NEW YORK, March 3 — It can fix a broken statue, repair a frayed iPhone cable, add a rubbery grip to a kitchen knife, make those Bose earbuds fit better, repair a leaky boat — and even create a prosthetic leg for a chicken. So, what is this product?
It is Sugru, and it is being heralded as the product you never knew you needed — until you did.
Sugru is a mouldable glue. It looks like Play-Doh, can be shaped around any object, sticks to almost any material, is waterproof, is heat resistant and dries to a silicone rubbery finish in 24 hours. Its ability to bond to virtually any surface — wood, glass, metals and ceramics among others — and its mouldable nature make it unusual in the world of adhesives, sealants and glues.
“I wanted to design something that was so easy and so fun to use that more people would consider fixing things again,” said Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh, the Irish entrepreneur behind Sugru. Even the name is taken from the Irish word “sugradh,” which means “play.”
Bridget Grunst, a buyer for Target Corp stores, admits she was sceptical before meeting Sugru’s team in the autumn of 2014. After all, Target already carried more than 40 glue products in its home improvement section alone.
“Did I roll my eyes? Yes,” she said, laughing. “I mean, glue is not the most innovative category out there.” But all of that changed when Grunst met the Sugru team and watched in amazement at the myriad ways, both practical and creative, that the glue could be used. The iPhone charger repair was the clincher.
“I have frayed cords at home, and it’s a unique way to fix it versus having to go buy another charger for US$50 (RM205),” Grunst said. Sugru’s rubbery flexible finish allowed it to repair charger cords, which super glues, with their rock-hard finishes, cannot do, she said.
Grunst also liked Sugru’s mouldable nature, with its ability to fill gaps, replace broken appliance parts or rebuild a broken handle on a kitchen faucet. Other glues, which are often liquids and sprays, cannot, she said.
That Ni Dhulchaointigh (pronounced nee-GULL-queen-tigg) would develop a product like Sugru would not have been easy to predict.
Born in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1979, Ni Dhulchaointigh grew up on a farm, where her father, John, worked as a farmer, and her mother, Eilis, was a teacher. As a youngster, she had an artistic bent, making paintings and sculptures. She received a degree in fine art from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2001 and a master’s degree in product design from the Royal College of Art in London in 2004.
It was at college where she first started experimenting with clay, silicone sealants and other materials for sculpting. She would bring them home and soon started using them around the house — wrapping the putty around knife handles to get a better grip, using it to fix a leaky kitchen sink stopper, adding it as rubber “feet” to the bottom of a laptop and repairing a mug handle. Her boyfriend, James Carrigan, who is now her husband, noticed her clever repairs and suggested she try to market it.
When she showcased the prototype at a student product design exhibition in 2004, the response was overwhelming, she said. “The top two questions were: ‘How much is it?’ and ‘Where can I get it?'” she said. She knew she had a potential hit.
With a US$50,000 grant from Nesta, a British research firm, in 2005, and a US$500,000 equity investment from Lacomp, a venture fund, in 2006, she dove in. She brought in a business partner, Roger Ashby, and hired two former Dow Corning scientists as consultants to help build the prototype. It took five years, 5,000 experiments and 8,000 lab hours to perfect and patent the formula.
At this point, the recession had hit and financing was almost nonexistent to market the product to retailers. “We pitched to almost 100 investors” without luck, she said. A private investor finally provided US$150,000, far short of what was needed.
So, in 2009, she took the social media route, sending samples to dozens of technology bloggers, in the belief that if they saw its potential role in repairing information technology equipment, they’d promote it. The strategy worked. “It went viral,” she said. When the company introduced its website in December 2009, all 1,000 packages, which took two months to make by hand, sold out within six hours. An additional 2,000 were sold on back order. “It was incredible; it changed everything.”
Suddenly, “investors were reading about us all over the Internet, and they started coming to us asking how they could help,” she said. Time magazine listed Sugru, alongside the iPad, as one of the top 50 inventions of 2010.
Sales topped US$5.5 million in 2015, up from US$3.4 million in 2014 and US$250,000 in its first year in 2010. Ni Dhulchaointigh expects sales to exceed US$10 million this year and US$60 million by 2020.
It is now sold online to more than 160 countries and through 19 brick-and-mortar retailers in 6,050 stores in four countries. In the United States, 10 retailers carry the product in 4,500 stores.
Ni Dhulchaointigh said Sugru could withstand temperatures as high as 356 degrees and as low as minus 58 degrees, making it durable indoors and out. It will not melt, freeze, soften or harden. It can be thrown into a washing machine or dishwasher, and even soaked in seawater.
Still, Sugru has its limitations: Its shelf life is 13 months, and once a packet is opened, it must be used within 24 hours. It cannot compete with products that promote their sticking power, where ads show a man dangling in a helmet glued to a steel beam. Sugru holds up to about four pounds.
Sugru has attracted avid fans, who have posted thousands of videos on YouTube and the company’s website, where they try to one-up one another on who can find the most innovative use for the glue. The company offers discounts and coupons on Sugru to the best entrants.
A motorcyclist used Sugru to mount a camera to his helmet, and then went on a ride down the highway filming his journey.
And then there’s the chicken. When a fox attacked a pet hen at a family’s home in Cork, Ireland, the hen lost a leg. So, the owner, a retired engineer, built a fibreglass prosthetic leg and used Sugru to add chicken feet to the prosthetic.
The chicken now walks on two feet. — The New York Times
