Chapter 01
1985–1990
Createc
One inventor, one desk in Biel, and a first client who made everything after it possible.
Our history
40 years of inventing on purpose
Our story celebrates not just achievements, but the inspiration they spark in others.
Who built it
From one desk to a house of inventors.
Creaholic started with Elmar Mock in 1986. In the beginning, there were no clients. So, to keep the company going, Elmar taught classes at universities.
One of his students became Creaholic's first engineer: Marcel «Mars» Aeschlimann. Today, he leads the company.
1985
Chapter 01Createc
01Team members
-Patent families
-Projects
Createc is founded
Elmar Mock founded Createc in 1986. The company was renamed Creaholic in 1994.
The first major client
Creaholic's first major client was the Swedish packaging company Tetra Pak. The collaboration gave the young company its early momentum and let it widen its innovation and invention consulting well beyond a single industry. The first job was a high-speed injection-compression technology for over-moulding paperboard.
Half a week at the blackboard
From 1986 to 1993 the founder taught at 50%: Biel University of Applied Sciences, plastics technology in Windisch, and materials science at FHS St-Imier. The teaching paid for the inventing - and it is where the first hire came from.
The first engineer
Marcel «Mars» Aeschlimann sat in one of Elmar's classes before he became the first engineer Createc hired. He is Managing Partner and Chairman today.
Derbyflex
The world's first binding plate. By improving flex and damping vibration, it made modern carving possible.
Four golds in Calgary
Alberto Tomba and Vreni Schneider won four Olympic gold medals at Calgary 1988 on the Derbyflex binding.
RockWatch
New manufacturing techniques and finishes for a watch whose dial is cut from stone.
Switel
In-mould labelling, ultrasonic welding and finishing, across a family of telephone handsets.
Sculpt
New watch concepts, with a print that runs continuously from the strap across the dial.
Plani-Mouse
A measuring and tracing device, developed together with Ronda.
Chapter 02
1990–1995
Becoming Creaholic
A conflict of interest forced a new name. The partner model that arrived with it is still how the place works.
A spout you could seal on
Tetra Pak's spout was made with two-component injection moulding, ready to be sealed straight onto the packaging.
STAMPS
For the STAMPS watch we engineered a housing that takes decorative foils - endless dial customisation, in an affordable and versatile timepiece.
Hearing, thought through
Development of the micro mechanics for a hearing system that converts incoming analogue sound into a digital signal, using a Digital Sound Processing unit.
Createc becomes Creaholic
A conflict of interest over the name forced a change. Createc became Creaholic.
The partner model starts here
The start of the Creaholic partner model - the arrangement that still decides who owns what, and who stays in. It is what turned a founder's company into a partners' one.
The first internal projects
Not everything was commissioned. A shaver concept developed in-house was sold to KAI in Japan in 1994.
The first WoodWelding tests
First WoodWelding tests and application ideas. A sonotrode and a thermoplastic pin: the ultrasound the sonotrode generates lets the pin root itself into the material of choice in under a second.
Saia Burgess
Quieter AC motors, and a gearing optimised along with them.
Chapter 03
1995–2000
The first spin-offs
Two technologies grew big enough to need companies of their own. The team trebled around them.
Founded in these years
- WoodWelding
- MINISWYS
Sterilising while blowing
Tetra Pak again: using explosive gas for sterilisation during blow moulding.
1,750 km across Australia
Creaholic led the technical and logistical development of the solar bicycle, then field-tested it over 1,750 km in Australia's World Solar Cycle Challenge.
A steering column that gives way
With Krupp Presta and BMW, a new system to collapse the car steering column during an accident.
A binding for every boot
A new snowboard binding that works across a far wider range of boot sizes and shapes.
The Radio Control Watch
It tracks listening habits by compressing and storing audio data, using low-power signal processing and pattern matching.
MOGID
A new device built around a GSM-based positioning system.
Radiolucent trauma care
Stryker's radiolucent, lightweight external fixation system used high-performance plastics for a next generation of trauma care.
Gas, liquid, solid
A rebrand with a business card of its own and a redesigned website - the first time the Gas-Liquid-Solid approach was built into the innovation process itself.
Chapter 04
2000–2005
The Soapfactory
A former soap works becomes the studio. Bone welding gets its first proof - on meat from the butcher down the road.
Founded in these years
- Spine Welding
Bones from the butcher
BoneWelding's first successful tests were run on bones bought at the local butcher.
A flower, not an org chart
The Gas-Liquid-Solid approach moved into a newly designed logo, and a flower became the way the company describes its own structure: petals are the projects, leaves the team, roots the foundation and the values.
