Certainly something I know is actually coming to fruition, and we should brainstorm a little bit about how to attack that together.
That's interesting, man. You know, it's a dirty little secret that... Hey everybody, I'm here with Pete Dering today. He's been a friend of mine for a while, and he is the awesome founder of Peak Design, a really cool design company. If you're in the camera space, you definitely know who they are. If you're just into really cool adventure gear, you also probably know who they are. Based out of San Francisco, really design-first brand, doing great things not only for the adventure consumer but also for the environment. So I'm super excited to have Pete here. He's an inspiration when it comes to innovation. Pete, if you don't mind, I'd like to start there. What are you seeing in the market for wireless charging? What pulled your company into that direction, and what gets you excited about it?
Well, what's funny is what pulled us in is the cameras itself, right? We're a photography brand. We see very clearly... It was 2016 when the iPhone 10 came out and portrait mode was released. I was on a motorcycle trip with my dad, and I took some photos of him. I had my SLR on Capture, and then I had the phone, and I took a picture with each, and I was like, 'Oh, I like better.' And it became a feeling of almost an existential need to start partaking meaningfully in the fact that these phones are cameras. So you'll have to follow me for a little bit. We got phones as cameras. We got, okay, what's the most important accessory for a phone which is a camera? Well, it's certainly got to be the case. There's a lot of phone cases out there. What makes it better? I have a personal passion around not just photography but photography, motorcycles, cycling, mountain biking, all of these things. At each one of these turns, having your phone rigidly held in place and accessible and usable, kind of like Capture. You can think of Capture is the clip for the big camera. This Slim Link is the clip for the small camera, which is your phone. So there it is.
That's right. Best yes. You've got a strap and a clip on your phone case. It should look familiar. It's very much in line with the thinking that we've had there also.
And so, man, all of these things combined, but then obviously the phone is such a useful tool for freaking everything, almost annoyingly so. It's absolutely ubiquitous. So you've really got to think about and cover the other use cases that are involved there. And one of those absolutely is charging your phone. But if you look at the Peak Design charger, got one right here. It's not just the requisite thing for a charger for us. If we're going to make the best charger, which is our mission, that's our guiding principle. It's not to just be like, I don't know, use some superlative in some empty way. When we say 'make the best things' as point one of our mission, it really ends up being a guidestone for us for what can we do, what should we do. It's more about product-market fit, and it's also like trying to keep us from just making me-too products. I will tell you, the temptation to leverage the brand and use this big machine that is Peak Design, 85 employees, the temptation to just get some products out there is there. But that's why we have that mission that says 'make the best thing.' So when we make the best charger, to us that meant it is actually quite useful to be able to have kind of turn your phone into a laptop sort of situation. It's also got to be a beautiful piece of gear because it's going to be hanging out somewhere in your kitchen or on your bedside table. Generally speaking, you're going to want something aesthetically pleasing to be on that. And then also getting really into the details, this thing is really properly weighted such that you can remove with one hand. Super important.
Exactly. It is important, and it's actually not something you would necessarily notice unless you use this for a while. If you're using an Apple MagSafe charger, it's either a very awkward one-hand release, like you're trying to knock it off with two fingers, or it's a two-handed release. And you might say, 'Who gives a [__]? Two hands, one hand.' You do these motions multiple times per day, and they all add up. I think it's somewhat imperceptible in the moment, the single action, but you notice it over time. It's just somehow pleasant to interact with a Peak Design product, and I think that really contributes to people developing a real affinity for the brand.
Yeah, having done a lot of different chargers for phones but also for other markets, whether that's wearables or computer peripherals or smart glasses or whatever it is, one of the things that really stands out about the product you're getting on is the real intentionality behind how the one-handed process works. I think it's especially important if people use this on their nightstand. If someone picks up their phone in the middle of the night or something happens, and then you want to go put it back on, being able to just reach over and generally place it and know that you're going to start charging. I'll tell you what people really don't like about charging, and you can see it in Amazon reviews and product returns: they don't like when they wake up in the morning with 10% battery that they thought was securely placed on their charger. So I think nightstand charging is super important. I think automotive charging is quite important. You guys have your motorcycle mounts, a little different than in-car, but in-car charging right now totally sucks. It's crazy. You can buy a $90,000 vehicle, an electric vehicle, and you think they should be pretty good at charging and battery technology, right? It's an electric vehicle company. Then you put your phone down to charge, and it gets so hot in the first five minutes because the alignment is so poor and it's not well designed. It makes you doubt the car. So what I think that you've done really well is you've leveraged powerful technology, including the new current technology that's inside, and you've really turned that into a satisfying experience that shows off what you can do. There are literally hundreds of other chargers out there, but very few, if any, have put the type of design thinking that you have into solving a problem and really making it enjoyable. So I've seen a lot, and I would say kudos to you. There's a reason it's on my desk as the one that I use.
Hell yeah, man. I really appreciate that. It's a really interesting... I'm glad you mentioned the car. We also make an excellent car charger as well. To your point, I just saw someone driving a Porsche Taycan, which I think is a $150,000 electric vehicle, and their phone is sitting awkwardly in the cup holder, upside down, with a USB-C thing. That's the way Porsche dreamed it off, right? Exactly. That's what the Germans had in mind. I don't know what that is. I guess physical products are hard to make. I think it's probably pretty likely that Qi2 chargers will be coming natively to cars. How do you feel that way as well?
