One of the coolest things about cannabis going legit and the industry rapidly developing these last few years has been seeing so many people from more traditional areas, backgrounds, and industries coming out and getting involved. From Apple designers and Google engineers to 5-star restaurant chefs, Aveda beauticians, and yes,even government officials, it seems like everyone with a passion for the plant is getting into the space, and the latest to join them is the creator of the now ubiquitous and game-changing corkscrew bottle opener, the Rabbit.
An award-winning innovator with a history of transforming everyday tools into extraordinary instruments, Ed Kilduff has worked for the likes of Nike, Reebok, Fisher-Price, OXO’s Good Grips, Smart Design, Keurig, and Starbucks designing hundreds of products and packages while accumulating more than 50 patents and numerous international design awards in the process, with some of those designs even making it into the MOMA’s permanent collection.
More recently, he helped co-create the Kickstarter-launched EVAK line, a gorgeous glass jar collection with an ingenious suction-like device that helps keep herbs and other foods fresh. It’s this super-innovative storage solution that eventually brought Ed into the cannabis space with his latest venture, Pollen Gear, a full range of revolutionary, child-resistant cannabis storage solutions that look great and work even better.
We had the chance recently to visit Ed in his Soho-based studio in New York City to discuss wine, design, Burning Man, and of course, cannabis. We chatted, chilled, and tinkered around with a bunch of fun toys and gadgets, all thoughtfully designed by Ed and his talented team at Pollen Gear. Below’s our conversation.
So first off, before we get into Pollen Gear, I’d love to talk about the Rabbit corkscrew. It’s been hailed as one most innovative kitchen gadgets of recent memory—and it doesn’t even need batteries! Was it your idea? Did you create it? Design it?
Actually, the first iteration of the Rabbit was a lever-style corkscrew invented by a Texas oilman and aerospace engineer named Herbert Allen back in the 70’s. Unfortunately he passed away before he was able to license his invention and left all his patents to his alma mater, Rice University. Eventually the French company Screwpull bought the patents and began marketing and selling the corkscrew under their name.
And so how did you get involved?
Well, long story short, a marketing company called Metrokane started making a cheaper, cheesier knockoff of Screwpull’s and ended up getting sued by them back in 1997. During the discovery, Metrokane saw that Herbert Allen’s original lever-pull patents were about to expire in 2000, so rather than fight the lawsuit, they settled and began getting to work procuring the patent. Meanwhile, right around that time, I happened to be walking the floors of a design trade show in Chicago trying to land a gig with my small portfolio, and I stopped by Metrokane’s booth and asked if they had anything that needed work on. Fortunately for me, they did, and the rest is history.
Wow, talk about being in the right place at the right time.
Definitely. I mean, at first I was a bit hesitant to get involved simply because it was somewhat of a design copy, but I needed the cash and ended up taking the gig, which obviously turned out to be a great decision. I spent about two weeks designing it in my apartment in Brooklyn and then it took an additional two years to finally bring it to market.
Must have been a total game changer for you, no?
Totally. I mean, we knew when we launched that it was likely to become one of the hottest items in the households industry. Everyone already knew what it was, except ours (the Rabbit) was just a lot cooler, not to mention a lot cheaper. We also made a ton of great tweaks and innovations to the original design over the years that truly made it a lot better. Then you add all the accessories that revolved around the brand—the bottle stoppers, foil cutters, etc.—all these retailers were carrying them, but there wasn’t a single household wine brand putting everything together, and the Rabbit really did that and more. In fact it was so successful we even ended up making a cheaper line called Houdini, and that also became really popular.
And now you’re in cannabis! A rather interesting shift from that to where you guys are today. Speaking of which, I read somewhere that you used to design for Nike and Reebok?
Yeah, in 1994 I was in the city (NY) freelancing for a bunch of different design firms and picked up a freelance gig for Nike working on their hockey skates. This was when they just acquired them by Bauer. I also did some packaging for Reebok and Starbucks. Mostly freelance stuff.
