irvine, Kate walker. 

What’s the most audacious thing that can be done with wool? We decided to replace the Printed Circuit Board, or PCB, with wool to tackle the environmental and health issue of roughly 40 million metric tonnes of e-waste that is produced each year. Wool is a great replacement, as there are two things irrefutable about it: it will never burn, as it’s nature’s natural flame retardant and it’s a brilliant insulator. Knowing this, we thought why not reinvent the centre-core of the modern electronic circuit and offer up a bio-based alternative to this billion-dollar category? This idea is the subject of a novel patent application, so watch this space*.

*Our product is epic and packed full of IP, of which we can’t fully disclose yet.

Have you ever used bubble wrap? Did you know the amount of bubble wrap that is produced annually is enough to wrap around the equator ten times? What about plastic packaging? Every year, eight million metric tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean. And what about those stupid plastic beer can rings and the net-things sleeved onto your fine alcohol and spirit tipple bottles?

The Ellen McArthur Foundation has estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than there are fish (by weight). Over half of this plastic is from plastic packaging.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Wool packaging

Wool is universally naturally and biodegradable and we are the best producers of it in the world. Wool is made of protein (called kertain). In the ocean, wool breaks down and is naturally consumed by living organisms as food and by the acidity of salt water. 

This project set out to reinvent the forever-clever bubble wrap, those liquor nets and all of the many everyday packaging items by creating a new, 100% natural and infinitely biodegradable packaging solution to combat this global addiction to plastic. 

NaturesClip set out to reinvent bubble wrap, those liquor nets and all of the many everyday packaging items by creating a new, 100 percent natural and infinitely biodegradable packaging solution to combat this global addiction to plastic. 

OceanWool is for environmentally conscious brands and consumers who hate plastic, and is made through a unique process whereby wool is simply washed, combed and processed to form a fully pliable medium that can be cut, pressed, formed and moulded to create endless packaging possibilities. These materials can be customised to suit almost any application, while being safe below the surface.

Inspired by New Zealand’s image and the beautiful colours found in marine coral, we grabbed an iconic Kiwi beverage bottle to illustrate the raw potential of this new ubble wool cushioning and consumer packaging solution. Like the famous quote by the founder of 42 Below ‘Every bastard says no’ – NaturesClip wants to encourage everybody to say no to plastic packaging and replace it with a solution like this that is safe below the surface.

Designers and contributors: Blythe Rees-Jones, Luke Morreau, Dan Gillingham and Nathan Collier.