Meet the Woman Reinventing Compression Gloves
Listen to this episode: Found.ee Podcast
Phantom Electric Ghost: This is Phantom Electric Ghost and we're live on the air with Téa Phillips. We're going to talk about how you're doing today.
Téa Phillips: Good, good! It's a beautiful rainy Friday here in Cookeville, Tennessee and I'm happy to be talking to you.
Ghost: I'm in New Hampshire and we've got some thunderstorms rolling through. Hopefully you won't hear them. But yeah, it's not a perfect day in New Hampshire, but it's in the pines, so it's always good.
Well, thank you for being on the show today. We're going to talk about your ideas. You're an inventor, you're a designer, and this is the kind of "meet the woman who is reinventing compression gloves" conversation we're going to have.
We have your URL for metaflexglove.com and it'll be clickable for people who want to get into details there. But before we tell your story, I always ask every guest that's on the show a couple of questions. So one of the questions is: what motivates you?
The Heart of Innovation: Helping People
Téa: At this point in the company, I'm motivated by my reviews. I made a product that's been helping a lot of people and even though growing a business is really, really difficult, it's ultimately rewarding because what we've done has been able to help people. So I'm motivated by trying to help people with Metaflex.
Ghost: That's awesome. So that's why you do what you do - you have a motivation to help people who have issues with like a medical condition or something they want to do.
Téa: With their hands, yeah. So my grandma had really bad arthritis and it started with wanting to help her. But now we're out on the market and we're helping even more people regain their independence and feel better.
Ghost: Yeah, I know being a musician, I ran into carpal tunnel because, you know, musicians, we always over-practice.
Téa: Musicians are at an increased risk for developing hand conditions. I think it's like 80% of musicians will develop some sort of hand condition or be injured. So hitting yourself with those drumsticks or just overuse injuries from playing on the keyboard or strumming the guitar, whatever you're doing, carrying all of that heavy luggage from place to place is also straining on the hands. So Metaflex is good for recovery.
From Engineering Student to Medical Device Inventor
Ghost: So I see the impetus was that you wanted to do something to help your grandmother. When you had the training and the type of skillset, was this like a synergy or did this come from out of left field? Is this something you were always working toward?
Téa: I never really knew what I wanted to do. I went to engineering school because I'm good at math and physics. I thought it was interesting and I wanted to build things and robots and rocket ships. And so I went to study mechanical engineering at Tennessee Tech.
While I was there, I met my co-founders in a club called Innovation and Healthcare. The idea was taking engineering students and healthcare students - like nursing students - bringing them together to solve healthcare challenges with the engineering problem-solving skills and engineering mindset.
So my co-founder, Sergio, came up to me after one of these meetings and said, "We have this idea, but we don't know how to make it real." So I immediately sketched it out and I was like, "Here's how we're gonna do it. We're gonna use these materials. It'll be designed like this."
We completed the invention, making and pitching at our school's pitch competition. We won! It was like a Shark Tank style competition called Eagle Works at Tennessee Tech University. We won first place and biggest social impact. We went on to win third place in the Launch Tennessee, which is like a statewide student pitch competition.
The Problem: Healthcare Access and Affordability
Téa: From there, I just saw where people were backing us up. When we were initially doing customer discovery, the idea is: lots of people around the world are experiencing arthritis from aging or overuse. Also, a lot of people can't afford to go see a doctor, whether it's taking the time out of your schedule, taking time off work, the money that you have to pay to go see a doctor.
Ghost: Yeah, you have to pay a lot. A lot of times, people with health plans today have to pay their deductible. And the problem is like sometimes younger people go with a higher deductible plan thinking that they're indestructible. And then they overuse things because they don't think about it. And then they get injured and they find that like, "Whoa, I got a $5,000 deductible before anything's going to kick in." And so they're less likely to go.
Téa: They're less likely to get care. So we wanted to find a way to help people manage their arthritis without having to go to the doctor. We researched that compression and strengthening were two of the most recommended therapies, but people weren't doing their strengthening exercises because it's tedious. You have to remember to do 15 reps and squeeze the stress ball.
So we made a wearable grip strengthener. This is Metaflex.
The Metaflex Solution: Compression Meets Innovation
Téa: The idea was just combining those two most recommended therapies into one device. It has these stretchy elastic bands that you can put anywhere on the Velcro straps. These mimic the tendons, ensuring natural hand movement.
So the idea is really gentle compression - you're reducing pain when doing daily activities. And as you're going about your day, when you're moving your hands, you're strengthening. When you're at rest, you're stretching, always with really gentle compression.
So we made this as an at-home option to help people manage arthritis.
