Alumni Spotlight: Brad Sliger of Geekey
It’s a serrated knife, it’s a ruler, it’s a wire-stripper, it’s a scoring tip, a screwdriver, a bike spoke key, a file, a wrench, a lid opener—heck, it’s even a pipe—all FAA-compliant and only 30 percent larger than the average house key, Geekey, the all-in-one tool invented by WWU Industrial Design alumnus Brad Sliger (’03) also fits on a keychain without being bulky. Sliger began his exciting career at WWU and went on to create products in the medical, fitness, sporting, and cosmetic industries. Fast forward to 2024, Sliger is completely hands-on with design, manufacturing, marketing, and all the logistics of running his own brand. He applied his industrial design skills acquired at WWU and experience in the field, and his hard work has paid off.
“It has always been my dream to have a product on the market, something I solely created to share with the masses,” says Sliger.
Sliger began his creative journey at an early age with many hours in his parents’ garage building and creating. He attended Sehome High School in Bellingham, where he focused on classes related to creativity. His senior year, he constructed a first-time class at Sehome on designing and engineering an electric car—a car he raced three times in a state-wide competition at the Velodrome in Redmond. After graduation, Western’s Vehicle Research Institute was a logical next step for him, where he learned he loved the combination of engineering and design.
While attending Western, Sliger shifted his engineering focus to the Industrial Design program where he received a completely new set of challenges. He valued and appreciated ID professor Arunas Oslapas’ guidance and the hard, but honest feedback of Dell King, professor of the Industrial Design senior studio.
“We don’t really speak with Dell until senior year,” said Sliger, “So he is not biased toward any particular student or project. The real world is the true test on whether you succeed or fail in design; Dell provided immediate and honest feedback on projects—preparing you for the public’s critical judgement.”
After working for many years professionally, Sliger had the chance to collaborate on a project with a well established industrial designer named Scott Wilson who is the founder of the Chicago based design firm Minimal.
“Scott Wilson made a name for himself by really ‘kickstarting’ the popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter by introducing two successful products.” Both items docked the Apple iPod Nano into a wrist band. “It was by far the most crowdfunded product at that time, raising just shy of a million dollars in 30 days,” said Sliger.
It was then that Sliger witnessed the unlimited potential of taking an idea to market with crowdfunding. “It is a great way to test out a new idea—if it succeeds with crowdfunding, there is a strong chance it will continue to do well on the market.”
Shortly after that was the moment the initial stages of designing the multi-tool took place.
“I had this idea of taking the common hexagon-shaped house key that everyone recognizes and transforming it into a multi-tool while keeping the same proportions of this well known key. It just made so much sense because so many common fasteners, screws and bolts are all hexagon-shaped. When refining the design, I made sure it offered as many functions as possible while still paying tribute to this iconic key. Once the design was completed, I created the name, logo, packaging, visual content, sourced production, and everything else from beginning to end.”
He launched Geekey on Indigogo in 2017 making 943% of his goal and went into full production to fulfill pre-orders. Geekey went on to win Hot New Next in 2018 and is a top tier competitor in sales for the multi-tool market. With the known success of Geekey, Sliger will be introducing Geekey 2.0 this fall with some added unheard-of features in multitools.
When asked what advice he would offer to current WWU students, he says to do your research, know your market, know what you are good and how to source what you are not good at. Most importantly, know you will have to wear many hats to achieve success.
But most of all, “Talk to others who have done it. If you have a good design, your product can sell itself. You have to communicate the value of the product, but the design is the first step to drawing people in.”
Learn more about Geekey.
Story by Frances Badgett