We are happy to introduce you to our new company Phone-Gizmos, and our flagship product  ZGrip. Phone-Gizmos is an entrepreneurial start-up company co-founded by our family team including two recent college graduates and one seasoned product design engineer. We decided to focus on innovative new products in the mobile phone accessories market, and are leading off with our flagship product ZGrip, and the optional accessory ZMount. And we decided to design and manufacture our products in the USA. We think you will love it!

When it comes to ergonomics, little things can matter a lot. Most of us hold our mobile phones for hours every day, and phones are getting bigger, heavier, and more expensive. So hold on tight and don’t drop it! Or, better yet, get ZGrip! The tension between holding it firmly for security against droppage and holding it comfortably is one of the reasons we decided to create ZGrip; to address the ergonomics of holding mobile phones securely and comfortably at the same time.

ZGrip is a compact and streamlined disc shaped extensible grip that attaches to the back of your phone, and pulls up to provide a comfortable and secure phone grip, with additional features to allow it to be a viewing stand, and to hang your phone on horizontal surfaces for video conferencing or taking selfies, and to be a car-mount base, using the optional snap-in ZMount.

The patent-pending design of ZGrip uses a compact base adhesively attached to your mobile phone, connected through a pin hinge to a flexible link that rotates upward from the base to fit easily between your fingers and to extend upward to connect through a second pin hinge to a button top that fits over the top of your fingers. The compliant link flexes to match your finger size and holding configuration, and it gently complies and adapts to your fingers to maintain contact and a secure grip. And it doesn’t force you to spread your fingers excessively around it like some other phone grips do. When not being used as a grip, the button top snaps down into a recess in the base top to provide a compact and pocket-friendly no-snag low profile shape.

Plus the base of ZGrip has an integrated top surface bezel shaped ledge that allows bracing your fingers for better security and control of your phones orientation in your hand, as can be seen in some of the sample grip configurations.

And the base provides a snap-fit mount into our optional ZMount, so you can easily add a mobile phone mount to your common use location(s), like your car dashboard (or motorcycle, boat, airplane, etc.) for quick and easy securing of your phone. It also allows rotating your phone for landscape or portrait orientations, a great feature for using a mapping app for navigating.

In addition, ZGrip provides a viewing stand feature for supporting your phone while on a flat surface in landscape orientation or portrait orientation. Landscape is great for watching videos or movies, and portrait orientation is great for reading off your display while it sets on your work desk or kitchen countertop.

And if you video conference, Zoom or Facetime, you will love the ability to use the hanger mode to hang your phone on the top of your computer monitor to conveniently point your phone’s video camera at yourself, so you don’t need to use your computers web camera.

Plus, we recognized that not everybody wants the same look for their phone accessories. So we added an easily removable adhesively bonded art-top to a center recess in the button top, to allow you to change the art-top to your liking. The adhesive releases easily, and can be washed off and reused indefinitely so you can exchange your art-tops as often as you like. We have a variety of eight art-top options for you to choose from (photographs of actual products shown below), and may offer more options based on your feedback. They can be removed,  changed, and reinstalled repeatedly and in seconds when you want another art-top look for your mobile phone, so go crazy and get them all! We use UV cured ink that is very hard and durable for long life. And the art-top disc is slightly recessed to minimize abrasion and wear of the art-top surface to preserve your art-top disc image quality over time. Further, you can even customize the look of your own art-top with finger-nail polish to match your latest favorite color, or other applique cosmetic finishes of your choosing. Perhaps some Etsy folks just had an “ah-ha” moment!

After you order, if you purchased an option including an art-top disc, we will send you a survey to allow you to specify the art-top of your choice.

And if you prefer to use wireless phone charging, we enabled the use of the latest technology extended range Xi wireless chargers by selecting all of our materials and dimensions to be fully compatible. Look for this type of charger as a future addition to our product line, and we will keep our community of followers and customers appraised of our progress!

And ZGrip is durable and designed to last. Unlike other phone grips on the market. We use high performance engineering materials that won’t break, even if you pull up on the button top with over 15 pounds of force. And the adhesive tape disc used to mount ZGrip to your phone or case is Very High Bond (VHB) type adhesive material that attaches it securely to almost any phone or phone case material, with the exception being silicone cases. (And we are working on that, but so far only reliable to 3 pounds holding force.) On most cases the VHB adhesive will release at about 20 pounds of tension force, or less if you use dental floss to slide under the adhesive pad and help it release. And the VHB tape residue is removable with common adhesive removal products like Goo Gone or Goof Off.

