This should be a case study on how good design and material selection can yield an outstanding product that's a huge improvement over what came before.

Kayaks have traditionally been made from wood, or fiberglass, or roto-molded polyethylene, or marine plywood. The materials are rigid, and an eight-foot-long kayak takes up eight feet of storage space when not in length. But the design team at Oru crafted theirs from extruded polypropylene instead--and, inspired by origami, designed it to fold up when not in use. Their design decisions not only made the kayak light enough to carry, but mean that it takes up a minimum of storage space when not in use.

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Since debuting the Oru Kayak five years ago, the team has continued tweaking the design and are now introducing the Coast XT:

New design improvements:

- Thigh braces for better stability and comfort

- New fold pattern gets rid of "space-wasting internal structure, without compromising strength" and makes ingress/egress easier

- Zipper channels. These are super-cool: Whereas Oru's earlier designs joined panels with buckles, here they're using this cool extrusion they designed:

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Oru is currently crowdfunding the Coast XT on IndieGogo, and they've already exceeded their target with $104,860 in pledges on a $25,000 goal. Congrats to the team!

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One other thing I'd like to mention about Oru that I really dig: They humbly highlight and credit the original source of their inspiration.

Our founder and inventor Anton Willis read an article about Robert J. Lang in the New Yorker magazine about applying the concepts of origami to everyday products. He decided to use origami to solve a very San Francisco problem – how could he store a kayak in a small city apartment? Many paper models later, the first Oru Kayak was born.

While Robert J. Lang doesn't fold origami kayaks, he has a collection of over 160 trademark folds, some of them amazingly complex. They are intricate and beautiful in both their flat and folded state. For this Indiegogo edition of the Coast XT, with the blessing of Robert J. Lang himself, we're paying homage to the "Birdwing Butterfly" with a custom skin print of the fold pattern. Like Oru Kayaks, the butterfly embodies transformation, freedom, and beauty.

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If you'd like to get in on it, there's still 16 days left in the campaign.