A group of young engineers who scooped thousands of pounds in enterprise competition prize money have taken their innovations to the next level – and to more than a million people.
The team behind Atlas Smart Technologies, which won a total of £8,000 in prize money from EIBF competitions three years ago, are taking the fitness industry by storm.
The team’s SmartBell innovation wowed judges at the EIBF Champion of Champions Competition in 2022, picking up the Enterprise Award for the most commercial potential.
The SmartBell was a smartphone-controlled dumbbell, offering users 26 different weight levels. It was paired with an app, which aimed to track people’s workouts.
Since the competition, the team – led by graduate engineers from Queen’s University Belfast – has focused on the Stronger smartphone app, with lots of success.
They say Stronger is like ‘Strava for the strength market’ – an app which allows people to share their gym workouts with their friends and analyse the data. Since its launch in 2023, the app has been downloaded more than a million times, with more than 100,000 people tracking their workouts each month.
The team is co-founded by Mechanical Engineer Peter Gillan, who said: “After competing in the Champion of Champions Competition, we won another competition in Ireland and the idea was to take the dumbbells to market.
“But after looking at the figures, we estimated we’d need to invest around half a million pounds. As a startup, cash was always going to be tight so after about six months, we launched the app that was going to go with the dumbbells.”
The team say part of their success was being one the first companies to use social channel TikTok as a marketing tool to get their product in front of their target audiences.
And after successfully pivoting the company towards software, the team are set to launch their second app, FocusFarm, in 2025. The app is designed to improve focus and productivity, rewarding users for not looking at their phone.
The Champion of Champions Competition is open for entries again, with any engineer or scientist who has participated in an EIBF-funded enterprise competition in the previous 12 months eligible to enter.
Peter looks back fondly on his time competing, adding: “We really enjoyed it particularly the couple of days at the Royal Academy of Engineering and the mentorship that came with it. We got a lot of feedback which really helped our pitch.”
Find out more about the 2025 Champion of Champions Competition.