We have spent over a year designing, prototyping, testing, revising, and refining our products and then setting up high volume injection molded plastics manufacturing here in the USA. And now we are making the first runs of production products. We invested up-front in establishing our manufacturing capability to make sure we can fulfill our promises to you and deliver the products we are offering in a timely fashion soon after our campaign funding is completed. We have CNC milling machines to make molds, lasers to engrave and texture our molds, and plastic injection molding machines with plastic material dryers and granulators to make our products with high quality materials and processing in high volumes. We also have pre-made our assembly and process support equipment like ultrasonic welders and production fixtures and tooling, and all manufacturing processes are refined and in-place. We use large industrial precision injection molding machines and engineering grade precision plastic resins. We do not 3D print our products. So you can rest assured that our products will be strong, reliable, durable and attractive. In other words, we have prepared for the production of your orders in advance and are rolling now! We plan to ship your orders placed in response to this crowd-funding campaign in 2021 prior to Christmas, so you can share your new ZGrip purchases as affordable gifts and stocking stuffers.

• To make your mobile phone easier and more comfortable to use
• To reduce problems like phone breakage from dropping, hand cramping and carpel tunnel syndrome, and stiff muscles from holding your phone with less optimal ergonomics, and when unnecessary.
• To blend innovative utility with aesthetic style and beauty, and offer world-class products and quality

• To innovate new and affordable products that will help people in every walk of life to enhance the enjoyment of their mobile phone user experience.
• To introduce a family of products that enhance the users experience, comfort, convenience and security when using their mobile phone.

• We plan to design and manufacture our products in the USA, supporting our local, state and national communities’ workforce.
• We commit to “pay-it-forward” to our customers communities and contribute 10% of our total net profits, distributed equally to needy causes:
  • Medical Research (Diabetes [type 1 and 2], Cancer)
  • Public Education funding at the grass-roots level
  • Funding for Disabled Veterans (e.g. Wounded Warrior Project)
  • Funding food kitchens for those in need across the USA

The main risk we have for the current product offerings is a potential future lack of raw materials availability for operating our production equipment and processes. Due to the Covid pandemic and the peak in PPE equipment demand, some plastics and related materials are in short supply in the USA. To reduce this production risk, we have pre-purchased an on-hand inventory of the key materials necessary for making over 100,000 units, so we believe we will be able to adapt to the product and materials demand on an ongoing basis.

Our team members bring a broad diversity of education, experience and capability in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, manufacturing engineering, technology, and entrepreneurship. These qualities, plus our drive to succeed will help us to successfully overcome any unforeseen problems in a timely fashion.

But despite our progress getting into initial production, we need your help. As a part of our campaign we plan to solicit your feedback for various aspects of product variations, colors, art-top cosmetic styles and finishes, and other new accessories that are under development. And your help with getting the word out and sharing social media posts and your shared experiences by word-of-mouth is invaluable. We are committed to providing world-class quality phone accessory products with the innovative features and qualities that you want and need. We hope you will join us as sponsors during this formative time for our new company, and help guide us with your comments, suggestions, and product use experiences and feedback. We hope to grow, and with your help, we will!

What we need now is a marketing and sales starting point for launching our introductory products to begin to get traction in the market, and to establish a long list of happy customers that like our products and recommend them to others! So here is what we have to offer for you!

To show our thanks to you for sponsoring us with your generous pledges for perks, we are offering a variety of perks with discounts ranging from 40% to 60% off the retail MSRP price. And to be flexible in meeting your ordering preferences, we are offering a perk order quantity of 1, 3, 6,  or 10 ZGrips, and for each quantity you can choose from a black art-top, a printed art-top, and if you want the ZMount. The final perk is a selection of all eight of our introductory art-tops, so you can have one for every day of the week, and then some!

And if you can’t make a pledge to support the purchase of our introductory products now, we hope you will help us however you can, like:

• Get the word out and tell others about our campaign
• Use the Indiegogo share tools, and share our campaign
• Post on social media about our new product

Our sincere thanks to each of you, for your consideration, and hopefully your pledge!