And how did you eventually transition into Pollen Design?
Well I worked at a company called Smart Design for two years back in 1994, which is where I met my partner Dean doing a lot of houseware items. A lot of stuff for Oxo and their now super-popular Good Grips brand. We both left a few years later in 1997 to start Pollen Design with the Rabbit being one of our first clients. Meanwhile Dean picked up a bunch of consumer electronics brand, so we really had a nice mix of products.
Why the name “Pollen”?
(Laughs) It actually has nothing to do with cannabis. Dean came up with the idea because he thought that being here in New York City, with all the different industries—media, fashion, arts, tech, etc.—he thought it was interesting in that we were quite literally cross-pollinating all these industries and cultures into various designs and products. And all these years later when we were trying to come up with a name for this new cannabis packing line, we were just like, well, we already have the name Pollen, it clearly makes a reference to cannabis and flower, so why change it? Besides, if we kept it, we didn’t have to deal with trademarking a new one, so it kind of all just made sense.
So basically it was destiny?
(Laughs) Yes!
Why high-end cannabis packaging? Obviously a lot different than your typical kitchen and houseware products.
Yeah, for sure. It actually all really stemmed from our EVAK line. Back in, I’d say, around November 2013, we were doing a lot of work for Keurig at the time. A lot of coffee stuff—pot holders, milk frothers, etc.—and so we had this idea of designing a premium airtight jar for coffee beans, to keep them fresh. This was our EVAK line. We really loved the design but it wasn’t so practical for Keurig because it was glass and a bit too premium for a mass market brand like theirs, so we decided to launch it on our own on Kickstarter. This was at the time when Kickstarter was just becoming popular, so it was all really exciting.
And how did that lead to creating the dedicated cannabis line? What was that “aha” moment?
Well we had several prototypes here in the office and some of the guys around here were telling us that they loved using the EVAK to store their buds. We then did a survey through Kickstarter and found that the top three things that people were using the EVAK for were coffee, tea, and weed, and that’s when we were like, “Hey, maybe we should look at making these for cannabis.”
And what made you think to make them child-proof?
Well around the same time all this was happening, we had a lot of people asking us to make the EVAK child-resistant, but it was really difficult because the lids and the design were kind of expensive, so we thought, why not just make a dedicated line of child-resistant jars and containers specifically for the cannabis industry? And from there we ended up creating several different designs and products—essentially an entire collection—and put it under the name Pollen Gear.
Wild. So tell us a bit about Pollen Gear and what it is you guys create? I actually saw a clip on your site with a kid desperately trying to get into one of your child-proof bags and then crying when he couldn’t. Hilarious.
(Laughs) Yeah, that was a lot of fun. With Pollen Gear, we officially started working on these designs a little more than a year ago without anyone knowing about it—kinda super-stealth mode, and then we recently launched at the MJ Biz show in Vegas this past November.
Wow, so pretty recently. And what kind of products do you currently sell under the collection?
Right now we have our Pop Box, which is an air-tight and smell-proof child resistant container, our SnapTech bags, which have a patent-pending snap-lock child-resistant mechanism, and our higher-end child-resistant glass jars.
And who are some of the brands you work with?
We’re actually already working with a bunch. We’re doing Pop Boxes for The Lab in Colorado, Temescal Wellness, and Redwood Herbal Alliance out in Cali, bags for Best Day Ever in Aspen, custom glass jars for Zen Leaf in Canada, Seed and Smith, and Next Frontier Bioscience. Really all over the place.
That’s awesome. Well I’m sure I’m not the first to tell you that the products really do look gorgeous. Especially these glass jars. Really sleek. Can you take us a bit through the design process? Or better yet, your design process?
Well, it’s definitely proprietary (laughs). No, but we’re really focused on the function, utility, and engineering aspects of the design. We start with that, then focus on styling it after the invention, because if it doesn’t function, it doesn’t really matter how sexy it looks—nobody’s going to want to buy it. We’ll spend weeks and months on a little gasket just so that when you push it down you get the right noise and function. So yeah, function and engineering first, then obviously the overall design and aesthetic as the final stage in the process.
