Hinsdale mom has invented a water safety device aimed at increasing visibility of children and adults to boats. Motivated by a strong desire to tackle this issue, she felt compelled to create a solution.

Several years ago, Erin McLaughlin was out boating with her six kids at a lake in Michigan when her daughter fell into the water while tubing. The falling wasn’t the issue, but a big boat traversing toward her, unaware of a person in its path, was cause for concern.

“I was terrified — she started waving her hands and we all started waving and shouting at the boat from our boat to get their attention,” said McLaughlin, a resident of Hinsdale. “At that moment I said to myself, someone needs to fix this problem — I need to fix this problem.”

Never having invented anything, it took McLaughlin a few tries to land on FlagGuard, a US-patented flag system that straps onto the inside of a lifejacket. When someone is in a pool or a lake, or even an ocean, the chamber attachment fills with water, pushing a bright orange flag up 14 inches over the user’s head, adding extra visibility to a person in any body of water.

“There’s nothing on the market that would make people more visible to oncoming boats in the water,” McLaughlin said over the phone.

To go from idea to inception, McLaughlin worked with Michael Prince, president of Ravenswood-based design firm, Beyond Design.

“I was able to understand what she was looking to do and help her go from the concept to manufacturing, creating a website, packaging — the whole nine yards,” Prince told Pioneer Press. “It’s just like Shark Tank.”

The concept was simple: invent something so boats in the water don’t run into children and adults. But the behind-the-scenes brainstorming needed to answer a lot of different questions. “How do you attach this to an existing life vest? Do we make a custom life vest? How do we make it small and lightweight so buoyancy works?” Prince explained.

After months and months of trial and error and multiple mock-ups, Prince and McLaughlin used in-house 3D printing to create prototypes. After each design iteration was manufactured for testing, they went to a local pool and jumped in with the FlagGuard attachment to make sure the flag went up easily.

“I wanted to invent something that would be automatic so when little children fall in the water, they don’t have to worry about holding up their water ski or waving their hands,” McLaughlin said.

An animation video posted on the FlagGuard website shows how the mechanics work. After the plastic chamber fills up with water and the user is safely out, the water drains from the chamber allowing the flag to retract to its resting position.

McLaughlin said her daughter made it back to the boat safely, but so many children don’t.

According to recent statistics released by the U.S. Coast Guard, there were 767 recreational boating fatalities nationwide in 2020, revealing a 25.1% increase from 2019. The total number of accidents also increased by 26.3%, and the number of nonfatal injured victims increased by 24.7%, the report shows.

“It’s so simple — it’s such a need for anyone in the water and if it can save one child’s life then it was worth it,” McLaughlin said.

While geared for children, McLaughlin said the product is useful to any age group.

A life jacket is not sold with FlagGuard’s $49.95 price tag, but the product attaches to most standard-size children and adult life jackets, McLaughlin said.

Western Springs resident and mom of three, Lauren Licitra, has purchased several FlagGuards since McLaughlin’s launch.

“I didn’t have to buy new life jackets for everyone. Kids put on their jackets, get on the boat, go on the tube, maze runner, you name it, or even just jump off the raft. As soon as they fall into the water, the flag slowly comes up,” Licitra said over the phone.

Licitra and her husband have a lake house in Michigan in the same area as McLaughin’s family, who were out advertising FlagGuard over the summer without even knowing it.

“My husband was driving our speed boat and taking our little kids tubing and we saw someone in the water with this orange flag and thought ‘oh my god this is brilliant,'” Licitra said. “We pulled up next to their boat and turns out it was Erin’s boat and one of her kids had it on.”

Licitra quickly swapped up FlagGuards for her children as well as her sister’s kids and bought several extras for their lake house guests that trickle in and out during the summer months. She first tried out the product by having her kids jump off the pier wearing a lifejacket and FlagGuard inserted in the back.

“My kids ran down holding hands, jumped off at the end of the pier, and I could literally see the orange flag come up — genius,” Licitra said. “The lake is big and crowded with all different boats [and] sometimes people are drinking while driving boats when they’re not supposed to. It’s just an extra peace of mind for me.”

McLaughlin added that the flag is hard to miss — the driver of any speed boat or pontoon will easily spot from yards away that “something is there.”

A big chunk of research was spent on the flag itself, she said, as they tested out different materials and settled on the most effective color choice of bright orange.

McLaughlin said she missed out on marketing during the Midwest’s swimming season because of supply chain issues causing a backlog in manufacturing, but since receiving the product in September, she partnered up with four Marinas in Michigan to carry FlagGuard.

For now, stacks of boxes filled with FlagGaurd occupy more than half of McLaughlin and her husband’s garage, where their children help with shipping and labeling. Customers can purchase directly off the FlagGuard website for two-day shipping, as well as through Amazon.

McLaughlin said she applied to ABC’s business reality series, Shark Tank, and is waiting “fingers crossed” to hear back. But her first order of business is to get FlagGuard in the hands of people who can benefit from it, she said.

Chicago is “enormous” for product development and invention, Prince said, spitballing companies like LinkedIn and Grubhub, and Radio Flyer as having Chicago roots.

“I’m in the business of invention and the companies that happen to be here blows my mind. Not just the entrepreneurs like Erin, but large, mega-million dollar companies that we work with — they’re not in New York, they are not in California, they’re here,” he added. “She’s in a market that is known for innovation, it makes me excited.”

With four U.S. patents pending and a registered trademark, McLaughlin said the idea she’s had tucked away in her mind since her 25-year-old daughter was 15, “blossomed” during the slowed-down pace of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s her “biggest accomplishment” to date, she said. “I was scared to get started but I knew in my heart that my idea is something I had to pursue even if I failed.”