The Soapfactory
The move to the Soapfactory. Its historic industrial character gives the work a room to happen in.
Plate Bender
For Stryker Orthopedic. By reducing friction and balancing weight against durability, the instrument improves surgical precision, portability and sterilisation - for surgeons and patients both.
Boehringer Ingelheim
Optimisation of the production process for the pressure-compensated cartridges used in inhaler devices.
Roche
A piezoelectric microfluidic pump that oscillates a funnel to eject liquid droplets continuously.
Dolls that answer back
Integrating the electronics into the Armstrong dolls, which talk, sing or howl when they are stretched or squeezed.
MuSeek
A patented audio-recognition system that uses fingerprint analysis to identify songs, deliver music information, streamline reporting and support buying music online.
A wheel that does more
The Multidirectional Wheel System, developed with Mikron: an intuitive, feature-rich scroll wheel built into Logitech's keyboards.
BMW
Fixation and tensioning devices for a fabric covering, developed to take the wrinkles out of it.
Chapter 05
2005–2010
Awards and water
Ultrasound collects its prizes, and a shower head begins a project that ends, two decades later, in a sale to L'Oréal.
Founded in these years
- Joulia
Swiss Economic Award
WoodWelding takes the High-Tech/Biotech category, for an ultrasonic process that bonds bone and wood alike - the same technology, working in a hospital and on a building site.
NEXA
An automated matrix connector for the last mile of a telecommunication network.
Hauert
A dosing system with the measuring cap built in, so liquid fertiliser can be measured and poured without the mess.
Brite, for Bernafon
Advanced automatic sound processing in a rounded, visually distinctive shell that sits comfortably on the ear. Red Dot design award winner, 2007.
Nespresso
An extensive exploration of milk foaming from portion packs.
SoapShow
Development begins on a water-saving system inspired by space technology, atomising water through impinging jets. It becomes Gjosa - and, in 2026, is acquired by L'Oréal.
SwissCleanDrive
Conceiving, building and fitting an electric drive to a Fiat 500 to turn it into a plug-in parallel hybrid.
Optic Biometry, for Haag-Streit
Design and development of an ergonomic laser optic device that lets ophthalmologists take a range of optical measurements. Red Dot honourable mention, 2009.
SpineWelding
A fast, high-rigidity fixation procedure for skull surgery, built on WoodWelding's joining technology with biodegradable thermoplastic elements.
A mixing cap that became a company
A mixing cap for concentrate, developed for Nestlé, becomes the base IP for the Smixin hand-washing system.
The first Stromer
Design and development of the discreet, fully concealed and replaceable battery system for the first Stromer e-bike.
Poken
A social networking device that lets two people swap their details by touching one to the other.
Chapter 06
2010–2015
Professional inventors
The company names what it does - and writes the method down, as seventy-two cards anyone can run a workshop from.
Founded in these years
- Multimaterial Welding
- Smixin
Professional inventors
Creaholic rebrands around a phrase its own clients had been using: professional inventors. Knowledge and experience on one side, creativity and freedom on the other.
SBB
A future digital access system that tracks a passenger's journey and bills it automatically.
Vipon
A discreet vibration-based device to ease menstrual cramps, opening new IP and green patent ground along the way.
Joulia
Joulia takes the heat out of shower water on its way down the drain and puts it into the cold water coming in. Less hot water is needed, and the energy used to heat a shower falls by more than a third.
NeuroPro
A modular clinical headset for ambulatory brainwave monitoring and early seizure detection, balancing signal quality against something a person can actually wear.
The perfect countertop pizza
Testing a portable halogen convection cooker to find out what actually governs a good pizza on a kitchen counter.
Swiss Wind Energy
A low-cost, small-scale vertical axis wind turbine.
The Gas-Phase Toolkit
Seventy-two cards to inspire, plan and facilitate workshops and projects - the Gas phase written down so it can be handed to somebody else.
Water4Life
Filtering packaging: a multi-layered membrane covering most of the pack, over an expandable structure.
Würth
A hand machine for the craft trades, developed with the furniture field and its revolutionary lightweight honeycomb panel in mind.
David Dimitri
A training device that reproduces the spring of a tensioned high wire, for an artist who needed to rehearse on the ground.
Chapter 07
2015–2020
Twenty-five arrive at once
Swisscom's human-centred design team joins, and four companies leave in the same five years. The house doubles what it knows how to do.
Founded in these years
- AlveoliX
- VetWelding
- Gjosa
- Decomplix
Creaholic and Swisscom join forces
Twenty-five people from Swisscom's Human Centered Design team move to Creaholic, Swisscom takes a five per cent stake, and both sides pool what they know.