Ghost: Do you wear that during the day or do you wear it just for like a time period?
Téa: It's been really surprising. About half of my users are sleeping in the gloves. Half of them are wearing them during the day because their hands hurt or because they want to work on their grip strength or both.
And then half of my users are wearing them at night to recover because of the stretching, or they wear them to sleep because some people - lots of people - wake up and their hands are closed. And if they're not closed, they're mostly closed and they're stiff and it hurts to open them.
So they wear the gloves, it keeps your fingers extended, it's custom for each finger. So if you just have problems with one of them curling up, and the compression helps to improve circulation so you don't wake up stiff or in pain. And it's helping a lot of people, but I've been surprised by how people are using it for more than just arthritis.
The Art and Science of Design
Ghost: Well, it seems very intuitive because it's a glove. So it's not something that's going to be overly complicated. In software engineering, we get people who want to go overboard, but it's always "keep it simple" because the simpler design has less fail points. If you can make something more elegant design, it actually serves a purpose, doesn't it?
Téa: Exactly. That's why it being simple - and people tell me that - it's such a compliment. It means it's less likely to fail and it's easier to use. So it's intuitive like you said earlier. People just get it when they see it and it's been really, really cool.
Ghost: Now, as a mechanical engineer, do you have to specialize in biomedical engineering or is that something you just kind of fell into?
Téa: I got a bachelor's. I didn't specialize in anything. If anything, I took some classes on business and I got a certificate of innovation and entrepreneurship. I was one of the first two people to get it. They had just introduced the program and you just had to invent some things.
I've invented more than Metaflex. Metaflex is just the only thing that I've brought to market so far. But I worked on toys for kids who learn differently. I've always been kind of tinkering and making things.
The Creative Process: Art Meets Engineering
Ghost: A lot of times ideas come from this idea of the muse. Creative people seem to have this ability to synthesize the inner and the outer. You're getting your left brain and your right brain - like a Da Vinci kind of thing. There's an art and there's a science. You can pull in artistic ideas that can apply within mechanical and design development.
Téa: Yeah, I agree. They shouldn't be mutually exclusive. I think it's really fun to create new things. And I use the engineering side of it where I'm understanding forces and where this needs to tie in and how much force needs to be applied and all of the joints of it.
And then the creative part, which is just making something beautiful, making something that people want to use - aesthetically pleasing. That's kind of like a fun part of it. So you get to do a little bit of both when you're inventing something new.
Ghost: Like a Model A or Model T versus a Ferrari. They're both cars, but the Ferrari has the art to it.
Téa: It's got the art to it. Yeah, it's really beautiful. You know, the people that made it loved making cars and you can tell in the way that it's designed. And I hope people think that I love making gloves.
Overcoming Fear: Bringing Ideas to Market
Ghost: You get the passion and the elegance of your design. But then in the real world, you have to do business.
Téa: It's so scary. It's so scary. It's like I made this and you give it to the world and you don't know if they're gonna like it or not because your friends and your family say, "This is great." And your advisors and your mentors are like, "You're doing so well."
But when you actually bring it to people, it's really terrifying, but it's worth it because either they love it and it's perfect - and that sometimes happens - or they like it and that's what normally happens. They like it, but they have some things that they would change on it, or they hate it altogether.
But most of the time you bring something to someone, they like it and they just have some ideas. If you've got something that you're working on and you think, "I'm too scared" - you're going to have to push back that fear because if you want to be an entrepreneur and you want to go into business and you want your inventions to come out of the lab or out of your garage and out of your head and into other people's hands and making their life better, you have to bring it to the people and you have to push past that fear.
The Grandmother's Wisdom: Finding Purpose
Ghost: Was imposter syndrome a hard thing for you to think the idea was worthy enough to bring to market, or did you immediately get really good feedback?
Téa: So when I first had the idea and we were working on it, when I talked to my grandmother before we even pitched in the student pitch competition, I had observed her and I had noticed that she wasn't doing the things that she loved to do anymore.
She wasn't gardening - my grandfather was gardening. She wasn't knitting - she had him on the sewing machine. He was cooking. And so she wasn't using her hands because they were hurting.
And she told me - and one of the uses of sleeping in it at night - she told me when she went to sleep every single night, she would hold a tennis ball and put a sock over her hands because she was waking up with her hand in a fist and it was stiff.
I imagined and I just felt, I understood that this would change her life. Like this would change her life. And there was no imposter syndrome. There was just responsibility. "You have to bring this to market. This is going to change people's lives."
So luckily I didn't go through that. I always felt like I had to do it. So as soon as I got started, there was really no stopping.
