Giving the umbrella a facelift

When Greg Brebner arrived in London on his OE there wasn’t much work around, so the design engineer set himself the not-small challenge of redesigning the umbrella.

“I made a big noise about it with all my friends, so I had to do it,” he recalls. “Being in the UK, they’re everywhere. So every time it rained you got reminded of what you hadn’t achieved yet.”

But Brebner is a man of his word. Ten years and thousands of hours and dollars later his revolutionary umbrella design is now rolling off the production line in China.

At first glance, Brebner’s Blunt umbrella design is arresting for the facelift it has given the classic umbrella shape. But its design smarts — including the rounded tips that provide a distinctive appearance — are not just for looks; they make the umbrella safer and stronger than classic models.

Brebner’s design addresses factors problematic with conventional umbrellas: their pointed tips pose a safety threat at eye level and they can prove flimsy in windy conditions. In opening a conventional umbrella the effort is directed straight up; Brebner has come up with a central frame geometry, incorporating telescopic ribs supported by high strength polycarbonate struts, which pushes that effort out to the edge of the canopy, strengthening the overall structure. The blunt tips, which open out like little umbrellas themselves, eliminate point loading at the outer canopy edges, further strengthening the umbrella.

According to its makers, the Blunt umbrella has established a new umbrella strength record, withstanding Force 12 winds — the maximum setting in wind tunnel tests. Why you’d want to venture out in such conditions, of course, is another matter.

Brebner admits the 10-year development process has been a labour of love. There have been hundreds of prototypes and, given the nature of umbrellas, each iteration required the painstaking production of multiple repeating parts.

In the early days in London, Brebner worked on his ideas on the floor of his flat and bought a sewing machine to make his own canopies. He returned home around 2001 to develop the product further, and was joined by Scott Kington, now Blunt’s managing director and only fulltime worker, soon after. They invested in moulds to make the first models, which were assembled by hand (taking an hour each) and sold in select Auckland stores to excellent feedback.

Backed by some committed shareholders (including John Morris, a director of construction company Haydn and Rollett) and wanting more than a boutique business they began investigating manufacturing offshore.

The last few years spent organising manufacture in China provided another steep learning curve. They had started working with a New Zealand company to outsource manufacturing to China, when they happened to make contact with China-based Kiwi designer David Haythornthwaite, an award-winning umbrella designer and
former design director of German umbrella company Knirps. Haythornthwaite told them of the two umbrella manufacturing areas in China, they were looking at the wrong one.

“He basically saved us about seven years doing that,” says Brebner. Jumping on a plane a couple of years ago to meet Haythornthwaite in the city of Xiamen was “the best thing we could do”, he says.

Haythornthwaite has helped decide which factory to cooperate with for production, set up production lines and has overseen tooling and mould making for parts used in the umbrella. He has also consulted the Kiwi company on branding and how it can become a global competitor.

The first shipment of about 20,000 umbrellas rolled out of production late September. Retailing around the $100 mark, they’re pitched at the ‘quality’ end of the market.

But the opportunity is still staggering given the company cites annual umbrella sales in the US and Japan, for example, of 68 million and 84 million respectively.

Haythornthwaite says larger, well-known umbrella brands are already contacting him or Blunt directly to get their hands on samples. He thinks the design will have a huge impact on the umbrella industry.

“Either all these brands will want to license the technology, or Blunt is going to gain market share worldwide,” says Haythornthwaite. “I see a bright future for Blunt.”

For Brebner, who has been working on the project at nights around his day job at the family plastics factory, there's light at the end of a long design tunnel. “It’s pretty hard because people think you’re nuts a lot of the time, especially when you’re three years down the track and you’ve done nothing. So it takes quite a lot of belief in yourself.”