Scott Wilson, with a watch and chair he designed.
Photo by: Erik UngerWhen Scott Wilson was global creative director at Nike Inc. 10 years ago, he had the brilliant idea that women might want more from a sports watch than a man's version in pink. His boss shot it down, but he went ahead and worked on the side with the Beaverton, Ore.-based company's watch-making partner, Seiko Epson Corp.
Sales of his Nike Presto watchâ€"more of a smooth, colorful bangle than a hard-edged timepieceâ€"hit 1 million in its first year on the market, in 2003, 10 times the sportswear company's benchmark for success.
Mr. Wilson, 42, now runs his own shop, Chicago-based Minimal Inc., where he is designing consumer products and furniture, some for his own production and some for others. He's getting noticed: Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum just named him one of its 2012 national design award winners.
Though his portfolio includes Xbox gaming equipment and an iPhone cover, he's best known for his brightly colored TikTok and LunaTik bands that turn Apple Inc.'s iPod Nanos into wristwatches. His latest effort is the LunaTik Touch Pen, a combination rollerball pen and digital stylus that eliminates the need to carry two instruments for paper and an electronic tablet.
Mr. Wilson also is getting buzz for his approach to funding. For his plastic watchbands, he raised nearly $1 million in 30 days via Kickstarter.com in 2010, the first time early-adopter shoppers pledged that much on the New York-based crowdfunding site. (The products are now sold in Apple stores, too.) He's back on Kickstarter with his combo pen-stylus and has attracted $309,083 in pledges from 4,200 tech geeks.
“While he's trained as a designer, he has an amazing business brain,†says Tom Stat, who worked with Mr. Wilson in the Chicago office of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ideo LLC, a design and innovation consulting firm, and is now a consultant.
Mr. Stat, who wears one of the Nike watches Mr. Wilson designed, remembers being amazed at the royalties Mr. Wilson raked in from a side project: a dishwasher clip that kept baby bottles from flipping over and filling with water during the wash cycle.
As a kid in Washington, Mr. Wilson was always drawing, building and taking things apart. He was shy, too, and even today has to “fight the inclination to be an introvert,†he says. His father encouraged him to pursue baseball at the University of Virginia, but he opted for the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, where he was able to combine his interests in graphic design and engineering (and was a Division III pitcher). By his senior year, he was working full time as a product designer at Kek Associates Inc.
The Art Institute of Chicago has included some of his pieces in a modern design exhibit that runs through July.
From this week's In Other News
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