And does that process ever involve cannabis?
I mean, I smoke, but not really beforehand. Sometimes I’ll hit the CBD pen to get me going, but very rarely. The type of weed out there today is so strong—it’s just too intense to start working with. If I smoked at work I’d just head straight over to Mamoun’s (a popular NYC falafel joint).
Their falafels are tasty. Speaking of which, how do you feel about edibles?
(Laughs) I love my Cheeba Chews.
And what about smoking or vaping? Any preference? Flower? Oil?
I do a little bit of everything.
Any particular strain? Are you more of an indica guy? Sativa?
Definitely more of a sativa guy.
Let’s talk a bit about the cannabis space in general. As we touched upon earlier, it’s obviously a lot different than the kitchen and housewares space. Now that you’re breaking into this new territory from a more traditional industry, have you found the transition to be difficult? What about clients and people you work with in the industry? Any flack for entering a space that’s still considered very much taboo?
Well as far as the transition, I love design and I’ve always enjoyed cannabis and been a part of the culture—been smoking on and off since I was a teenager, go to burning man and other festivals, so I’m very much in tune with the lifestyle, which makes it a great fit for what I’m doing here. As for people taking issues with it, nah, we really haven’t had any of that.
And what about the industry as a whole compared to the more traditional spaces you’ve worked in. The people, the business aspect, etc.—how do you find all of that?
I mean, there definitely are a lot of shysters out there. People you certainly need to be aware of. Pretty much like any other industry, except here it feels like there are a lot of people who you’re just not quite sure what their role is—what they’re doing, what their job is, things like that. Also a lot of people that are definitely in it more for the monetary gains rather than for a true love and passion for the plant. But of course there are also a lot of people like you and me. People who truly share a love and appreciation for cannabis and the lifestyle surrounding it.
Definitely agree with you on that. What about from a design perspective? Any products in the space that you’ve seen that have really impressed you?
Absolutely. There’s a lot of nice stuff going around—PAX, Humbldt, infused Stillwater tea, Soul Selects—a lot of great brands out there doing amazing stuff design-wise.
Obviously you’ve worked and designed in a lot of different industries. How is designing for the cannabis space different?
Oh, to me it’s way more exciting, mainly because it’s such a new area and the potential for innovation is so big. Housewares has unfortunately been kind of flat for a while now, so for what we’re doing this is awesome. And then you look at the market opportunity, and knowing that we can design so far ahead, that quite possibly when they’re doing the legislation and creating the laws, they’ll look at us and see we’re doing child-proof and child-resistant packaging with all this heavy testing, that hopefully they’ll turn to us when trying to come up with all these new rules for how to package, what to write on the packages, etc… I mean, they haven’t even scratched the surface of that stuff yet, and meanwhile we’re right here creating it.
And of course with child-resistant, there’s a lot of opportunity to come up with these super innovative mechanisms, which is really exciting for us. Not to just come up with a new container shape or jar size, but also implement a new sort of function, because then we’re really getting the opportunity to create and innovate from scratch.
And speaking of innovating from scratch, what’s the future look like for you guys? Specifically Pollen Gear—any new and exciting innovations or projects in the works?
Well we are actually in the midst of launching an exclusive Marvel Comic artist series of jars with Adam Pollina. He worked on X-Force for many years and also drew a limited series for X-Men’s Rise of the Apocalypse, so that’s pretty exciting for us.
And where will those be sold?
Still mainly B2B, but we’ll be offering them up to whoever wants to buy them.
Sounds awesome. Well thanks again for taking the time to chat with us and show us around the studio. You’ve got a great space here and it’s been a ton of fun playing around with all these different toys and gadgets. Speaking of which, how’s about we hit that vape and fill up that extra-large EVAK jar for some heady Instagram shots?
(Laughs) Sounds good to me!
