Meet The Inventors: Maxime Augay of Airhood On How To Go From Idea To Launch

“Never let anyone else than yourself convince you that your idea is not good enough.”

This is especially true in the first phases of conceptualization and development, not to let anyone discourage you from exploring your idea. If you truly believe in it, you need to push it to a point where you made all the points mentioned before, whatever other people might think. And because even good ideas will face many difficulties in getting to the market, you should always focus on the people who think your idea is great and take their help when they offer it!

As a part of our series called “Meet The Inventors,” I had the pleasure of interviewing the Maxime Augay of Airhood Inventor.

Maxime Augay is a Product Designer and 3D Artist. He completed the Master Product Design at ECAL in Switzerland in 2017.

Passionate about technology and materials, he enjoys finding simple answers to complex problems, which are part of the job of a designer today. His experience as a sales assistant at the furniture company IKEA brought him closer to everyday products and mass production techniques.

In the frame of his studies, he collaborated with editors and brands such as Vitra, Victorinox and e15.

His practice shifted to be more 3D-oriented in 2020, focusing on product visualization/animation and motion design. He currently works for Philippe Starck, taking care of most of the 3D imagery.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

My passion for construction games like Lego made me manipulate and build up three-dimensional things very early in my life. I then followed quite classical scientific studies but stopped everything after high school to focus on a more creative path. During my preparation year for art school, I discovered the design field, and it was, to me, the perfect mix between art (that would not give me enough constraints) and architecture (that would give me too many constraints).

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Follow your dreams and they will become a reality.” This sounds textbook, but it is a part of my story. The first time I followed my heart and changed my path was at the end of high school, where I was destined to become an engineer. I quit everything, started to take drawing lessons, and eventually ended my design learning six years later in one of the most prestigious design schools in Europe. I really enjoyed designing products, but I also realized during my studies that what I loved most was selling them with beautiful renderings. After I got back from Switzerland to Paris, where I live now, I worked in a small design agency for brands that didn’t reflect what I wanted to do with my life. It gave me the small push I needed to finally shift my path again and focus entirely on 3D visualization.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. What was the catalyst that inspired you to invent your product? Can you share the story of your “ah ha” moment with us?

Back in 2017, we had a little brainstorming workshop to prepare our master’s diplomas, and after an unfruitful day back at my apartment, I stared at my kitchen hood and thought that it was such a dull object. I wanted to do something with it, to make it more attractive. The portable aspect came right away in my thought process, thinking about all these little kitchens that don’t have an extraction system. The AirHood was born this day, in my head at least!

There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How did you overcome this challenge?

This fact is even more true when it comes to diploma projects because we are still students and, especially in the product design field, we usually don’t have any business classes. Many great ideas get lost after you receive the actual degree and start to work in a studio. But not the AirHood, because after I published it online on my website and other social networks, I started to have many emails from people asking me where to buy the product and loving the idea! I answered every one of them personally, and each new email convinced me that it would be a great product on the market. I exhibited the product in Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2018, along with other friends’ products, and received good attention from the press with a few articles online. In January 2019, I was invited to IMM Cologne to participate in the Pure Talent Contest Award with the AirHood. I won the first prize, getting me closer to a potential collaboration to bring it to the market. The thing that happened a few months later was when Smart Product Concept (SPC), the company that handles product development and distribution worldwide, contacted me after they saw an article about the product in a German newspaper. To simply answer your question, any good idea has the potential to reach the market. You need to do everything in your power to make it happen, and the enthusiasm of people from all around the world was the catalyst that made me believe that it was worth the effort!

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

Yes, it is important to try to find out whether the object already exists, but the real question is at what stage it exists/has existed, and what you want to do with it, where you want to bring it. If the same idea stayed at the prototype stage or was only sold in one part of the world and you think everyone should benefit from the concept, then you are more than entitled to pursue it. We live in a world where new ideas are almost exclusively brought by new scientific discoveries or unlocked because of ever-evolving technologies.

Also, the world is saturated with many different instances of the same object — a chair, for example — but it doesn’t mean we should stop designing new chairs because people will still need to sit. It needs to be smarter and more in line with the ethical/ecological challenges we face today. The idea of making another one smarter is a concept that requires putting a lot of thought into it.

Did you have a role model or a person who inspired you to persevere despite the hardships involved in taking the risk of selling a new product?

Not really a single person. As I said earlier, hundreds of people all around the world contacted me to ask where they could buy the product, and for a long time, I had to answer that it was only a student project. It made me confident that the product could actually be useful and that it was worth the effort!

For the benefit of our readers, can you share the story, and outline the steps that you went through, from when you thought of the idea, until it finally landed on the store shelves? In particular we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

As mentioned before, I received active support from my partner, Smart Product Concepts. This Hong Kong-based company has the capacity and the necessary know-how to take care of patent applications, find development and manufacturing partners, locate retailers to distribute the product and much more. After presenting my product design in Hong Kong, we agreed that this product has a lot of potential and decided to launch it with the help of a crowdfunding campaign to verify this assumption. This campaign was a great success and the team is working hard on the next steps, which involve making the product commercially available in several regions around the globe. In the overall process from product idea to store shelf, I see myself more as an inventor than as an entrepreneur.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

It wasn’t a mistake per se, but before collaborating with SPC, I had a really bad experience with another person who said he was interested in developing the Portable Kitchen Hood. He was very excited the first time he called me on the phone to ask me if I would be interested in collaborating with him, so I was super thrilled to have a shot to bring the project somewhere finally. This person would only call me on the phone to sell me mountains and wonders, and I didn’t manage to sign or discuss any serious agreement or contract by email. I ended up doubting the goodwill of this “partner.” He got quite upset when I told him that since nothing serious had been signed or decided yet, I wanted to see if I could find greener pastures elsewhere.

