Prong
Prong’s first product, the PocketPlug (right), is one of the coolest phone accessories that we have seen in a long time. The Prong team was kind enough to share many of the details and features of the PocketPlug with us. You can catch the Prong team at CES at Eureka Park (Booth 70109) and at Unveiled on January 5, 2014.
TechFaster: What’s one thing you want the world to know about your company?
Prong’s flagship product – the PocketPlug – is the first mobile phone case featuring an integrated charger. This phone case + charger in one features two retractable charging plugs built directly into the case itself, so you never have to carry charging cords or battery packs again.
What does your company do, and how do you do it?:
Prong is a company dedicated to designing and manufacturing innovative accessories for electronic devices. With a talented team of technical engineers and designers, Prong seeks to provide today’s upwardly mobile consumer with elegant, intuitive, and innovative charging solutions for electronic devices.
The Prong PocketPlug is the first mobile phone case featuring an integrated charger. The PocketPlug is optimally engineered to charge your mobile phone in any electrical outlet using two charging plugs built directly into the phone case’s design. Simply deploy the retractable plugs from the case and plug the PocketPlug directly into any two-prong electrical outlet for immediate charging results.
Why do you do it? What problem are you taking on?
Prong’s flagship product, the PocketPlug, offers the consumer electronics market the fastest, most efficient charging solution, in the most portable form possible. As the first mobile phone case + charger in one, the PocketPlug ensures consumers’ mobile phones remain charged and ready for use as they text, talk, browse the web, take and share photos, and more in any setting.
As a device that combines function and efficiency with style and durability, the PocketPlug caters to a wide array of individuals with all different types of lifestyles and hobbies. From the young tech-obsessed, to the family unit in need of the perfect charger, the PocketPlug is a gadget that is beneficial to every mobile phone user.
Tell us a little bit about the founders:
Jesse Pliner and Lloyd Gladstone are co-founders of Prong. As founding partners, Pliner and Gladstone oversee all daily operations surrounding the brand including: manufacturing and production, distribution and sales, research and development, brand strategy, business development, advertising, and digital marketing.
A Pittsburgh Pa. native, Pliner’s entrepreneurial background began at the New York-based financial firm Bear Stearns, where he worked in sales and trading for three years. Pliner then applied his financial expertise at multinational Internet corporations, managing media sales for Yahoo! and later AOL.
Gladstone, a native of Boca Raton, Fl., received his Juris Doctor from the prestigious Benjamin N. Cardoza School of Law at New York’s Yeshiva University. With a shared interest in entrepreneurism and consumer electronics, Gladstone and Pliner drafted the preliminary prototypes in 2011 for a mobile phone case featuring an integrated charger that would go on to become their company’s flagship product, the PocketPlug.
After executing a successful crowdfunding campaign through the investment platform Kickstarter, Pliner and Gladstone officially founded Prong in the summer of 2011. The enterprising duo then launched the PocketPlug in 2013, which has garnered substantial praise for its smart, intuitive design, and product ingenuity.
Both Pliner and Gladstone currently reside in New York City, where they maintain Prong’s corporate headquarters. Since its inception in 2011, Prong has grown to also encompass an international distribution center, operations in New York and California, and a select team of esteemed engineers and designers from the technology space.
Tell us your founding story. What was the “ah ha” moment?
Interestingly enough, Prong’s co-founders – Jesse Pliner and Lloyd Gladstone – do not come from a tech background. The two young entrepreneurs met while Gladstone was in his final year of law school, and realized they shared a vested interest in entrepreneurism and how to improve the mobile phone case and charger market.
Living in NY at the time, both men knew all too well how irritating it was to forget their phones’ chargers while running around the city, at the gym, at a bar or restaurant, and while traveling. On a whim, the duo started to create makeshift prototypes using plastic pellets they found online that could be rendered down into pliable material, crude charging plugs bought at a neighborhood drug store, while drafting everything in the most simplistic design studio – an apartment kitchen.
After several rounds of tinkering, tweaking and going back to the drawing board, the self-taught engineers finally developed a functional phone case + charger that would go on to become the company’s patented PocketPlug. What began as an innovative design concept from two enterprising men, turned into the first mobile phone case featuring an integrated charger. (Photos of Prong’s original PocketPlug prototype are available for review, per request).
What’s the next step? What do your current goals look like?
Prong is slated to expand their collection of premium charging solutions in 2014 and will be launching new, innovative chargers and mobile device accessories throughout the year.
We would like to thank the Prong team for answering our questions (and sending us some review units? Maybe?). Don’t forget to stop by their booth at CES at Eureka Park (Booth 70109) and also at Unveiled on January 5, 2014.
