MadeWithGlove’s journey was one of many trials and tribulations, excitement and trepidation, perspiration and inspiration. For being a foreign entrepreneur, an innovator and an inventor requires a visa, patience, creativity, resources, funding, motivation and above all else, the power to keep going, to pivot and be willing to lead and go where no one else has gone before. And part of that journey is also knowing when to let go. In 2021, I decided to let Made With Glove go.
In 2013, I travelled to Prague for a weekend city break. After landing in -21 degrees and embarking on a 6 hour walking tour, my fingers started to feel very numb from the cold. I had disposable hand warmers but because I had my gloves on, I couldn’t feel the warmth from the hand warmers. It was only until I put the hand warmers inside my glove that I felt immediate relief….
When I returned to the UK, I researched fashionable heated gloves. But I couldn’t find any. My journey into developing innovative heated gloves began after I won a wearable tech hackathon in Manchester using sensors to measure the temperature and a heating element to warm the gloves.
After prototyping with many different materials, we discovered Graphene. A new novel material that is stronger than steel, transparent, highly conductive and flexible enabled us to test and realise its potential commercial application for our gloves.
Bridging the Gap Funding from the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre in Manchester provided us with a brilliant team who confirmed that graphene was a suitable material to use for heat onto a sustainable textile.
