THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY
For years inventors have been trying to improve on the flawed design of the humble brolly – from inflatable umbrellas to hi-tech batons that blast the rain away by creating a force field – but it’s all ended in floods of disappointment
IF THE ancient Chinese warlord Wang Kuang travelled forward in time from 189 AD to 2023, lots of things might make him scream. The fearless warrior might quake at the sight of an aeroplane or weep to behold a TV, but one thing is certain: an umbrella wouldn’t elicit a blink. Evidence of collapsable umbrella stays was discovered in his tomb and dated back to 25 BC, and historians believe brollies are far older than that. TS Crawford, author of A History of the Umbrella, writes that it’s “safest” to say the first umbrella was constructed “over 3 000 years ago”. Its design was perfected in the 1850s, and since then it has remained essentially the same.
That, frankly, doesn’t make sense. One only has to use an umbrella once to realise that they’re bad at their job – spokes poke, canopies tear and the whole thing easily flips inside out.
Since the millennium, self-styled disruptors in Silicon Valley have reinvented everything from buses to tents but, somehow, the humble umbrella perseveres practically untouched.
Our appetite for better options means customers have been let down. Almost a decade ago, when he was an overworked IT student at the University of Haifa in Israel, Tal Kitron spent £121 (then R2178) on an umbrella.
It didn’t have spokes or a canopy – “It seemed quite revolutionary,” the 35-year-old software developer says now.
He’s referring to the “Air Umbrella” which launched on crowdfunding website Kickstarter in September 2014. Within a month, 825 backers pledged over $102 000 (then R1,1 million) to aid
‘ONE ONLY HAS TO USE AN UMBRELLA ONCE TO REALISE THAT THEY’RE BAD AT THEIR JOB – SPOKES POKE, CANOPIES TEAR’
its development.
“This is a real ‘invisible umbrella’, claimed the description – a video showed a baton-like device blasting rain with a force field of air.
Ultimately, no backer received an Air Umbrella. Some investors were refunded, though many, like Kitron, did not receive their money back (in a 2016 update, the company said it would endeavour to refund the others in time).
The product’s inventor Chuan Wang, who is based in Nanjing, China, did not respond to an interview request.
James Orgill, a 39-year-old chemical engineer from Utah in America, tried building his own Air Umbrella from a leaf blower and a pipe in 2020. He claims he proved it couldn’t be done without an “exorbitant amount of fast-moving air” that “would require the person holding it to carry around a generator”.
Testing it, Orgill says, “showed me how ridiculous the actual product is”. Kitron says he “didn’t look thoroughly” before donating – he now realises the design is “really dumb”.
IT’S been nine years since the Air Umbrella was covered breathlessly by the BBC, Bloomberg and The Telegraph (which guardedly referred to it as “ambitious”). In that time, no other hi-tech umbrella has appeared. In August 2023, troubled by showers in his home city of Leuven in Belgium, Kitron anxiously searched for protection. Everything he found would “get destroyed by the next storm”; nothing seemed revolutionary.
“I came to the conclusion you just buy an umbrella that’s not the cheapest but not too fancy,” he says, “and when it gets destroyed, you just buy five more.”
Why must we live like this? The story of the modern umbrella’s success is like a London street after a rainstorm – littered with the debris of fallen brollies. According to author Marion Rankine’s Brolliology, “In 1855 alone, over 300 patents were submitted for improvements to the umbrella.”
And in the 21st century, inventors from Italy to Japan have tried to update the device. So why is it that so many of them have failed to weather the storm?
Justin Nagelberg spent eight years and more
‘IT PROMISES TO KEEP YOU DRY, BUT LEAVES YOUR EGO ALL WET’
than $150 000 (then R1,6 million) creating a product that doesn’t exist. Thirteen days after the Air Umbrella launched on Kickstarter, so did the Sa – a geometric umbrella with a hidden skeleton that folds open like origami.
“I always thought the traditional umbrella structure was outdated,” says 38-year-old designer Nagelberg – the Sa has carbon-fibre ribs “10 times thicker” than in normal umbrellas. “It would probably pick you up off the ground before it ripped or bent out of shape.”
