Seeking to complement their premium hand-blown glass votives, glassybaby needed a premium flameless tealight to deliver a flamelike warmth to environments prohibiting an open flame.
Client Illumocity LLC, on behalf of glassybaby
Role Lead mechanical engineer
Product evie tealight
Launched 2019
Manufacturing Location China
why reinvent the flame?
Electronic tealights were largely perceived as cheap and dispensable with a predictable flicker pattern, according to early insights gained through surveys to glassybaby customers. Although many people prefer a physical flame to illuminate surroundings, this is not always an option for places such as hospitals, nursing homes, children-friendly areas and even restaurants.
glassybaby needed a premium lighting experience to illuminate their handmade, premium glass votives. Not only did the tealight need to be beautiful inside the votives, but also as a standalone tealight.
trust the process
A phased product development approach was critical to keep the team on-track and establish consistent communication with our client. Before a ‘production’ effort to commercialize the tealight system was even considered, we first sought to develop the technology behind the flamelike experience.
Working closely with another electrical engineer and industrial design lead, I established a preliminary product architecture for a tethered tealight. Through multiple prototyping iterations along with experimentation with materials, light sources and LED configurations (and a healthy dose of late-night tinkering), we delivered a breadboard in less than 2 months with flexible adjustments to brightness, radial movement and selectable profiles. Seeking to minimize part count and complexity, this was achieved without any moving parts using a proprietary LED arrangement and sequencing algorithm to ‘throw’ the light like a real flame.
The client was absolutely thrilled and asked us to put a proposal together to commercialize the tealight system to sell through glassybaby retail and online stores.
a successful launch
The evie tealight system was well received during its launch within glassybaby stores in December 2019. Starting in January (2019) with nothing more than a tethered tealight, our team worked quickly to navigate the design process and gain input from stakeholders so that decisions were promptly made.
In addition to delivering final detailed design and overseeing verification testing, I was responsible for selecting a capable contract manufacturer (CM) to produce the tealight system. By designing a thorough selection process with a focus on identifying a supplier well versed in high-volume injection molding experience, consumer electronics and speed, we identified the right CM partner fit.
The final system is comprised of three rechargeable tealights, a magnetic charging dock and a remote control to turn the lights on/off simultaneously. Each tealight can be controlled by remote or the on/off push button on the bottom of the tealight.
