10094056Altere StudiosClosedInvestment AcceleratorInnovate UKAltere Studios creates sustainable wellness tools that delight people into healthier lives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we stopped going to the gym and started working out at home. Like many others, we bought a suite of affordable bodyweight fitness tools made of solid iron and silicone, but were disappointed: they blistered our hands, bruised our wrists and quickly became worn, bad-smelling and unsightly in our small London apartments. During our family dinner my brother and co-founder Alex, an Architect, also reminded me how unsustainable iron weights are due to the energy needed to cast them and the climate impact of freighting cheaper units often manufactured in the developing world. Alex had been working with terrazzo flooring, and suggested it might be possible to manufacture ceramic weights out of reclaimed construction waste, or surplus rock from quarrying. Not only would this new ceramic composite be sustainable, breathing life into otherwise condemned waste, but it would give us the freedom to create weighted forms: * near-impossible to create affordably out of metal, optimised for their purpose as high-performance workout tools; * beautiful to see and interact with, so workouts are something to look forward to and keep coming back to; and * locally crafted in small batches in community-centric studios, to create opportunities in underprivileged areas and minimise the environmental impact of distribution. By the end of this project, we intend to have developed a new sustainable ceramic material designed for movement and pioneer a simple manufacturing process to produce it at scale. Our objective in the first year is to have launched our EDITION01 kettlebell out of this new ceramic composite and have one full-time London-based studio manufacturing it profitably. We're trying to innovate in three domains simultaneously: sustainable material & manufacturing process; socially-conscious business model; and market-disrupting product. To achieve this, Altere Studios is developing: 1. a new sustainable ceramic composite recycling local surplus materials and built to be handled, unlike than static flooring and furnishing; 2. a localised artisanal manufacturing process which we intend to bring to underprivileged areas, distributing practical skills and creating employment opportunities; and 3. fitness products disrupting the large and stagnant domestic free-weight market through a performance-centric design only made possible by our new best-in-class material.