Product · 2025
Flag
Umbrosa asked for a lock that could be made in Belgium. It became one you work with your foot.
Umbrosa makes its parasols in Belgium, except for one small part: the lock on the rotating base, still machined in China.
Next to Glatz, TUUCI or Solero, that lock fell behind. To turn an Umbrosa parasol you had to crouch down, twist it open and push the mast round, and at a glance you could not tell whether it was locked at all. The brief: foot-operated, a visible open and closed state, no pressure to hold it open, CNC-made by Metatec, and no more than €10 in parts.
We drew ten concepts, from a push-pin and a pedal switch to electromagnets. The decision matrix pointed to the modest option: keep the existing pin and pivot, and redraw the parts around them. Fewer, simpler pieces that turn and mill cleanly in Belgium, and fit every Umbrosa base.
Flag is a small stainless-steel lock, SS316 for the pin, because parasols live next to pools and the sea. A quarter turn of the flag lifts or drops the pin, and its position shows from standing height whether the base is locked.
The angle. We 3D-printed every iteration, mounted it on Umbrosa's real metal plates and tried it with our feet on the floor. That is how we landed on a 90-degree turn, and on a flag placement that never gets in the way of the mast. Metatec's analysis did the rest: dropping one radius from the flag halved its cost, from €12 to €6.
