Product Development Story | HEATBLOCK VERYKAL
With the increasingly severe summer heat in recent years, parasols have become an essential item for protecting skin from the sun when going out. However, choosing a convenient one-touch automatic opening and closing model often increases its weight. Conversely, prioritizing lightness often leads to insufficient light-blocking performance.
As a result, many people find themselves burdened by the weight of carrying an umbrella. We began development aiming to create an all-weather umbrella that combines reliable light-blocking performance with the convenience of automatic opening and closing, and that can be carried in a bag every day.
A major challenge in development was achieving both lightness and light-blocking properties. Fabric with 100% light-blocking capability tends to be thicker and heavier than typical rain umbrella fabric.
Especially for automatic opening and closing umbrellas, stiff fabric can make the umbrella bulky when folded, making it difficult to carry. It can also put stress on the frame during opening and closing, hindering smooth operation. Resolving the thickness and stiffness of the fabric was an essential factor for product commercialization.
Therefore, we selected a thin and flexible fabric woven from ultrafine 20-denier yarn. It has the softness to smoothly synchronize with the delicate movements of automatic opening and closing.
To prevent a reduction in light-blocking performance due to thinning, we adopted a unique three-layer structure consisting of a fabric layer, a light-blocking layer, and a polyurethane (PU) coating layer. This achieves 100% light blocking, as well as 99.9% cut of UV rays, visible light, and even near-infrared rays, maintaining thinness while providing excellent light-blocking and heat-shielding performance.
By combining this thin fabric with lightweight and elastic carbon fiber for part of the frame, we achieved a lightweight design of approximately 210g to 240g (depending on the color), despite having an automatic opening and closing function.
It can be easily carried in a bag, and the sun can be smoothly blocked with a single button. We hope that this HEATBLOCK VERYKAL will support your summer outings as a tool to make your daily commutes more comfortable.
