GiqueGEAR’s Smart Station serves as a protective carrying case and a work/viewing stand for smartphones. Screenshot from giquegear.com.
It’s clear in the way he addresses the subject of smartphones that GiqueGEAR co-founder Todd Arendt has a tendency to, well, geek out about the devices. But for all his excitement over smartphones, Arendt could never seem to find a carrying case about which he was equally enthusiastic.
“Smartphones had married the functionality of the PDA to the utility of the cell phone,” Arendt said in an email interview, “and yet I still couldn’t find a case/stand to do what I wanted. I figured I couldn’t be the only person with this problem, so I started hacking away at cases and making them transform into stands.”
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Thus, GiqueGEAR was born. Arendt made some headway with his initial hacking, but it wasn’t until he teamed with Josh Redhead that things really began to take shape.
“Since then, our method of collaboration has turned out some pretty awesome stuff,” Arendt said of the Altoona-based duo, “all focused on enabling people to do more with their smartphones.”
The first of GiqueGEAR’s products is the Smart Station. Billed as the “ultimate home for your smartphone,” the Smart Station is equipped with a belt clip and zipper plus two credit card pockets for taking smartphones — and cards or other small belongings — on the go. The case can also convert into a stand to serve as a vertical or horizontal work/viewing station. The Smart Station sells for $24.95 and comes in two varieties, with either the GiqueGEAR logo or Android logo debossed on the front.
After formally teaming up in May of last year, Arendt and Redhead, who both work on GiqueGEAR in addition to full-time jobs, placed their first order for Smart Stations in late December. The pallets of products arrived last month, and the GiqueGEAR guys began shipping orders almost immediately.
“It felt like forever to get the product produced,” Arendt said, “but that is just a fact of life when you are starting out, with no prior vendor relationships.”
Arendt declined to discuss sales figures but said the response so far has been “very exciting.” Perhaps the most exciting of those positive responses came in the form of a review by Scott Webster on the site androidguys.com.
Webster wrote: “I was somewhat hesitant to try out a new product from a start-up accessory company because I had no idea what to expect. … Going in, I lowered my expectations. Jump to two weeks later and I have a new favorite desktop companion.“
Arendt said GiqueGEAR will release its second product, a micro-stand for smartphones that he calls “pretty much the alter ego of the Smart Station,” in 4-6 weeks. And as Arendt and Redhead work to establish GiqueGEAR, Arendt said they will focus on building the brand with products for which “there are currently no competitors” or “where we possess such a sizable advantage in terms of design quality that there really is no competition.”
“As long as we continue to live up to that principle,” Arendt said, “the GiqueGEAR brand will be everything we want it to be.”
For a brief demonstration of how the Smart Station converts from stand to carrying case, see the video below.
