Spanish company seeks license agreement for a shoe cleaning machine

Shoes are often a complement to clothing. People are usually very careful about cleaning their clothes but not that much about their shoes. They barely pay attention to some parts of it, disregarding the sole without noticing how much dirt or bacteria is brought home every day. This fact is particularly important nowadays with the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, having at home an electrical appliance helping users cope with cleaning and taking care of shoes whilst protecting our houses from eventual infections would be a great market success. A Spanish (Basque) SME has designed and patented a shoe cleaning machine (SCM) that cleans, sanitizes, dries, deodorizes, polishes and stores shoes. The key advantage of this solution is that it does not only clean the shoes but it also disinfects them. The company is specialized in innovative designs and solutions, winning numerous awards over the past couple of years. Examples of their designs are a 95% recyclable chair or the design of wall chargers for electric vehicles. The solution is formed by: • Storage drawer: Apart from the shoes themselves, shoe cleaning products may be stored. • Drying drawer: Shoes are dried and deodorized. • Cleaning compartment: Shoes are cleaned here. Four polishing rollers, an inner mat and an outer mat are the required tools. The left rollers are used for cleaning the dark shoes while the right rollers are used for the lighter ones. This can be programmed before the washing. The outer mat removes the most noticeable dirt and the disinfectant liquid impregnating the inner mat sanitizes the sole. • Top grid: Allows adequate ventilation which refrigerates the machine. • Programme buttons: There is one button in the drying drawer to activate this option. Moreover, at the top of the machine there are other three buttons available to control the cleaning. The left button is meant to polish dark shoes. The centre button is to activate the heat pump. And the right button is used to polish light shoes. The SCM is designed in a way that it’s entirely made of plastic. Although the main body of sheets is made of metal, drawers and fronts are made of ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) thermoplastic. Brushes and mats are made of rubber. This makes the machine a low-cost product to manufacture and quite easy to assemble. The company is looking for home appliance manufacturers (dishwasher, washing machine, etc) in order to produce the SCM under a license agreement. A demonstrated knowledge on plastic product fabrication is of paramount importance.