4dLifetec
The whole user experience for a laboratory device that detects DNA damage - sophisticated inside, straightforward to use.
Intermobility
A public e-bike concept for Intermobility's entry in the Paris e-bike competition: a unisex frame that flows, and a battery mounted low for balance.
Joulia finds its market
The shower heat-recovery system meets what the market actually asked for: simple, robust, seamlessly integrable, plug-and-play, and easy to maintain.
The Music-House
A Creaholic vision project - the invention house drawn as a piece of music.
Pulse Feedback
An employee survey tool that changes how companies and the people in them grow: build a survey, gather the insight, act on it.
Arboloom begins
The incubation project starts with first cup ideas and prototypes, formed from wood.
CWA
A vision project for tomorrow's gondola: a modular, customer-centric cabin that improves access and opens new uses across ski, summer, urban and leisure.
Seven thousand inventors
Hands-on innovation training programmes in design thinking, prototyping, creativity, visualisation and storytelling - over seven thousand people through them.
Elmar Mock, nominated by the EPO
Creaholic's founder and co-inventor of the Swatch is nominated for the European Patent Office's lifetime achievement prize. One hundred and seventy-eight patent families over three decades of inventing.
The first digital tools
Pulse Feedback, Customer Centricity Score and Looping: three tools that help an organisation gather feedback, understand what people need, and keep improving.
SBB
Shaping the future of mobility, from new business models at Zurich main station to resource-efficient train brake technology.
Zurich main station
New business models tried out in the middle of the country's busiest building.
Chapter 08
2020–2025
IKEA, and a sale to L'Oréal
WoodWelding reaches flat-pack furniture, Gjosa is bought by L'Oréal, and the team grows to sixty-five.
Founded in these years
- Arboloom
IKEA
WoodWelding goes into furniture assembly: less time to put a piece together, and a faster line to make it on.
Phonocut
An analogue vinyl lathe, and the first consumer device that cuts a record at home. Place a blank disc, connect the audio, press start.
myky.ch
With BEKB, ewb and GVB: a platform that walks a homeowner toward sustainable living, with financing, energy solutions and building protection in one place.
Kickbox
Scaling intrapreneurship with Swisscom, Implenia, CSS, LGT, Switzerland Tourism and GF.
Ypsomed
Intuitive mechanical concepts for a new generation of autoinjector pen, built around a replaceable prefilled syringe.
AlveoliX
Organ-on-chip technology that sharpens preclinical decisions, cuts the cost of developing a drug, and offers a real alternative to animal testing.
Swisscom sure
A year with Swisscom launching a new insurance business: shaping the value proposition, testing it, and building it into the MySwisscom app.
Self-sufficient antennas
Sustainable, self-sufficient mobile antennas for Swisscom.
L'Oréal acquires Gjosa
The water-saving technology that started as SoapShow, inspired by how water is handled in space, is bought by L'Oréal.
Thirty years of Tetra Pak
Eighty-five projects and more than fifty-five patents with the client that made the early years possible - caps, seals and the processes that produce them.
Galenica
A modular interim workspace with themed zones and its own signage, and a digital health strategy with a future vision and an innovation framework behind it.
Chapter 09
2025–2030
Inpressing
A way of pressing solid wood into shapes that plastic used to own. The board for these years is mostly still empty.
Founded in these years
- Inpressing
Innovation Night Series
An invitation-only evening: a guest speaker from the network in conversation with a member of the Dream Team.
Zurich Airport
Two pragmatic baggage-unloading prototypes tested under real conditions, to establish whether they were feasible, whether anyone would use them, and whether they made business sense.
Inpressing
A patent-pending high-speed wood-pressing technology: an industrial route to the small objects and packaging that are made of plastic today.
Future Thinking
For a leading industrial automation manufacturer: the innovation fields worth entering, and six strategic directions to shape the group's strategy around.
2030
Still being written
The last board runs to 2030 and is mostly empty. That is not an omission - those years have not happened yet.
Drag the ribbon, or use the arrows and the rail
By 2026
What forty years added up to
Between 1986 and 2026: fifty-one people, two hundred and ninety-five patent families, one thousand five hundred and ninety projects - and fourteen technologies that left home to become companies of their own.
51
Team members
295
Patent families
1590
Projects
40Years on the market
Forty years, and still counting.
It is 2026, and Creaholic has been on the market for forty years - four decades spent helping people and companies solve the problems they could not solve on their own. The wall keeps filling. We are still walking forward.