Altum Designs

Altum Designs is a London based company, run by Mr. Daniel Varney. He designed, manufactured and now markets a unique and pioneering bike tool, which won a Tapei Cycle Design & Innovation award in 2017, and the business is now starting to really get off the ground.

The product comes under Altum’s MODUAL range, which consists of an innovative 14 function bicycle multi-tool and an accompanying tool roll that are “comprehensive enough for use at home, yet compact enough for the road – a portable yet powerful alternative to conventional folding bike tools”.

Dan always had the burning desire to start a business of his own, and throughout his life his entrepreneurial spirit has always been a constant. As a child, several of his family members owned small businesses which gave him a deep respect for the beauty of small business entities. His interest in design, however, was more of an innate thing.

The idea for this multi-tool was a long time in the making, having started life as Dan’s final project at university where he was studying degree level Industrial Design. He and his friends were cycling enthusiasts and their frustrations by the shortcomings of other commercially available bike tools formed the inspiration for MODUAL. Over the following years, Dan worked as an engineering consultant on the development of an armoured fighting vehicle to sustain himself while he continued to develop his ingenious tool.

In November 2015, Dan decided that the tool had matured enough, and so he left his engineering post in order to focus on taking his product to market.

Dan says that finalising the design was the easy part – it was preparing it for manufacture that was tricky. Making sure that mass production is feasible for an invention such as the MODUAL bike tool is a complex process, where striking a balance between technical feasibility and the retention of the original design is critical.