Maker Spotlight — Anton Willis with Oru Kayak

Meet Anton Willis, the creator of Oru Kayak. Anton grew up in Mendocino County, CA, kayaking in the ocean and local waterways. After moving to San Francisco, he found that storing his kayak was problematic in his small apartment. Inspired by origami, he began folding paper with the idea to design a boat he could keep in the city.

“Beyond the job creation and quality assurances, it gives us hands-on access to the production process. We spend a lot of time at our manufacturing facility — ensuring that every Oru Kayak meets our standards for safety, design, and performance. And recently, it’s made the prototyping process for our newest model much faster.” — Anton Willis

With paper models in hand, Anton joined TechShop in 2011 to make and test real prototypes. Although his first full prototype sank to the bottom of the Bay, 25 iterations later he had a fully-functioning product. A lightweight backpack that could easily and elegantly transform into a durable waterproof kayak. He then partnered with Ardy Sobhani and Roberto Gutierrez and launched a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. 730 backers flocked to the Oru Kayak kickstarter page pledging over $443,800 to help bring this kayak to life. That was over 554% of their original goal of $80,000.

They then demoed the Oru Kayak before a national TV audience on ABC’s Shark Tank. After answering questions about how much does the kayak cost to produce, how many have been sold so far, what their projections were for the next year, and lots of back and forth between judges, Robert Herjavec makes an investment for $500,000 for a 25% stake in Oru Kayak. Anton and the team accepted his offer.

It was important to the founders of Oru Kayak that all manufacturing was done in the US. That caused them to head to Southern California to set up manufacturing in partnership with a company that provided the lightweight, durable plastic hulls for their kayaks.

Since then Anton and Oru Kayak have earned numerous accolades and Oru Kayak is now distributed internationally and sold by major retailers such as Amazon, REI and Backcountry.com. You can even spot them during a Giants game when Posey hits a grand slam into the Bay.