The Sa was born in 2014 after Nagelberg’s boss at New York design company Nooka asked him to brainstorm new products. Almost 1 500 people pledged $142 940 (about R1,5m) on Kickstarter, but in 2022, Nagelberg finally told backers they would not receive an umbrella. With their money already spent developing the product, he began refunding them from his own pocket.
“It was a very arduous and challenging development process,” explains Nagelberg, now based in Tokyo. When he initially contacted manufacturers in China to bring his vision to life, they tried to “give us basically an existing umbrella and change one really simple thing like the shape of the handle”.
Profit margins also rained on his parade. “The price to make a single umbrella is really, really expensive,” he says.
Assembly is pricey because umbrellas have “small parts” that need to be “connected by hand”, incurring high labour costs.
His design also required costlier materials than a regular umbrella, and because he didn’t want any exposed screws or seams on the final product, manufacturing was complicated.
Another problem: “A lot of manufacturers won’t even give you the time of day unless you have a 5 000- or 10 000unit order,” he says. “Ordering an initial batch is very, very, very expensive and very high-risk.”
After almost a decade, Nagelberg ultimately learnt that designing the perfect umbrella is relatively easy – making it is the hard part. This explains the disappearance of another umbrella that made headlines in 2012 – the Rain Shield. Designed by Taiwanese students Lin Min-Wei and Liu Li-Hsiang, the umbrella extended down one side to protect carriers from the splashes of passing cars. The product won a Red Dot Design award and earned 250 000 YouTube views.
“Winning an award definitely did encourage us,” says Lin (34). But, she adds, she ultimately lacked the resources and experience to develop the product for sale – plus the design wasn’t perfected.
“We created a display model mainly for exhibitions. Actually, it was a bit heavy for practical use,” she admits.
THE Sa and the Rain Shield are far from the only umbrellas that had trouble opening up in the 2010s. The hands-free, helmet-like Nubrella once generated headlines but its inventor doesn’t sell it today – as is the case with the UnBRELLA, a device with its frame on the outside, meaning it doesn’t drip when closed (though third-party sellers seem to be shifting old stock of both).
Nana Kimura works for H Concept, the Japanese design company that sold the UnBRELLA for ¥9 900 (then about R1 100) in the 2010s. She says although it sold reasonably well it was discontinued after its original manufacturer closed down and H Concept could not find a new factory up to the job.
Manufacturing difficulties are one thing, but umbrella inventors also have to contend with the far trickier matter of human psychology. How many people are really prepared to carry something that will attract stares?
According to Brolliology, the traditional umbrella was once considered embarrassing – in the 1780s, crowds followed a doctor named John Jamieson while he carried a yellow umbrella through the streets of Glasgow in Scotland.
While the inside-out UnBRELLA might seem far-fetched, it’s not the most outthere design that’s failed to rain supreme.
In 1997 construction surveyor Edoardo Iurincich was walking past a school in his hometown of Trieste when he was alarmed to see children attacking each other with umbrellas.
“He thought, ‘We need something that’s a little bit safer’,” says Iurincich’s son, Dean. The 23-year-old student is translating for his father on Zoom. Iurincich (69) has light-grey hair and thick black eyebrows, and is “honoured” to chat.
Trieste is a blustery port city in northeastern Italy, and Iurincich had long been troubled by umbrellas breaking due to gusty “bora” winds. Hoping to tackle this – and stop children poking each other – he invented an inflatable umbrella that could be pumped up with a small battery-powered pack. The design was inspired by the structure of mushrooms,
made without parts that would snap in the wind and could be folded to fit in your pocket.
The patent for Iurincich’s umbrella was granted in 2002 and he presented a sample at a gifts fair in Hong Kong a year later.
“He was approached by a large umbrella manufacturer from China,” Dean says.
Although the Chinese manufacturer was “extremely interested” in the umbrella, Iurincich felt he wouldn’t be paid his “fair share”.
Dean remembers his father travelling to China “for several years” to find a manufacturer he could trust – he feared many would simply steal his design. Ultimately, Iurincich began to feel guilty about spending time away from his son and decided to leave the project behind.
