Firefighter Nathan Helten was tired of having wet gloves when heading out to a fire. He knew there had to be a solution, but he couldn’t find any — so he invented one. After more than a year in the preliminary stages, Helten took his startup to market. With the advice of fellow Sedgwick County firefighters and the Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer at Wichita State University, the Handy Hook became a reality. “I knew there had to be a better way,” said Helten, who has worked as a firefighter for more than a decade. “I’ve always had that mentality.” Helten was in the middle of building a house in Garden Plain when the idea came to him. The Handy Hook not only keeps firefighter’s gloves dry between events, it helps them get ready for fires more quickly, Helten said. By allowing gloves to hang outside of the uniform instead of squashing wet gloves into pants pockets, they dry faster. In addition, Helten said, the clip minimizes glove-up time, helping to get the uniform on quicker with the hook. “I thought of an idea of being able to take your glove off by sticking something narrow down into a glove and pulling it off. So Christmas break, four years ago, I built this wicked little chunk of metal that I bolted to the side of my pants — I literally bolted it,” Helten said. From that U-shaped contraption, he continued to adapt the model, changing it more than 150 times. Finally, Helten realized he had discovered the ideal mechanism. That’s when he realized he needed help. A little more than a year ago, Helton visited the Tech Transfer and Commercialization department at Wichita State University and asked for advise on his new product.
Source: Wichita Business Journal
