Toy Fair 2016: The double Hörbert

February 1, 2016

Toy Fair 2016: The Double Hörbert

Music machine made of wood (not only) for children.

The Swabian start-up Winzki presents its first product to the professional world at the Toy Fair in Nuremberg: Hörbert – an MP3 player made of wood. Visually, it is a mixture of a portable radio and children’s toy. The design and equipment are kept minimalistic. Nine colorful buttons on the front control a playlist each. Navigation is child’s play: simply press further and the next song or audio play will sound from the built-in 10 cm Visaton full-range speaker. Hörbert draws its power from common 1.5 volt batteries or rechargeable batteries.

Response to the throwaway society

The music is stored on a four gigabyte SDHC memory card. “That’s enough for seventeen hours of music,” says Rainer Brang – the inventor of the wooden music box from Nürtingen, east of Stuttgart. Made in Germany, Hörbert is manually assembled by Brang and seven employees. The company founder has made sustainability his mission and designed Hörbert as a response to the throwaway society. Instead of plastic, the outer casing is made of beech, poplar, and birch. Naturally, all from sustainable forestry. The robust wooden housing can withstand both impacts and falls. And if something should break, repairing Hörbert is child’s play thanks to its simple technology. All components can be reordered or replaced individually by the manufacturer. In addition, the device is easy to transport. It weighs one kilogram (W/H/D: 25/15/7cm), and safety comes first: Battery operation avoids the cable clutter trip hazard, and a volume limiter has also been considered.

Museum of Modern Art

Curiously, visitors can find Hörbert twice at the fair. At the joint stand set up by the Nuremberg Toy Fair for young and innovative companies – and at the special exhibition area “TrendGallery.” Hörbert made it there because a jury of ten journalists and market researchers currently selected it for the “Design to Play” category. Fame is nothing new for Hörbert: it was already on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 2014 to 2015. And success is also not strange to it: Winzki has sold more than 5000 Hörberts by now. The trend is upwards.

“It is an honor for me to have landed with my idea from a hobby project right among international trend products,” says engineer Brang. His motivation: “I wanted to provide an alternative to plastic devices,” explains the 40-year-old young entrepreneur. This year, Brang wants to expand his company internationally. Hörbert should be available for purchase worldwide, explains the father. He originally built the music player for his son. What the Swabian also likes: that Hörbert appears twice at the fair – but he only has to pay once.

https://www.hoerbert.com