Another man with an unusual patent is 45-year-old Raynel Lazo-Antunez. In 2017, he and his wife/co-founder were granted the patent for their “automated hands-free umbrella” – the DroidBrella’s helium-filled canopy hovers with the help of a propeller. But when I reach Lazo-Antunez – who was born in Cuba but now lives in Florida – it is apparent he wants protection from more than just rain.
He describes a device that would block tech giants from spying on us through our phones.
“It will be disruptive for the current financial and technological status quo on Earth,” he says via email.
Lazo-Antunez is currently using his savings to fund a functional prototype. As neither the DroidBrella nor Iurincich’s inflatable umbrella have made it to market, it’s difficult to say whether customers would happily be seen with something so different. Reviewing the helmet-like Nubrella in 2008, ABC News claimed it “promises to keep you dry, but leaves your ego all wet”.
People often pay a premium for this potential embarrassment – the Nubrella once sold for $119,99 (about R1 120). But this was a rare exception.
“People have a really strong feeling about how much an umbrella should cost and it’s quite low,” Nagelberg says.
About 80 000 umbrellas are left on London’s public-transport system alone every year; most customers are reluctant to spend much on something so easy to lose.
Still, despite the difficulties of markets and manufacturers, some alternative umbrellas are available today, standing upright against strong winds.
“I’ve become a famous TikToker,” says Helen Drumm (58), who runs Sound Quality Gifts, a gift shop in Monaghan, Ireland. She has accumulated 38 000 followers on TikTok – popular videos feature an umbrella that Drumm markets by dancing and singing.
“People come into my shop now and say, ‘Helen, I want one of your famous umbrellas’.”
Created by the England-based businessman Stephen Collier in 2013, The Rainshader looks like a motorcycle helmet. It sits over a user’s head and shoulders without restricting their view.
Newspapers at the time reported that The Rainshader had been tested in 64km/h winds and didn’t blow inside out – yet despite the initial attention, Collier seemingly failed to take the world by storm. The business passed through multiple hands until it was bought by Drumm in 2023 (Collier did not respond to interview requests).
ANOTHER success story is the senz°. Designed by three Dutch students in 2006, the storm-proof umbrella has a sloping back and is available in much of Europe, Australia and Japan. Its general manager, Ingrid Verschueren-Willemen, says people are prepared to pay £59,90 (R1 378) for the product because it’s designed to last.
Still, marketing is “always a challenge”, due to restricted budgets.
The KAZbrella also sells. Invented by England-based Jenan Kazim (68), the brolly opens from the inside out, meaning its exterior is dry when it is folded after use. Kazim first had the idea 25 years ago, when he saw water from his mother-in-law’s umbrella dripping onto her carpet.
More than 3 000 Kickstarter backers pledged £265 397 (then about R5,3m) in 2015. The KAZbrella is on sale for £45 (R1 035) today.
“I developed the initial designs in my own shed all by myself,” says Kazim, a trained aerospace engineer. His original prototype was made with “bits of string, bits of rods” from DIY shops, but he understood the importance of making it look like a regular umbrella so customers weren’t embarrassed.
Kazim’s wife, a textile designer, creates geometric patterns for the undersides of his brollies.
The KAZbrella sells in the UK, the US and Japan. Kazim hopes to begin wholesaling so eventually his umbrella can replace the traditional design. For now, the future of the Rainshader, senz° and KAZbrella remains to be seen.
Things also aren’t over for inventor Iurincich – although his patent has expired, he still has a “flame burning inside of him”.
The Sa’s Nagelberg hopes to return to his product too, but for now he sits in a puddle of disappointment. “I’m really bummed that I don’t have anything to show,” he says.
A time-travelling Wang Kuang might’ve been baffled to behold an Air Umbrella or Sa, but sadly neither shields our streets today.
Historian TS Crawford published his A History of the Umbrella in 1970 and ended it optimistically, writing that he would “leave the umbrella to find its place in the space-age”.
Man has since landed on the far side of the moon, but the perfect umbrella remains out of reach.