Hi its Dustin CEO and Co-Founder of Prolux :)   I thought I would share the story of how Prolux started and the very first product we invented.   Today at Prolux we have a team of US Engineers and Vacuum experts with lots of patents but it was not always so.   This is the story of the very first product we ever invented.    

Our very first invention...how I cured my son’s allergies in 8 hours

Have you ever seen your children or loved one suffer and you would do anything to help them?  You just want to be their hero in this struggle they are facing?   This is one such story about my young son who suffered terribly from allergies and my goal to help him.    Long story short?   It led to our very first invention here at Prolux and ended up helping thousands of families.

 

Do you see the picture below?   This a picture of my son.   In his eyes I am his hero.   There is nothing I can’t do.  I call him “my little buddy” because where I go he is not far behind.    Just one problem.   He had severe allergies.   I had terrible allergies growing up so I totally get it.   

It got so bad that he had to be on prescription allergy medication from his doctor.   We had just moved and it was is first day at a new school (kind of important as you might imagine).   The day before school started his grandma and him had planned a day together.   He started to have allergies and his grandma (bless her heart for trying) gave him over the counter medicine for it.   It barely did anything.   So he wakes up the next morning for his first day of school and I hear my wife let out a scream…

The medication had done nothing and when he woke up his face was completely swollen and he could only see out of one eye.   Of course my wife (bless her heart) gave him some medicine and sent him off to school.   Lets just say it was not the best impression on his first day of school! :)  Do you know anyone in your life that struggles with allergies?   You would do anything to help them right?  Well I had had enough.   Enough was enough and I was DONE!   I was going to do something about it!   

So I started studying allergies.   I ended up going really deep and one thing that surprised me was that allergies are caused by a lot more things than just “allergens” in the air.   As I started studying allergies I found that you could have allergic reactions to foods, allergens, pollutants, bacteria, mold, pet dander and more!   Then I started spending time in our R&D lab after work playing around with different technologies to try and combat that.    I started experimenting with UV light and found that certain UV lights worked better than others.   I found that there is different kinds of UV and that UVC was most effective.   I also found out that 200nm to 280nm is most effective at killing bacteria nd 250nm to 400nm is most effect at killing viruses and so we wanted our light be at 270nm to be most effective on bacteria viruses and mold.   I also studied HEPA filtration to filter out things like pet dander and allergens in the air.  

I spent months on this project and came to conclude that there were 5 different things that could cause allergies and for the appliance to work I would need tech in the Air Purifier to combat each type.   So my prototype was finally finished (this is why we put 5 stages of filtration in it).   

OK I have to be honest here.   The prototype did not look very pretty :)   It was handmade in our lab after all but I was ready to test it.  On the prototype there may have been a fair amount of duct tape and glue involved LOL :) Essentially I had determined that multiple things causes allergies and since I did not know what he was allergic to I would build an air purification system that was full of tech designed to fight all of them!

So I came home and showed it to my wife and plugged it in the living room.  Bless her heart for letting me test it out without burning down the house :)  About 3 hours go by and I am watching my son and he seems to be doing better with no reactions.   2 more hours go by (the unit has been running for 5 hours now) and its time for him to take his medicine.   My wife is watching him and says “He seems fine lets hold off on his medicine for now”.   So we do and watch him carefully the rest of the night and he seems fine.   Now the big test how would he look in the morning?  I did not want another Quasi Motto moment :)   Next morning rolls around and I hear him laughing with his sister and go in and...he is totally fine no reaction!   This is great its been over 12 hours with no medication.

 

Days go by.  He is totally fine no medication and no reactions.  So far so good.   10 days go by and everything is good but the air purifier has been running straight for 10 days.   Then human nature sets in.   You know the part where we start to doubt ourselves?   I started wondering if it was a coincidence?   What if he was allergic to pollination and that pollen season was over?   What if he had just outgrown it?   So I decided to give my new invention a little break and I turned it off and drove into work.

 

At work a couple hours later my phone rang and it was my wife.   She was frantic “what did you do!”.    “What do you mean?” I replied.   “He is having another allergic reaction!” she said.   I then explained to her that I had turned off the air purifier on my way to work.  After chastising me for my stupidity she hurried and turned it back on.   When I got home from work I talked to my wife.    She said “it took a few hours but he is totally fine again.   Whatever you do DO NOT EVER TURN THAT OFF!”.   Message received :)   Even though my wife was annoyed with me I started to feel a little pride.   I had actually built something that made a difference for my son.    It was a good feeling.  

