hardware-manufacturing
(3)
GLAMCOR Bet $200,000 on Cosmetics. Customers Only Wanted the Light.
A failed construction business, a year in cheap Chinese hotels and one oddly revealing trade show turned Erik Kaiser’s lighting hunch into a global hardware company. Its best lesson is simple: watch what customers crowd around, especially when it is not the product you planned to sell.
Remora
Remora is a Detroit-area climate-tech company that bolts carbon capture onto the things already burning fuel - semi-trucks and freight locomotives - instead of building giant plants to pull CO2 back out of the sky. Its zero-backpressure device threads exhaust through proprietary adsorbents, captures up to 90% of the CO2, reduces soot and NOx to Tier 4 levels, then liquefies the gas to be sold into a supply-constrained industrial CO2 market. Operators share the revenue, so cutting emissions becomes a line item that pays rather than one that costs.
Cofactr
Cofactr is a New York-based software and logistics company that automates electronics procurement and supply chain operations for hardware manufacturers. Its cloud platform takes a team from bill of materials (BOM) to build by combining AI agents with ITAR-registered warehouses to handle sourcing, ordering, traceability, storage, kitting, and delivery. Cofactr is built for high-compliance, fast-moving industries such as aerospace, defense, robotics, and medical devices.