Our Founder
Liz Holland, CEO and passionate inventor at Sensory Product Design spent her whole life dealing with her own Sensory Processing Disorder (aka SPD). Combine that with being the daughter of a successful inventor and studying Industrial Design and that adds up to a very “problem solving” person. Throughout her life, especially before she knew she had SPD, she could feel how hyper-sensitive her senses were, causing significant pain, every day.
So what does the inventive maker do? She makes all kinds of things to help! But mostly for herself, because it was some time before she understood SPD and how to “untangle the mess” — this is what Liz called, “solving one problem at a time”. One of the most illusive things about SPD, is that everyone experiences it somewhat differently. Even if two people have the “same” senses that are sensitive, they can have completely different they “experience the overload” and therefore they might have different coping mechanisms.
However, Liz found that IF you can solve “one issue”, let’s say light in your eyes, that can be fairly easy to “fix” in most situations (stay connected to SPD future products for a lovely upcoming solution!). Then, if one thing is “fixed temporarily”, it’s easier to “tune into” what else is being triggered. Hopefully then, you can identify another and solve that, and so on.
Liz realized that she had created many things over the years for herself and those ideas could help others!
Liz’s Back Story
Prior to starting Sensory Product Design, Liz worked primarily in design. As an avid tennis player, Liz had the privilege of deigning tennis racquets for Prince Tennis. Her designs have won five international design awards including:
2005 - International Red Dot Design Award – Prince O3 Silver & O3 Red Tennis Racquet
2005 - Popular Science “Best of What’s New” Award – Prince O3 Blue Tennis Racquet
2006 - Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) Bronze by the IDSA – Prince O3 Hybrid Hornet Tennis Racquet
2006 - Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design GOOD DESIGN Award – Prince O3 Hybrid Hornet Tennis Racquet
2006 - Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) Bronze by the IDSA – Prince O3 Hybrid Hornet Tennis Racquet
2006 - Tennis Magazine’s Editor’s Choice for 2006 – Prince O3 Hybrid Hornet Tennis Racquet
In 2015 Liz was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder. While much continues to be discovered about SPD, both for Liz and the medical community, Liz knew she had much to offer others that had similar struggles.
In the years since she has really delved into not only how it effects many people’s ”issues” – a toxic smell, light in their eyes, sensitivity to certain noises, repelled by certain/textures of tastes or uncomfortable fabrics and/or many thing that irritate skin. Any one of these can be debilitating, but when you have any combination of the above, especially simultaneously, they can feed each other having a domino effect that completely knock down for long periods, especially if you are unaware of this effect.
For many, (including Liz) they have many “super sensitivities” and when they experience them intensely, it causes physical pain and/or their nervous system to either shut down or go into fight or flight. Liz had to literally “design” her whole life around this daily struggle. She likes to call it a “blessing & a curse”, though in her case, the curse came first and now as she gets to help others, that is the blessing!