Small steps to success: an interview with the company CEO and Founder of a unique textile startup

This year the company “Amperetex” has become a resident of the Special Economic Zone and 2021 they are going to open a plant that produces innovative textiles in the industrial park “Chrabrowo”. Pavel Pogrebniakov, the General Director of the Kaliningrad’s startup, told us about the unique technology, the breakthrough and how to bring up an inventor

About success on the Horizon

Every startup is a risk-taking as innovative products often don’t have ready markets – this market has to be created. An important feature of our project is that we offer the market a breakthrough in existing heating technologies for various surfaces. We have gone from the development of the idea and creating a prototype up to the first pilot lots and prototype testing in different countries and various customer groups – large and medium enterprises, natural persons of the Russian Federation, the European Union, the USA and Canada. Having received feedback, and after changing the prototype a few times, we reached the phase of the integrated plant development to provide an uninterrupted flow of job lot production.

About roofs without icicles

In 2018 we opened a bus-stop with anti-slip coating in Zelenogradsk, using our unique heating technology. It was one of the phases in the development of our product – we wanted to check out how the technology would work under the Baltic conditions when the temperatures on a winter’s night range from +1ºC to -1ºC, forming layers of ice and slippery surface. For energy-saving reasons we have implemented an automatic intelligence control system so that it would heat only if it is necessary.

Before that, together with our partners we made helipads, exits and entrances of multi-level parking spaces, private home lanes, anti-freezing roofs, pedestrian bridges across rivers, so that there would be no icing in winter. In Europe we made warm textiles for furniture and also there are some projects in engineering industry. We work with European and Asian car industries, now at the stage of prototype models.

Speaking of the scopes and scales where our technology can be applied, there are plenty of areas to be mentioned: starting from interior design and building, fit-out works and agriculture, industry, restaurant business and aviation.

About bases for startups

I can tell you that everyone with whom we communicate and whom we tell about our technology get a few ideas which can be applied. It’s a very important indicator. We have consciously decided that we won’t produce an established line of ready-to-use products for end-users, instead we’ll focus on producing threads and fabrics, which we’re going to offer in the fields B2B. We’ll give other enterprises and opportunity to improve their products based on our technology – whether it be clothes, lath, warm window sills, heating covering materials for warm houses – there are lots of options. For instance, people produce soft roofs for houses and want the last meter of the soft roof to be heated without additional bulky and energy-intensive appliances. We find each other and the they start producing under their brand with mandatory reference to the “Amperetex” technology.

About the ecological properties of production

For me, environmental friendliness in heating technology is lower energy use and absence of pollution and emissions. Electricity consumption for heating is sometimes prohibitively high. To make an impact, our technologies and construction features of the materials can reduce electricity consumption by 60 per cent, in areas where heating was once impossible.

About the upbringing of a young inventor

I believe, the only possible and right way to develop innovations is when inventing is learned from childhood. When kids learn to create something useful or improve something that already exists from an early age. Of course, It won’t be a Hoverboard straightaway, or flying cars or something else what nowadays seems to be fantastic. But starting small, by improving a thing which is nearby, one can achieve a lot. Big things have small beginnings – a thousand steps. Every step forward is an improvement of some little details: a sandbox bucket, a toothbrush, a hairbrush and so on. These things lead to creating a model of an inventor’s behavior model, an outlook in which every thing is supposed to be improved, developed or, if you like – evolutionized. And it won’t matter where the inventor lives, she’ll be able to find opportunities to improve her environment everywhere.

Also, it’s important to understand, that an innovation sometimes won’t lead to commercial success or overwhelming results, but this is anyway a small inventor’s step for the development of mankind. Innovations are occasionally similar to a long relay, where you can’t see the finish line at the very start, but without it the victory is impossible.

About support and time value

We don’t obtain finance for our core business but we work closely with our Business Support Fund to conduct a patent and marketing research so that it helps us to establish appropriate priorities and spot new opportunities. For us the Business Support Fund “Moy Biznes” (English for: “My business”) is a professional partner and assistant, with whom working is always an enjoyable experience.

https://klops.ru/news/2020-11-30/224258/preview/Bnbrf7ZnQSN2iyqgluCR6w