Traverse City Tech Company Lands 'First-Of-Its-Kind' Partnership With Detroit Tigers

The next big innovation in professional sports may come by way of a Traverse City-based company.

This week, the Detroit Tigers announced plans to install new state-of-the-art “premium comfort seats” at Comerica Park. Those seats were “specially designed” for the Tigers by Figueras, a manufacturer of high-end seating solutions based in Barcelona, Spain. However, the core technology in the seats – described in a press release as “quick-touch heating and cooling climate control technology” – was developed and brought to market by Promethient, a startup based right here in Traverse City.

For more than a decade, Promethient has been working to bring that innovation, trademarked under the name Thermavance, to market. Thermavance combines graphene – a one-atom-thick layer of graphite, known for its incredible tensile strength, flexibility, and efficient heat conductivity – with thermoelectric heat pump devices. The resulting material can be sewn into virtually anything – be it a car seat, a garment, or a piece of military equipment – and then heated or cooled electrically. The result is what Promethient calls “human-scaled climate control” – a way of giving each individual the ability to manage their own temperature by way of conductive heat transfer.

In other words, Thermavance can heat or cool the human body via touch, which is more effective and efficient than heating or cooling via air.

According to Promethient CEO Bill Myers, the company’s biggest success stories up until now have come in the powersports world (Polaris is a key client) or in the marine industry, where boat manufacturers like Skier’s Choice, Moomba, and Bennington have recently incorporated Thermavance into certain models. For years, though, Promethient has been drawn to the event seating space, and especially to professional sports. The company finally started making headway in that sector in 2021.

“We were locked up for about a year and a half because of COVID, and the first trade show we could actually attend after that to demonstrate our technology was called the Association for Luxury Suite Directors,” Myers says. “At that show in 2021, we met a company called DreamSeat, a provider for stadium and venue seating across the country. They’re a very ambitious, innovative company, and when they saw the Thermavance technology, they immediately connected the dots for what it could do for their venues.”

The relationship with DreamSeat proved fruitful: Last summer, Promethient did its first stadium installation at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio, home of the Cincinnati Open tennis tournament.

“The technology was well-received; the facility operators and fans loved the experience,” Myers tells The Ticker. “Cincinnati is a place where it can be pretty cold in the spring or fall, but downright hot in the summertime. And yet [Lindner] is an open facility. So, what do you do to keep people comfortable? That facility embracing our technology proved to be a really strong first statement around what we had to offer.”

The success of the Cincinnati installation made it easier for Myers to bend the ear of an executive from the Detroit Tigers. Soon, the Tigers had connected Promethient with Figueras, their seating partner. Engineers in Traverse City worked with designers from the Barcelona company to incorporate Thermavance into a premium baseball stadium seat design, which will debut as part of the Tigers’ new “Home Plate Club” next season. Ilitch Holdings, the team’s parent company, touts the installation as an “first-of-its-kind” offering in major league sports.

Per the Ilitch press release, “the plush new seats feature a high back and head rest, wider armrests with soft pads for additional comfort, cup holders, and up to one foot of additional legroom.” They’re also upholstered in marine-grade vinyl with a “special coating that reduces UV absorption,” which means they won’t get as hot on sunny days as your typical baseball stadium seat. The Thermavance system will be controlled via armrest-mounted switches, which will allow the seat user to adjust temperature as they see fit.

At least to start, Myers says the Tigers are only installing about 350 Thermavance-equipped seats. Those will be found in the Home Plate Club, a currently-under-construction premium seating section situated right behind home plate. That project should be finished in time for Opening Day 2025.

“Right now, their focus is on premium seating [for using this technology],” Myers says of the Tigers. “But obviously, our longer-term goal as a company is to broaden the application of Thermavance into more types of seating inside of stadiums.”

Getting Thermavance into other sporting venues is also on the to-do list, and Myers teases that Promethient will have “at least two more stadium installations occurring in 2025.” From there, he expects buzz and word-of-mouth will grow quickly throughout major league sports – something Promethient is already preparing for.

“A big increase in demand is absolutely what we’re planning on as a company,” Myers says. “Fortunately, the cost to scale production is not that high, so it’s not a huge investment to double our volume if we need to do so. I think we’re prepared for whatever comes.”

Lowell Gruman is managing partner for Boomerang Catapult, a local venture capital firm that has invested significantly in Promethient over the years. With the Detroit Tigers partnership, Gruman says Promethient “has become the poster child” for what Boomerang Catapult is trying to do in Traverse City.

“Our investment theory is that great jobs will draw great people, and that great people will make a great and resilient community,” Gruman explains. “That goal is being realized by what Bill is doing at Promethient, which is bringing world-class engineering talent to Traverse City and creating these novel, absolutely-brand-new-to-the-market products. No one else is doing what they are doing right now; there is no competition. The biggest challenge is that a lot of people just don’t know this technology exists, and this partnership with the Tigers is exactly the kind of thing that could change that.”

Photos courtesy of Ilitch Holdings.