Building a Global Team
Ghost: When you started to make hiring decisions, how was that for you?
Téa: Well, there's a specific type of person that works at a startup. Some people do fit into the corporate mold. They want a nine to five. They don't want to think about it afterwards. They want steady and consistency.
People who work in startups thrive on change and dare I say chaos, because opportunities pop up out of nowhere. Like at the last minute we need to send a special custom PR box to this team to have them see if Metaflex is going to be a good recovery tool for their athletes. Or we get the opportunity to go on this new show and so we need to prep and have the social media people there.
So you have to find a really specific person and I have found them through my network. The two employees that I have right now, one of them I found because I was asking a friend who was hosting a conference. I was like, "I'm hiring for this. You know anybody?" And she recommended this perfect fit for me.
I finally found Megan, who's our brand manager, who just started full-time this month in June. She's been doing part-time work for us up until now, but really excited to have her on board.
And then my chief clinical officer is a hand therapist and he works full-time at a big trauma center in Nashville, Tennessee. When he was working on a different product and just gloves in general, they're like, "Did you know about Metaflex? You know, the glove girl?" - that's what I am commonly referred to as, the glove girl.
Manufacturing Excellence: Global Partnerships
Ghost: I've heard about manufacturing capabilities in terms of die casting and manufacturing base and technical expertise and quality, being able to replicate people's designs accurately with tight tolerances for medical devices.
Téa: Our manufacturing is in China and they are the experts in compression wear. They said my glove is the most difficult glove that they've made so far. And I've got versions that are much more complicated that I'm very excited to show them.
But I went over there and I got to meet the people in person and eat the food, which was fantastic. And just do business with people in China and form a really solid relationship and foundation. And they have different work culture than we have. And it was just really interesting to meet them and learn about that and see their manufacturing capabilities.
Our tolerances have to be exact. Like they have to be exact.
The Future of Metaflex
Ghost: Are you just doing iterative advancements of Metaflex or are you looking at other products?
Téa: I'm focused on gloves right now. I've got probably eight or 10 different versions of Metaflex in my notebook, two of which are coming out this year. So Metaflex version two is just based on customer feedback - making some changes that'll be out this year. And then another version, which is going to hit the same target, but for people who have slightly different preferences.
And I haven't talked to my marketing team - maybe I shouldn't be announcing it too early - but we've got more stuff coming out. And next year we've got that lined up too. So we're going to be releasing new gloves for the next several years.
People ask me about other joints and we can use similar technology and focus on other areas. So we'll be expanding - knees and ankles and other things maybe. We're focused on hands. We'll be making some other things to support the body in other ways.
Breaking Down Barriers: The FDA Journey
Ghost: How was getting approvals through an organization like the FDA? Was that a hard thing to do?
Téa: My background is research and problem solving, so it wasn't hard, but it took me forever. It took me months. I didn't have the money to pay someone to do it for me. So I read the Code of Federal Regulations, Section 21, on medical devices and medical device establishments and what needs to be registered, where and how things need to line out.
I registered us with the FDA and got all of our approvals, got all of our barcodes. So it was a lot of reading and taking notes, but not difficult work. The most difficult part was getting the money to pay the fee. So the FDA registration fee last year was like $8,000 and this year it's nine - I think every single year it has gone up.
And the barrier to entry is the fee. I feel like America is just a pay-to-play system. It makes me so mad and I'm so annoyed because I grew up rural and I know the effect that poverty has on people.
It's a barrier to entry. We probably have so many new medical device innovations, but that is stopping them from getting to market because I have a compression glove. Should that be regulated? Should that require an $8,000 fee? I don't think so.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
Ghost: Do you ever see yourself as an entrepreneur who starts one business focused on this and then maybe does another business?
Téa: Multiple businesses. Yeah, but not too fast. With Metaflex, I know how to get a product to market. I know how to get initial customer feedback. And I know how to make something that people like and how to get it to them. And now we're working on building the team.
Once I feel like I have a good grasp on how to get things up, going, working, and then scaling, I'll start to move into other things, but I don't want to split my focus too much.
Every enterprise thing I do will be very different from Metaflex. I already know what I'm going to do next. But I'm waiting. I'm waiting to do it until the time is right.
A Message of Hope and Innovation
Téa: The people with the money are the people making the rules, which is why I want to make money so I can fix some of these problems.
Ghost: I'm glad that you actually stuck to it and you went and learned FDA stuff and you did it. I hope this is a very enlightening episode for people who are in this space - people who are very creative, inventors, engineers - to see that if you stick to what you really believe in, that you can actually make it happen.