ENGINEERS, DESIGNERS PUT HEADS TOGETHER

The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
August 6, 2005
By Jim Wise, Staff Writer

Engineers and designers, according to the guys who own and operate Durham's Tackle Design Inc. have an expression: “Throw it over the wall.”

What that means is, one side doesn't talk to the other until there is something to complain about.

What Tackle Design has tackled is getting rid of the wall.

“We integrate those things very well,” said Jonathan Kuniholm, a Durham native who co-founded the company two years ago with some of his graduate-school buddies. Their company, whose clients range from a toy designer to a jet-engine manufacturer to an environmental artist, moved their shop a few weeks ago from Raleigh into downtown Durham.

“It's really on the cusp of something exciting happening,” Kuniholm said.

Tackle Design describes itself as a “team of inventors and designers” that “knows how to take ideas from the back of a napkin to the production line and beyond.” Its five principals have backgrounds in industrial design, machining, mechanical and biomedical engineering, manufacturing, product development, robotics, software development and a variety of related specialties.

“Technical innovation,” said partner Kevin Webb, “brings together different fields usually not done in-house.”

Tackle Design's new headquarters is at 107 N. Church St., in a century-old building that, over its career, has housed such disparate concerns as Adcock's Cafe, the Lucky Strike Billiard Parlor and, in 1925, something called the “Science Seekers Club.”

“We really like the feel here,” Webb said.

The storefront space, where traces remain of the cafe's tables and counter, includes a wide-open space for desks and computers and, in back, a workshop with light casting and welding capability -- and a supply of Legos.

Founders Kuniholm, Jesse Crossen, Jason Stevens and Chuck Messer met at N.C. State University, where they worked together on two engineering projects. “That,” Messer said, “spawned a relationship that worked really well,” and when graduation and job-hunting loomed ahead for some of the foursome they decided to keep it going. They started a business together.

“We started very small,” Messer said, chipping in $50 each to cover incorporation costs, then working with cell phones and home offices.

Webb, who said he has known Crossen for years, joined the company later, bringing in a background in environmental studies, city planning and computers.

What interests the Tackle Designers, Kuniholm said, are “very technically challenging” projects that fall into “the gray space between engineering and industrial design that both disciplines would like to claim” and over which the two disciplines typically conflict.

“Designers complain about engineers ignoring aesthetics or human-interface goals, and engineers complain about designers ignoring costs” or technical considerations, Messer said.

“They don't have to be mutually exclusive,” Webb said.

Since starting the company, they have continued working with NCSU engineering professor Gregory Buckner on tools for robotic heart surgery. Biomedical projects are a large part of their business, along with work for Carlton Forge Works, a California firm that makes jet-engine components.

“What we do for them,” Messer said, “is technical problem identification and solving as relates to manufacturing.”

“It's a nimble, creative company and they're open to all kinds of things,” said Kuniholm. “And one of the most significant players in the field.”

“Pretty much the ideal client,” Messer said.

Then, there is the toymaker in New York City who was already successful but needed technical help on one project. Other clients have just “the spark of an idea,” Messer said, and for them Tackle Design “can go start to finish and produce a prototype.”

For the first year of operations, Kuniholm said, “that category of inventor was our bread and butter.” Now, the company is doing more technical consulting work. Along the way, they've dabbled in the arts, as well.

One of those clients was Durham artist David Solow, who created an installation of beeswax luminaries for the N.C. Museum of Art.

“That's one of my favorite projects I've ever worked on,” Messer said. “It was like, ‘We have this problem, now solve it in two hours. Go.’ ”

“Talk about working with a creative client,” Messer said, “it doesn't get any more creative than that.”

The company has a lot more projects Kuniholm and his partners would like to advertise, he said, but most are still trade-secret. But business is good, to the point they had enough work on hand they stopped advertising last November, Messer said.

Messer said they're feeling very welcome in downtown Durham, and their business has found a good fit.

“We like walking to lunch and running into folks,” Messer said. “It feels like a community down there that's open to new people”

Kuniholm said,“To nurture new business, you really have to have flexibility and a sense of excitement. That's the difference between Raleigh and Durham.”