Once Upon a Fridge
It’s crazy to think that it’s been more than a year since we came up with the idea for the Fable Refrigerator—seventeen months to be exact. In that time, we won SCAD StartUp, met with industry leaders, launched our website, filed for an LLC in Wisconsin, participated in a business incubator, conducted target market research, wrote a business proposal, placed second in another competition, built a low fidelity prototype, and now, we’re starting our social media journey.
But how did it all start? How did an industrial designer, an illustrator, and a writer come together to innovate the fridge of the future?
Two of our three founders, Madelyn and Erin, met in sixth grade during band class. They both played the oboe and read the same books, and by freshman year of high school, they were the best of friends. They even both, unknowingly, chose the same university: Savannah College of Art and Design.
During their first year, Madelyn and Erin participated in SCAD StartUp, which is a weeklong business innovation competition hosted by their university. They designed a mobile playground called WildFire after finding out that three out of four kids in America don’t have access to proper play equipment. Even as a team of only freshmen, they placed third out of more than eighty teams.
The next year, Madelyn became a resident assistant and met Adrienne, her community assistant and student advisor. Adrienne was an endlessly hard-working student, so when she asked Madelyn to join her and Erin’s team for SCAD StartUp week, Madelyn didn’t hesitate to say yes. The three of them entered under the team name “Kingswomen.”
The prompt they received that year was, “Where do we go from here?” and it inspired them to take a hard look at the future of their planet and consider what impact they might make on that future. But there was so much they wanted to fix—three days into the seven day competition, they hadn’t yet picked an idea.
Then, just a few hours before their midpoint presentation, they came across one fact that changed everything: their earth only had 60 years of farmable soil left. They decided to innovate a replacement for conventional agriculture—something without soil, something for individual consumers.
Thus, the Fable Refrigerator was born: an all-in one fridge, freezer, and hydroponic farm that is the same width as a standard refrigerator but gives users the ability to grow their own organic and nutrient-dense produce five feet from their kitchen table, regardless of season or location.
After 1 week, 1245 minutes of Zoom calls, and 19 hours of rendering, we presented Fable to the judges, and placed 1st out of more than 90 teams. The rest is history, or well, a fable for another time. Check back next week, and follow us on our fresh social media journey!