Bower has devised what he believes is a quick-release system designed to reduce injury by allowing users to rearrange weight loads on the fly.
To oversimplify a bit, you can think of the system as a clip that attaches multiple bags in a way that makes them easier to carry.
Bower and his company, Bowerbags LLC, received the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce’s Soin Award for Innovation at the chamber’s annual meeting Tuesday morning.
Bower’s product — called a “modular quick release system” or MQRS — is meant to let users move weight loads rapidly and securely.
The idea is simple: Reduce injuries suffered by members of the military and first responders. But anyone with weight to carry on the move can use the product, Bower says.
This isn’t the first time his work has been recognized. The Ohio Third Frontier Commission in October 2022 awarded Bowerbags $100,000 for development and commercialization work.
In an interview before receiving the Soin award, Bower quipped that the system might be seen as the “lego of backpack systems.”
He calls it “a simple widget” — but one that seems almost infinitely configurable.
Bower’s work started as a graduate student. He was familiar with the task of carrying multiple bags (or trying to), leaving the house at 7 or 8 a.m., and returning at midnight.
“I was carrying a myriad of stuff, without the use of a car,” he recalled.
Perfecting the system became a painstaking, decade-plus task of trial and error, 3-D printing hardware when necessary.
“I could tell you a thousand different ways this wouldn’t work,” Bower said.
He arrived in Dayton in 2017 to show the product to the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where advice helped refine the system further.
Bower said Air Force representatives told him, “Hey, Jamie, you really listen. Then you come back with those changes.”
He worked through the federal government SBIR (small business innovation research) program. Government awards got him as far as what he calls the “the valley of death” — a place somewhere between Department of Defense funding and building a product to scale.
In his time in Dayton, Bower grew to know Nicholas Ripplinger, founder of Battle Sight Technologies, another defense-oriented innovator and a former Soin winner himself. He also found a haven at the Entrepreneurs Center, on the third floor of the downtown Dayton Arcade, where he has a “rapid-prototyping, small-batch manufacturing” space.
But getting to work with AFRL was especially useful.
“I think Dayton is just one of the best places for a small business to grow,” Bower said.
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