Anji Mountain Kakureta End Table
Anji Mountain | Sponsored Project | Spring 2021 | Twelve Weeks
Research: Raymond Peck, Lauren Para, Francisco Kellman, Sam Vogel
Anji Mountain Outstanding Research Award
Anji Mountain is a home furnishing company founded in 2003 with a focus on products made with high quality imported textiles.
Their new spinoff brand Anji X focuses on consumer exercise equipment and needed expanded product offerings.
Kakureta End Table is the result of identifying an opportunity for better storage solutions in undedicated exercise spaces.
Problem
Brand Expansion
Anji's new brand Anji X focuses on products in home exercise and is based on vertical expansion in their mat category. In order to launch with an established product offering Anji sought new areas for their manufacturing to expand into.
Unmet Need
Most people want to stay in shape but don’t want to dedicate their limited space to exercise equipment. There are an infinite amount of ways to work out but a limited set of poor solutions for storing home exercise equipment.
Market Opportunity
When it comes to storage, the market lacks variety and solutions sacrifice aesthetics for accessibility with no no-compromise solutions available.
Online shopping results for “home gym storage” and “gym equipment storage” reflect the lack of variety in the current market.
Ideation
Sketching
Inspiration from luxury brands including Tiffany’s, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton led to exploration of multi-functional storage solutions.
Grouping and Development
After selecting the best concepts from the ideation phase they were further explored along functional lines.
Chosen Concept
Expands Anji’s textile focus and offers a more subtle way to tuck away home exercise equipment.
Testing
Mockups and real-life layouts tested functionality and proportion of the design. It was essential to fit standard dimensions of an end table while addressing the challenge of storing a full-sized yoga mat.
While roughing out standard dimensions for an end table it was asked if a section could be permanently designated in the table for a yoga mat.
It turns out, that the width of a full yoga mat fits within the height of an end table.
Basic geometry shows that the circumference around a standard circular end table with D=17” is 53.4”.
The 70” length of a mat is too long to be directly wrapped, but when folded in half it’s only 35”, less than 2/3 the circumference of the table leaving more than enough room for support structure.
When folded in half, an exercise mat fits almost 2/3 around a 17” diameter table.
Unfolded, the mat extends to a full 24”x70”
Magnets were the obvious choice for easy attachment and detachment.
Folding the mat flips the polarity of magnets on half of the mat and has to be planned for when it comes to placement.
The cover can be made removable, building a full-sized yoga mat directly into the table saving internal volume.
Kakureta End Table
Kakureta is the solution to home exercise equipment storage.
Using a full-sized 24”x70” yoga mat attached by magnet, Kakureta hides unsightly exercise equipment in plain sight and is ready to work out when you are.
Enough space, and strength, to keep up with you.
High capacity can fit a set of 45-lb dumbbells or a basket for more versatile storage solutions, along everything else you need to get a sweat in.
A steel backbone and reinforced rails can support some serious weight.
Mat/Cover On
While in a hidden state, Kakureta fits in with a normal living room’s decor.
Mat/Cover Off
The cover pulls off and unfolds becoming an exercise mat and revealing exercise equipment hidden inside.
Leverage Anji’s Textile Library
By drawing Anji Mountain’s vast library, any existing textile design can be easily modified to the included yoga mat for a huge diversity of product offering with minimal additional development.
Optimized to Ship
Kakureta is designed with knockdown assembly in mind. This means it takes up less space to ship increasing shipping volume and lowering costs. It also means users can disassemble and store Kakureta compactly.
Layered Construction
Using Anji’s experience in textile layering and lamination, magnets are embedded directly into the yoga mat. Because only one layer of the laminate has pattern applied, it’s the only one of four that needs to be modified to expand the product offering.
Built to Last
A sturdy backbone using bent and cast steel provides a versatile platform that can support many times its own weight.
316 grade stainless steel has greater strength and improved corrosion resistance over 304 grade stainless steel which helps with a high impact environment and contact with corrosive sweat. The final product is powder coated to improve durability over high friction areas and tactile experience.