 

A few weeks went by and my wife walked by my sons room and stopped.   Something smelled weird coming from his room.  Now lets be honest most boys rooms small a little funky but this was different :)  My wife (and my daughters) all have “super smellers” where they can smell anything LOL :)   So she goes in his room and starts sniffing around and she notices the smell is coming from under his bed.   She gets down on her knees and looks under his bed and...sees BLACK MOLD EVERYWHERE!

 

She is mortified!   She starts ripping everything out of his room and pulls the carpet back.   The carpet is wet and the floor under the carpet has water stains.   When I come home from work I take a look and find that our roof had a small leak and each time it rained it leaked a little.   Where the leak was the water would go down inside the wall (right next to his bed) hit the floor and spread out under his bed.    He was then having allergic reactions to the black mold!

 

Here is the crazy thing :)   The air purifier that we had running was on the other side of the house in the living room.   Still it was pulling the air in and destroying the mold spores!   That is when it hit me “Wow!  This thing really works and we need to manufacturer these as I bet this could help other people as well”.

 

That was years ago.   My son is now graduated High School and doing great :)   We still make this air purifier to this day and have sold tens of thousands of units.    With the onset of Covid 19 you can imagine how popular these models have been.   In fact since then we have sold out 5 times and have a hard time making enough units.   Below is a picture of the same exact model I made for my son (but looks way better now and is tried and true.   Oh and we later ended up adding one more level of filtration and so it is now 6 stage.  

You can still buy it today (it was a best seller during Covid) by going to CLICKING HERE

 

We also came out with a new updated model with remote control (see image below) which you can see by CLICKING HERE

 

So that was our first invention at Prolux.   We started manufacturing them and made up 800 units.   I was so excited to start selling them...and only 3 a week sold!   They were ahead of their time and no one saw the need.  I was going to be dead before we sold out of them :) ...and then the bird flu hit the US.  People panicked (nothing else out there) and sales exploded and we were sold out in 2 weeks!  It briefly became the best selling Air Purifier on the internet for about 3 days :)

 

 

When Covid hit a lot of people came out and started just making up ridiculous claims about their air purifiers and jumping on the bandwagon.   So bad that the EPA started cracking down on everyone.    They even told us “you can’t say that” (that it kills things like mold and viruses).   So we knew it did those things and so we sent the air purifier to an Independent 3rd party lab for testing.   We tested it on 2 viruses (Human Corona Virus, and H1N1 influenza), Black Mold and Bacteria.    Here is the official text from the tests

 

“This model of New Comfort Air Purifier demonstrated, through independent laboratory testing, to be effective at removing 99.99% of Viruses, 99.98% of Symbiont Bacteria, and 97.03% of Black Mold Spores in the air.  Test results showed reduction of 99.99% of airborne Human CoronaVirus 229E, 99.99% of airborne Influenza A H1N1 Virus, 97.03% of airborne Aspergillus Niger (Black Mold), and 99.98% of airborne Staphylococcus Albus (bacteria).  This independent test was performed in a 1,059 cubic feet lab test chamber for 2 hours.”

 

BOOM!  Mike drop :)   This was the same exact model I had made for my son and lab tests showed it was 99.99% effective against the viruses, 97% effective against black mold and 99.98% effective against bacteria.    In addition to it using other things like HEPA filtration for other allergens.   No wonder this thing had 4.5 stars on Amazon and we could not keep up with production during Covid!

Keep in my it was made years ago and still works great.   However, we just released a new version with some updated tech (looks totally different but the tech is just as good with a few improvements) at the link below.  

One note to remember.    These units are designed to be a tool to help keep your air clean and are not guaranteed to protect you from viruses or allergies.   We have filled them with the tech to act as a tool to help you in the fight against allergies and more but there are no guarantees.    In other words please follow the advice of medical professionals :)

 

Question, who is the HERO of this story?   Why did I write this story?   Am I the HERO in the story?   No I am not.  The Hero is parents and anyone anywhere who will do anything to help someone that needs your help.   You are the one who is making a difference in your family's life.   Just a reminder that if not you then who? :)

Happy Cleaning :)

 

Thanks, Dustin

Prolux, CEO