ABOUT

About Company

Meaning
The name SVALT is derived from the French word “svelte,” meaning graceful & elegant, and the Swedish word “sval,” meaning elegant & cool.

Founding
SVALT was founded in 2011 by Chad Kirkpatrick as a mission driven product design studio after a 15 year architecture career focused on sustainability, passive heating/cooling, and responsive design. “My goal with SVALT is to make the best products that I can; products that are as much art as tech, and as much objects of substance as machines engineered for performance. This focus allows me to drill down into the hyper-niche where I can pursue the most extreme designs and obsess over the smallest details to create high-end products for professionals and others that demand the most from themselves and their equipment.” This approach has helped SVALT create numerous first-of-kind and best-in-class products with a wide set of features unique within the market, while Chad’s lifelong focus on sustainability drives him to push boundaries within the consumer electronics market.

About Sustainability

Purpose
Sustainability is about creating systems that support the health of our global human community and our planet’s natural ecosystem through the more efficient use and the more equitable distribution of our planet’s limited resources. This approach reduces consumption and waste byproducts, while bringing us into closer community with others; a community where we directly benefit from the well-being of others.

Reduce + Reuse + Recycle
Reduce, Reuse and Recycle are the three R’s of sustainability, and are core to SVALT designer and founder Chad’s worldview and his work through SVALT as outlined in the following sections.

Reduce x Local
SVALT designs and manufactures locally with care in Portland, Oregon, United States. By working locally SVALT’s founder, Chad, can shorten supply chains while connecting directly with the people that make parts from the owner to operator throughout the design, development and production phases. This direct connection also extends to customer service, as Chad personally attends to customer communications and orders. This personal care and attention to detail leads to a better product and better customer experience, as well as a mission driven company that values people over profit, and that prioritizes quality over quantity.

Reduce x Quantity
SVALT products are not mass produced off-shore to maximize per unit profits, and are instead created in small bespoke quantities with hand-finishing and hand-assembly for those that require the best performance or for those that want to have an object of substance on their desk. Since maximizing production volumes and sale profits are not the priority, SVALT can invest funds into designing innovative products and using local fabrication with a focus on sustainability; funds that would have otherwise been invested into advertising to drive higher sales volumes. Lower production volume reduces resource consumption and waste pollution for an overall lower impact.

Reduce x No Power Required
SVALT offers a full range of fanless models, including silent heatsink Cooling Dock models (DHCR, DHC, DH) and silent passive Cooling Stand models (SRxN, SxN). In addition to these fanless models, all of SVALT’s fan equipped models use responsive and natural passive cooling designs so that the laptop can run more efficiently even with the fan turned off. This helps to reduced energy consumption and associated pollution.

Reduce x Durability
SVALT products are made primarily from durable metal construction and are designed to endure with strong bolted modular assemblies. This helps to increase product life span, which in turn helps to reduce resource consumption and waste pollution.

Reuse x Upgradeability
SVALT products use modular components and systems for continued use through a wide variety of replacement and upgrade options. Modular cooling systems use modular speed control units with standard fan connection sizes for additional replacement and upgrade options. These modular components and systems use strong bolted and quick snapped connections for repeated disassembly and reassembly. Instead of forcing customers to buy a new product, customers can upgrade components, or use trade-ins to upgrade an entire product (see upgrades page). This reuse of existing resources helps to increase product life span, which in turn helps to reduce resource consumption and waste pollution.

Reuse x Repairability
SVALT products are right-to-repair that ship with the tools required for disassembly, cleaning, servicing, replacing and upgrading (see upgrades page). This reuse of existing resources helps to increase product life span, which in turn helps to reduce resource consumption and waste pollution.

Reuse x Adaptability
SVALT products are designed to work with a wide range of devices by using universal supports with adjustable or replaceable pads. This reuse of existing resources helps to increase product life span, which in turn helps to reduce resource consumption and waste pollution.

Recycle x Recyclability
SVALT products use metal construction for easier reuse and for more viable end-of-life recycling. Anodized aluminum can be more easily re-milled and re-finished, and when it eventually reaches end-of-life-cycle, aluminum is one of the most universally recyclable materials. Other less easily recyclable materials are collected when feasible as scrap and remnants for fabricator recycling, plus finished good materials are collected from customers through product and component trade-ins for reuse and/or recycling as available (see upgrades page). This helps to reuse and recycle resources, which in turn helps to reduce resource consumption and waste pollution.