Two former band mates from Loughrea have created an emergency phone charger to be rolled out in pubs and clubs which they hope will turn them into Galway’s latest entrepreneurial sensations.
While portable phone chargers are ten a penny, Chargys are designed for people who are not prepared and get stuck without any bar of charge on their precious mobile phones while out for the night.
For the price of a drink, customers can charge their phone in under an hour, getting between twenty and fifty per cent charge, enough to get them home.
The devices which they can bring with them are single use – they can either be disposed of in a battery recycling bin or returned to the seller for recycling.
After hitting the pubs of Galway, Jonathan Madden (27) and Bryan Larkin (26) have already pre-sold 1,500 units before they have even arrived from the manufacturer in Hong Kong.
Jonathan this week is travelling to Italy and London to talk to stockists about the Chargy, with interest from pubs and clubs in Dublin and as far away as Germany.
“There’s nothing quite like this on the market. It’s for people who need their phone to get through the rest of the night and for pubs who don’t have chargers or who can’t be bothered with them,” explained Jonathan.
“It’s giving a service but also generates revenue for the pubs. We have decided to go ahead and order 5,000 so we can have them out there for the Christmas market.”
The pair, who met through the local music scene in Loughrea, used to be in the band Sucker Charlie. Bryan, who now sells tiles in Galway City, first came up with the idea after getting stuck himself.
“He was going out for a night in Loughrea and his mammy said give him a ring if he needed a lift. By the end of the night he had no charge on the phone and all his friends had disappeared. He had no option but to start walking home to Abbey in Portumna – it was twenty miles away.”
Jonathan, who has a Masters in Music Technology from the University of Limerick, works from home as a broker for IT parts.
They first undertook extensive research. They found that only one in ten people had more than thirty per cent battery life after 11pm. Most had ten per cent or less. One of the biggest causes of stress for parents on a night out was losing battery charge when they needed to be in contact with babysitters.
“Some bars we spoke to offer charging points but many don’t carry the chargers and worry about phones getting broken or stolen if they take them in behind the counter.
“Many simply refused to charge phones behind the bar after a certain time. Others had these charging units but found they took up too much space and didn’t work well.”
Once they sourced a manufacturer capable of creating the lithium device, they spent several more months of testing and research. It has a CE safety classification.
“We hope people will stick with the Chargy for its quality. We wanted to go for something of the highest quality.
“Your phone could be costing €1,000 – you don’t want to go sticking it into anything potentially dangerous.”