Gennadi Fedorov, founder of Atus Design, had built his very first airbrush, or rather a simple sprayer, when he was 11 years old back in Russia. He was fond of model aviation, was designing, building and flying his own models of Control-Line and Radio-Control airplanes. It wasn’t always easy to buy so needed equipment in Soviet Russia in those days. So, the natural decision that Gennadi came to – build it yourself! At the same age Gennadi started attending art school and became very fond og creating some of his artworks using airbrushing technique. By the age of 18 Gennadi designed and built for his personal use five different spraying devices, ranging from very delicate and precise models to larger and more powerful for spraying larger surfaces. He mostly used compressors, which he had taken off old refrigerators.
Work on Temptu airbrush had begun when Gennadi received a phone call from Michael Benjamin, Temptu’s president. Michael had a vision for his company to move out of a narrow pro-artists’ niche market and expand its operations into consumer market. He knew what he wanted and where he wanted to be, but did not know how to get there. Michael knew that he would need to find the right inventor to do the right job. He started looking through USPTO database and came across patents of 2004 for battery-powered portable airbrush for arts and crafts for kids with Gennadi Fedorov name as inventor who was residing in New Jersey.
Work started with market and analogs research and revision and initial ideation by creating hand sketches. Next step was creating sculpted foam models for evaluation of ergonomics, shape and overall sizing.
