ENTREPRENEUR INNOVATION: Makeshift Weight Uses Canned Foods for Home Workouts
Stuck at home without workout equipment, yet have a pantry-full of cans during shelter in place? Enter the perfect recipe for a healthy body: MakeWeight, an innovative gadget that can act as a makeshift set of weights without breaking the bank or taking up space. Emily Fukunaga, nifty inventor obsessed with reducing waste, is a management consultant working with Fortune 50 companies streamlining businesses, and had her “aha” moment during the COVID pandemic when she found she had no weights or workout equipment in her apartment during lockdown. Pre-covid she hadn’t purchased weights due to space limitations and because she was going to the gym. In midst of quarantine, weights are impossible to find online. Her solution? Cans doubling as weights for her workout routine before eating them.
The MakeWeight device allows users to install desired weight in the form of food cans to create flexible workout equipment at home, inspiring you to exercise with what you have around the house. Emily says, “I wanted to create a tool to help folks with this solution. As I thought more about it, even outside of COVID there is an opportunity to use it; with small apartments or budgets, you can just buy one item that allows you to adjust the weight that goes into it. I love the idea of utilizing capacity, and now people may use cans without buying separate weights. The MakeWeight currently has one product that turns cans into a dumbbell, but the idea doesn’t stop there. I would love to make it so that people can use heavier weights, different shaped items, and products for different types of workouts, like kettlebells or a bench press.”
More about Emily Fukunaga:
Management consultant by day and entrepreneur by night, Emily has a passion for tinkering and making things that help people and the planet. She worked for the last 10 years in the consumer goods and retail industry and graduated with an MBA from Columbia Business School in 2018. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and moving to Colorado College for school, then to Hong Kong for work, Emily currently lives in Baltimore and has worked extensively with PwC in strategy consulting.
