By Kara Thompson,
Special to the AFRO
What’s the best way to help a jogger running at night who is afraid of being hit by passing cars? How can athletes play on a basketball court with no risk of injury from a slip or fall? Where do medical professionals, searching for an easier way to track their patients’ vitals, turn when they need fast, reliable information? Technology is the answer.
Today, companies are working hard at bridging the gap between technology, medicine, fashion, and accident prevention.
Technology can solve all kinds of problems, large and small. It has made life easier for all who use it.
Harbor Designs and Manufacturing LLC is Baltimore’s example. Josh Barnes, who suffered from the recession and was in unemployment at that time, started the business.
“We are a turn-key solution provider to companies and vendors, bringing new technologies to market. We provide full-supply chain management including cleanroom assembly and technical assembly in-house. Then, hopefully, we help you ideate on what your next product is and manage that as well,” said Barnes, when asked what Harbor Designs does.
The solutions provided by Barnes aren’t based on hypothetical situations.
These solutions have been able to solve many of the problems customers face in the real world. Harbor Designs was approached by a client who had almost hit a jogger while walking on a dark road with poor visibility. He was so traumatized by the incident that he decided to create light-up running pant.
“He decided he was going to make joggers more visible,” said Barnes. “So we integrated stretch electronics, where you actually print the circuit onto the garment. We embedded [
machine-washable]
LEDs.”
After watching his son play basketball, a parent had an idea for a shoe that would have enough traction on the courts. His son was constantly licking his hands and wiping his shoes with it.
“What anybody who plays on any court knows is that the courts get dusty and slippery. You don’t have traction if you’re trying to make your shot in basketball, and kids are getting hurt too,” Barnes said.
The father came up with what he calls “traction gel,” a product that athletes can clip onto their shoes for easy access while playing. Harbor Designs named the invention “Court Grabbers.”
“We designed a little plastic carrier that gets laced into your shoelaces. And then there’s a shuttle that snaps into that plastic carrier, and in the shuttle is a little [
traction pad]
that you squirt some of this traction gel in,” Barnes said.“When you’ve got it laced into your shoelaces on both feet, you just wipe your right foot against your left foot and vice versa, and then both of the shoes now have traction on the bottom of them again.”
Harbor Designs is a manufacturer and producer of wearable technology. Harbor Designs is also partnering up with a subscription-based game service to create an online escape room.
“There’s no shortage of projects. There’s a lot of really cool tech being developed in Baltimore right now that I think [
is]
It is often under-priced. People just don’t know what’s happening in our tech scene here,” said Barnes.
It is quite different to design and create tech-integrated clothes than it is to design transfusion pumps and dispensers because of the high wear and tear.
“The key to developing good wearables is to stay up on the latest technologies, because it is an ever evolving market,” said Barnes. “There are lots of sew shops around, but they’re very nuanced in what they do and what they’re good at.”
Most of Harbor Designs’ creations are ideas brought to them by small businesses and corporations to bring a product to life. They help startups out of Maryland colleges like Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University, and the University of Maryland.
A partnership with Fashions Unlimited, another Baltimore-based company, yielded the design of a shirt equipped with sensors throughout for medical professionals to track the person’s heart rate remotely.
“Our founder Philip [
Spector]
, loves doing projects… that merge the gap between technology and fashion,” said Fashions Unlimited’s production manager Ebony Crear.
“In the last decade the apparel industry has seen a huge shift towards what they call Industry 4.0-related technologies, such as machinery, robotics and digital software to digital practices,” Crear said. “In general the whole process of manufacturing, from meeting a client to producing the garment is heading towards being all digitized.”
Crear says they’re actively upgrading the business’ technology to better design the garments and the machines they use to create them.
“One way they use technology during the production process is using 3D-rendering software to help their clients visualize potential final products.
“If we’re trying to help [
a client]
develop their pattern–let’s say they don’t have everything ready and they’re still tweaking some things– we can input all of the exact data points [
into the software]
It also provides a 3D image. We would even be able to print that out or fit it to an avatar.”
Crear stated that this tool is especially useful for global clients who cannot visit the factory during production to inspect their products.
“The process from taking an idea to making it practical, making it functionable, making it wearable is intense,” she said. “It’s all of these facets that I just feel like sometimes, as a designer, you might not have thought of.”
Harbor Designs is a Black-owned business that has partnered with Fashions Unlimited to create a new fashion industry. Using the integration of technology, manufacturing and production of apparel and accessories, the business are making sure that everyone can keep up with the changing times– from athletes to doctors and fashion designers.
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