Mobile chargers and power banks can help keep guests, users and customers happy in a wide range of venues, from hospitals to sports centres and cafés.
Power up without being tied down With a string of new, innovative solutions, the Danish company Charging.dk is revolutionising the way students, café guests and conference members can power their laptops and mobile phones. Among the many products new to the Danish market, you’ll find charging lockers for phones, portable power banks for laptops, and much more – in short, products that enable everyone to power up without being tied down. By Signe Hansen | Photos: Charging.dk
Two years ago, at a planning meeting for the new Campus Bornholm, Ruben Kofod, the founder of Charging.dk, had a realisation. “The school was presenting all these amazing layout ideas, flexible classrooms, little alcoves and sofas for the students. It was all very cool, but at one point, someone asked: ‘How will students charge their laptop? Because the way it is now, some areas are completely inaccessible – it’s one big jungle of chargers, extension cords and coats’. 62 | Issue 135 | April/May 2020
Then the whole concept of flexibility faded,” Kofod explains. “I was astounded to realise that, in 2020, we still can’t charge a laptop without having to draw an extension cord through the room – and that’s when the idea took off.” In search of more innovative solutions, Kofod travelled to China, where he found a number of new products developed for – and tested on – the American market, but new to the Danish market. Having
secured the import rights, he founded Charging.dk.
Safe phone, free mind One of the first places where Kofod tested the viability of one of his new products – a mobile phone charging station with individual lockers for each phone – was a local after-school institution. The feedback he got was that not only did the charging station allow the children to ensure that their phones were powered up at all time; the product also freed them both physically and mentally to take part in other activities. “Many children get their parents’ old phones, and that means that they quickly run out of battery, but they become really dependent on the phone; many have their travel cards on it, need it to call their parents and so on, so it’s a big worry