For the latest in our ‘meet the maker’ series we recently contacted Greg Foweraker from Innate to find out more about their active travel products and their green philosophy.
Q. Briefly tell us about Innate who you are and how you got started?
A. Innate creates cleanly designed essentials for active travel. Innate comes from the Latin word Innatus, to be born into, we like the cross-reference to the DNA to our design philosophy of Leaner Cleaner Greener . Our first products were providing solutions to travelers needing a water bottle with no endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA and that would accommodate a filter to remove pathogens. We’ve stuck to our vision of providing collections that deliver solutions across a range of essentials for our active customers.
Q. What made you decide to make wallets?
A. We’d been developing our META collection of travel organizers that were TSA compliant using recycled and re purposed fabrics with stitch less construction. This got us thinking that we couldn’t abide many of the travel wallets on the market that used chunky binding tape to stabilize the seams; we started die-cutting and rf welding up some test samples; the first ones had problems with edge stability due to the individual threads in the fabric getting pushed by the cutting dies into grooves on the cutting surface. We solved this by using an HDPE cutting board and then did little things like reinforce the clip point; overall this was a fun project and we’ve gone on to create a family of wallet related items including our persona travel organizer.
Q. Are you looking to add any other designs? What’s the future hold for Innate?
A. We’re just putting the finishing touches on our Deltos RFID shielding passport wallet; we wanted to create a low profile solution for international travellers yet have dual currency slots, airline card holders and a secure yet convenient passport sleeve. We’re currently testing a fully submersible zip that can be assembled with stitchless construction; this has great potential for wallets for folks messing about on the water.
Q. Which famous person would you love to get an order from for one of your wallets? and why?
A. Oh that’s easy, Rei Kawakubo , the founder of Comme Des Garcons created an iconic collection called Persona, -The Face You Present to the World; we named our persona series of digital organizers in homage to her work and as a double entendre to the face of digital devices.
Greg Foweraker
