Westport dad Charlie Sherts started dreaming up the idea for his new product, the Mozy, while sitting at his son”™s soccer game one very chilly day in 2019.
“I was sitting on the bench freezing, noticing that people around me had blankets, but they weren”™t working,” Sherts said. “I realized that it all has to do with the convective heat loss. No matter how tight you wrap a blanket around you, it leaves gaps where air comes in.”
As a research and development specialist in the medical device field, Sherts drew upon his experience studying thermodynamics and heat transfer to troubleshoot the issue. The idea for the Mozy began to take shape.
“The name was created by combining letters of the product”™s most important features ”” MObile and coZY,” he said. “We also wanted a fun, easy to remember name that gave a warm cozy feeling.”
Startup costs were funded by Sherts, as well as Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns. With a goal of raising $10,000, Sherts came closer to $20,000, which funded prototype development and plenty of testing as he studied how best to block convective heat loss while addressing airflow between body and blanket. The Mozy startup team cycled through 37 different prototypes, enlisting fellow sports parents to form sideline focus groups.
“We experimented with the Westport soccer teams and did some testing with Wilton teams too,” Sherts told the Business Journals. “It helped us see what we should adjust, what features we should add, how it should be fastened; it was all part of the development, which took about a year.”
The wearable Mozy thermal wrap has a heavy-duty, water-resistant and windproof outer shell and inner plush fleece that hugs the body due to built-in elasticity. It attaches at waist level so as to cover the area that needs it most.
“You see people wearing heavy jackets and heavy socks, boots, hats and gloves, but from the waist down it”™s primarily just a thin pair of jeans,” Sherts said. “The Mozy has a thickness of a half an inch, which minimizes the heat transfer from your body to the cold air, as well as the convective heat loss from the body to an aluminum bench.”
In March 2020, the Mozy was ready to head to production and be marketed to sports parents and other outdoor spectators. Then, Covid hit.
“When all of the sports activities were shut down, we had to decide whether to go forward,” he said. “Suddenly, we found a lot of people were interested (in Mozy) for their outdoor fire pit or for eating out, things like that. We just had to pivot with it and say okay, that”™s our new primary market ”” everyone who”™s just trying to stay outside and keep doing the things they enjoy.”
The Mozy”™s official launch was in November. As the weather has gotten colder, orders have grown substantially, with holiday sales thus far totaling about $80,000.
Sherts tells the Business Journals he”™s proud that he is able to keep his operation in the United States, specifically the Northeast, working with a manufacturer based in Saratoga, New York, and a shipping partner in Stratford, Connecticut. With the supply chain close by, he said they are ready to scale.
“We”™re really proud to be a Connecticut company and we want to get involved with as many of our local communities here as much as we can. We”™re seeing a lot of really exciting things coming our way from across the country.”
