(Spring Creek & Morrisville, N.C.) Montie Design (www.montie.com), an innovative concept-to-marketplace product design and development firm, today announced Luca Harrell (Va Tech), Jake Eck (NCSU), and Josh Little (NCSU) as the winners of its Winter 2012 Student Design Contest. The competition tasked aspiring product designers with developing camp cooking, washing, or equipment storage and organizational products that would fit with the Montie Gear line (www.montiegear.com) of outdoor, shooting, hunting, archery, and camping products.

“While all the participants we had from across North Carolina and Virginia produced unique and interesting designs, Luca, Jake, and Josh had the three we felt would help campers best enjoy their time outdoors,” Montie Roland, company president, said.

As most campers set-up their sites under a canopy of trees, the focus of this Winter’s contest was to design portable equipment using the trunk of trees in a campsite as the central structural support for kitchen, storage, or camping comfort and productivity aids. The products would be designed to help campers reduce pain points related to unpredictable weather, difficulty cooking and cleaning up, and organizing equipment and supplies. The winning designs needed to fit the Montie Gear product traits of being extremely high quality, high performance, long life and very portable.

Little’s third-place design was for a tree mounted multi-use organizer; second-place winner Eck came up with an elevated cooking surface with stove; and first-place went to Harrell for his collapsible wet/dry tree mounted container and sink. In addition to receiving cash prizes of $500 and $250 for first and second place.  Luca is working as a summer internship with Montie Design.  He is working toward spending time in Spring Creek, N.C. to help move his design to production and train the local workforce to manufacture the product. All winners will be given a commission on products that go to market within two years of the submission date.

Video interviews with the contestants can be accessed from the Montie Design blog at blog.montie.com.

Montie Gear products have the tagline of “Heirloom Quality -Tested Troublesome Gap Tough.”  The  Montie Gear products are American Made.  For more sustainability information about the products visit the Montie Gear website.

For more details visit www.montiegear.com.

About Montie Design
Montie Design is an innovative concept-to-marketplace product design and development firm with core competencies in mechanical engineering and industrial design. Implementing a collaborative approach to partnering with clients, Montie Design balances vision with usability in realizing products that are economical to manufacture, elegant and robust. The firm operates out of the Southeast’s innovation hub, the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, with its wealth of industry-leading technology, resources and customers. For more information, visit www.montie.com.