Built on cold benches

How it started

In February 2021 one of us sat through a 6am squirt-level hockey practice at a rink in Blaine, Minnesota, on a bench that was measurably colder than the ice. The thermos went cold in twenty minutes. The hand warmers lasted an hour and did nothing for the part of you that was actually freezing.

The problem was not insulation. Sitting on foam just slows down how fast the cold finds you. The problem was that nothing was putting heat back. So we spent a winter prototyping a cushion with a heating layer bonded under the foam, running off a battery small enough to forget about.

The first version was a laptop battery, a heating pad from a hardware store, and a lot of duct tape. It worked. We sat through an entire tournament and did not think about our feet once.

What we actually make

Four years later the duct tape is gone and the principle is not. Every product we sell does the same job: it puts steady, controllable heat between you and something cold, and it runs long enough to outlast the game.

We do not make tents, chairs, coolers, apparel, or anything else. One problem, done properly.

Where things are made

Heating elements and batteries are manufactured to our spec in Shenzhen by a partner we have used since 2022 and visit twice a year. Final assembly, quality testing and every battery safety check happen at our facility in Northeast Minneapolis. Every unit is powered on and heat-cycled before it is boxed.

Our batteries are UL 2054 and UN 38.3 certified. We publish the test reports — email us and we will send them.

The returns policy, and why it is long

You cannot tell whether this works from a product page. You can only tell by taking it to a game in February. So we give you 45 days and pay return shipping both ways, because the only honest way to sell this is to let you test it in the conditions it was built for.

About 4% of orders come back. We refurbish what we can, recycle the batteries properly, and donate working units to youth hockey associations around the Twin Cities.