Nichlas Kulenkampff

About

Industrial designer with over 20 years of hands-on experience taking consumer products from initial concept through prototyping, iteration, and into mass production. My background spans hard goods and soft goods across a broad portfolio of industries.

What ties that range together is design thinking: understanding the real problem, framing constraints clearly, and working through solutions until the product feels inevitable. Over the years I've developed a problem-solving approach that transfers across categories — whether the challenge is a physical product, a digital tool, a software platform, or a piece of connected technology.

I joined Denka Design Consultancy in 2008 and led the design team for 17 years, serving clients from global sportswear brands to medical device companies. Today I'm CTO and co-founder of GritCargo, a logistics-tech startup where I apply industrial design thinking to IoT hardware, software, and AI.

Outside of client work, I build boats — from previous builds to a current project underway. It's the same design-and-make instinct applied at a different scale, and it keeps my hands-on fabrication skills sharp across materials, structures, and problem-solving under real-world constraints.

Experience

20+ years, concept to mass production

Education

BTech Industrial Design, 2004

AI & Technology

Alongside industrial design, I’m increasingly focused on how AI and software can solve practical problems. I approach these systems the same way I approach physical products: start with the user, define the constraints, simplify the experience, and build something that works in the real world.

I build and shape AI-powered tools, connected product systems, and software workflows that sit between strategy, design, and execution. That includes everything from agent-based automation and API-connected tools to product thinking around how hardware, software, and intelligent systems fit together as one experience.

This work sits naturally alongside my design background. The medium may change, but the core skill is the same: structured problem-solving, good judgment, and turning complexity into something useful.

AI Agents & Automation

Designing conversational agents and practical automation workflows that help teams reduce friction, surface information faster, and get work done in the tools they already use.

Connected Products & Platforms

Working across hardware, software, and IoT systems to shape products that don’t stop at the physical object — from dashboards and APIs to the wider product ecosystem around them.

Design-Led Technical Problem Solving

Applying a designer’s way of thinking to technical systems: clarifying requirements, mapping constraints, improving user flows, and helping new technology become usable, useful, and commercially viable.

Selected Work

Lumen Handpan

Musical Instrument / Electronics

Complete product design of the world's first electro-acoustic handpan. Form factor development, material selection, electronics integration, and prototyping. Successfully crowdfunded on Indiegogo and sold out. Featured at NAMM and reviewed by Sound On Sound.

Focus Areas

Electronics integration Form factor development Material selection Prototyping Crowdfunding Acoustic engineering

Watt Scooter

Transport / Mobility

Industrial design for an electric kick scooter built for urban commuting. Focus on robust frame geometry, rider ergonomics, and a clean brand-forward aesthetic designed for manufacture.

Focus Areas

Carbon fibre Folding mechanism Battery technology Ergonomics Tooling Urban mobility

Spritzit

Consumer Product / Packaging

Design of an innovative sports bottle cap system with integrated flavour pods. Full product development from concept through injection-moulded production tooling, including colour-coded variants and child-safe mechanisms.

Focus Areas

Injection moulding Mechanism design Consumer packaging CMF specification Child safety

BigBlock

Toy / Children's Product

Design of a handcrafted wooden toy car range combining natural timber with bold colour accents. Focus on tactile material quality, child-safe proportions, and small-batch production-readiness with premium unboxing experience.

Focus Areas

Wood & natural materials Small-batch production Packaging design Toy safety Tactile design Sustainable design

Duram Colour Wall

Retail / Display Design

In-store colour selection display system for Duram paints. Designed a modular retail wall that organises the full colour range into an intuitive, shopper-friendly layout with integrated swatch and sample dispensing.

Focus Areas

Sheet metal Acrylic Wood Paint & texture Lighting Retail display Modular systems Point of sale User experience

PED Stand

Point of Sale / Industrial

Point-of-sale payment terminal mount designed for Sababa. Sleek enclosure housing for retail environments, balancing secure device mounting with customer-facing usability and a refined metallic finish.

Focus Areas

High-traffic engagement Modular design Injection moulding Assembly & installation

Agriplas Irrigation

Agricultural / Industrial

Micro-irrigation component design for Agriplas. Precision-engineered drip and spray fittings designed for injection moulding, balancing flow performance with low-cost mass production for the agricultural sector.

Focus Areas

Injection moulding Flow engineering High-volume DFM Precision components Agricultural tech

Race Track Barrier

Safety / Industrial

Rotationally-moulded safety barrier designed for motorsport circuits. Stackable, interlocking form with integrated impact absorption geometry, engineered for durability and high-visibility deployment.

Focus Areas

Rotational moulding FEA / crash simulation Impact absorption Stackable geometry Safety engineering High-visibility