From prototype to production: How the Torkar brothers built SolidGPS

L-R: SolidGPS co-founders Trent Torkar and Nathan Torkar, Cush'n Soft Operations Manager Sarita Jeeris-Rajan at their Dandenong manufacturing facility.

When Nathan and Trent Torkar started thinking about motorcycle theft in 2018, they weren’t planning to build a hardware company.

They just wanted to protect Trent’s bike.

Living in Dandenong at the time, the brothers were acutely aware of theft in the area.

They explored alarms, immobilisers and GPS trackers, and quickly grew frustrated.

“You hear an alarm going off down the street and most of the time you just ignore it,” Nathan said.

Immobilisers could be expensive to install, and many GPS trackers were either unreliable or unaffordable.

So, the brothers decided to build their own simplified GPS tracker.

In the early days, SolidGPS operated out of a rented house.

Their living room doubled as a workspace and production equipment filled much of the home.

“We had the whole house pretty much set up for it,” Trent said.

What began as a solution to a personal problem evolved into a structured operation, with momentum building year on year.

Later, the pair navigated overseas manufacturing and troubleshooting, travelling to China to develop their first prototype.

Their first major breakthrough came in 2020, when SolidGPS featured on national television, including in a segment on Seven News.

The end of SolidGPS’ production line: packaged products ready to be sold.

The exposure triggered their first significant spike in sales.

“We used that clip everywhere,” Nathan said.

“That was our first big jump in sales.”

Six years on, SolidGPS has grown into a fully operational business with its own factory and six local employees, and, as the brothers note, “a lot of happy customers.”

SolidGPS however, isn’t the Torkar brothers’ first business venture.

Before launching SolidGPS, Trent worked onsite at Eastern Innovation and helped organise entrepreneurial meetups in Melbourne’s south-east.

“At the time, there wasn’t much happening in the south-east,” he said.

“Eastern Innovation was the only place really focused on encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation.”

The brothers later pitched SolidGPS at Eastern Innovation’s annual Pitch Night.

Nathan still has the original pitch deck — and laughs when he looks back on it.

“It was frankly terrible,” he said.

“I was really nervous. It was one of my first presentations in that sort of field.”

Despite describing the pitch as “unpolished,” he said the experience was formative.

“It was a good experience putting yourself out there.”

A SolidGPS employee at SolidGPS’s Dandenong facility.

Nathan also hot-desked at Eastern Innovation during SolidGPS’s early days, attending events and staying connected in the startup community.

Community, Nathan says, played a critical role.

“Not many people are entrepreneurs.

“All my old friends were working nine-to-five or at uni. When your business isn’t successful yet, you just seem crazy.”

Being surrounded by other founders helped counter that isolation.

“Having a community of people doing the same thing helps a lot.”

The brothers’ entrepreneurial ambitions have also expanded beyond SolidGPS.

The team later acquired Cush’n Soft, a manufacturing business with a long history specialising in padded toilet seats.

Cush’n Soft Operations Manager Sarita Jeeris-Rajan, is a former participant of Eastern Innovation’s Empowering Women Entrepreneurs program, and shares the Dandenong facility with Nathan and Trent.

Sarita said that the EWE program “came at a good time”, given that SolidGPS was expanding and Sarita was looking to develop her skills.

Looking back, the brothers say the journey has been shaped by experimentation, community and persistence.

“You want to be around good people who want to build each other up,” Trent said.