OneUp launches the world’s most compact life jacket

OneUp is a project that was created and launched in Gran Canaria. It has transcended the Canary Islands and Spanish borders. The project is on its way to becoming one of the most effective tools for saving lives at sea or in any other aquatic environment. It is a life jacket inside a can. It has a salt tablet inside that dissolves in contact with water and spring releases the vest which perforates the CO₂ gas bottle and inflates in just two seconds.

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Life jacket invention

The invention of Saúl de León, CEO and creator, together with his partner, Luis Borges, arises as a response to the shipwrecks of boats with immigrants in the Mediterranean.

“The idea was to create something light, compact and that from a safe distance can be launched to help those who are about to drown,” said Borges, who assured that the product created is light, small and easy to transport. “A Red Cross lifeguard can carry 50 or more OneUp life vests on his jet ski, and save 50 or more lives,” he added.

“Saúl de León worked for a year to bring out the OneUp prototype, and when I joined the initiative I brought my knowledge of how to do mass production through my experience with the Chinese industry, where I make drones and other products,” said Borges.

Together with the mass production, they carried out a market study, realizing at that time that they had invented a product that served a greater cause, so they activated a fundraising campaign through crowdfunding. Crowdfunding, or micro-funding, is a network of collective financing.

The OneUp advantage

The campaign raised about $40,000 (€36,000) in three weeks, more than 100% of the target. They discovered that there was a demand for their product and people liked it. This helped the team to carve a market niche and the first distributors started to emerge. The next step was to bring the product to market, one of the buyers being the Government of the Canary Islands, which was later joined by Salvamento Maritimo and the Spanish Red Cross.

The OneUp is approved and has all the certificates required by Europe as rescue material. Soon, they will have the USSG of the Coast Guard of the United States of America, penetrating a much larger market, and will be able to replace the rescue ring in boats of less than nine meters.

The objective is to create a rescue network by installing tools that contain the OneUp but at the same time offer other information and rescue services.

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(Featured image by distel2610 via Pixabay)

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First published in Canarias7, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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