Company Category: Fashion Accessories

Over a decade ago, our team was hard at work at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, studying how geckos could climb walls and stick to ceilings, and engineering and prototyping our own bio-inspired gecko adhesives. We started our own company and got to work figuring out what broader problems our new material could solve. We decided to brand our new technology as Setex, which is named after the sticky hairs on geckos’ toes, called setae. We had an AHA moment the first time we attached our material to the bridge of a pair of lab safety glasses. Suddenly the frames which had been uncomfortable and slipping could now be worn comfortably and securely. We got to work developing, testing, and scaling production for our Setex Anti-Slip Nose Pads, booming to a 40% market share within 18 months of our 2020 launch. We have subsequently launched anti-slip products for wireless earbuds, gaming, and general use, and have products in skincare and sporting goods in the pipeline.