I finally ended this “collaboration” because he was trying to buy time to find a way to steal the idea. I learned that we should never trust a business partner who refuses to leave any written trace of his interest nor is willing to sign a document that would protect the idea’s owner.

My relationship with SPC is the opposite of this story. They have been benevolent and very serious from the beginning.

The early stages must have been challenging. Are you able to identify a “tipping point” after making your invention, when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

The moment I understood that the product would eventually become a reality was after receiving the prize at IMM Cologne and seeing all the articles in online and printed magazines. I had huge hopes that this could finally go somewhere two years after I initially presented the project to my diploma jury. I continued answering people who would reach me by email, responding to written interviews for articles, and communicating on social media. And it paid off when SPC contacted me to collaborate.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Invented My Product” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. “Do a lot of mockups and prototypes.”

It’s great to see objects in three dimensions, handling, ergonomics, bulk, etc. We work with 3D software more and more, letting you iterate many variations super quickly, but when thinking about a real-life product, you need to see actual centimeters. We understand a lot more about our product when we have it in our hands than on a screen!

2. “Do your research very thoroughly.”

This is a basic one, but it is very true as well. A general idea can become great when you have good research to support it — numbers, testimonies, comparisons, market studies, etc. You need to be able to explain every single one of the decisions you make about your product with a number or an example of why it makes sense to proceed a certain way more than another. Also, referring to what has been said before, it is better to know as early as possible if the idea is far from someone else’s and to think about what can be done smarter or differently.

3. “Document your creation process.”

First of all, it is great to see the progress you have accomplished since the first thoughts you put into your idea. And secondly, people usually love to see the creation processes in general. It’s inspiring and interesting to see how people tackle different problems or execute various tasks. A lot can be learned by seeing the creative process of someone else. I can personally spend hours watching wood or metal workers do their jobs.

4. “Communicate about your idea.”

When you are at school, speaking with your classmates and presenting your ideas to your teachers is natural. And it is a great opportunity to become bulletproof in explaining your concept. It also naturally validates it after some presentations. But this learning period only lasts for a while and being alone with our ideas once we’ve found the working world can be quite overwhelming. It’s necessary to talk to other people, test your idea or concept in other people’s minds and see how they react to it. In the end, unless you make things for yourself only, such as an artist does, you wish that someone else will eventually end up using your product. Communicating is vital to have people know about what you are doing, and doing it perfectly can significantly help bring a small idea into the big world.

5. “Never let anyone else than yourself convince you that your idea is not good enough.”

This is especially true in the first phases of conceptualization and development, not to let anyone discourage you from exploring your idea. If you truly believe in it, you need to push it to a point where you made all the points mentioned before, whatever other people might think. And because even good ideas will face many difficulties in getting to the market, you should always focus on the people who think your idea is great and take their help when they offer it!

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

The first two points of my previous answer — research, drawings, and prototypes — all simultaneously.

The first drawing will orient your research and initial prototype, altering the second drawing, etc. You should end up with a proof of concept that will make you and the others believe in the product. I built, for instance, a working prototype of the portable kitchen hood for my diploma presentation, and seeing the air sucked into the air duct made little effect in conquering the jury’s hearts.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

It all depends on how confident you are, what skills you have, where you want to bring your product, and your starting capital.

Bringing a product to the market is not something that one individual can do anyways. It involves dozens of different people who all have their own skills in a specific domain. Hiring such a person would make things faster or even make them at all in certain cases. The number of things to think about and prepare for is enormous. I would never have been able to do it myself if SPC didn’t offer to develop the AirHood to make it industry ready.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

It depends on the scale of your idea and how confident you are about it being beneficial for a huge amount of people. If you are convinced that money is the only barrier to having your idea change the world (or at least a part of it), then raising capital from investors is the way to go. But it also comes with a great deal of responsibilities, and a step-by-step process could also be considered for the same idea as a slower option but a safer way to bring your vision to the market.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I cannot speak about personal success changing many things here, but I hope that the success of the AirHood will create a safer cooking environment for many people and make a small part of their world a better place!

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I couldn’t stress enough how important it is to do what we love to do in our lives, so if I had to initiate a movement, it would be the one of change. It takes a lot to shift paths, and it’s always a risk, but if you believe and put enough effort into it, you can quit your boring job to do something you find more significant. There is no better satisfaction than waking up every morning knowing that you’ll do what you love to do for a living all day.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would like to have a moment with Dieter Rams, an amazing German designer who was prolific in the second half of the 20th century, especially with the brand Braun. He is responsible for the “10 principles for good design” and was one of the first to declare that it is very important to think about the environment when we conceive an object (his rule number 9). We should all know these principles to make better and more responsible products. He has been an inspiration since the beginning of my practice. I’d like to ask him if he thinks those 10 principles still apply today in a globalized world and what product best matches his principles.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.