Good Grips Handles

Overview

OXO documents its origin story: founder Sam Farber saw his wife having trouble holding her peeler due to arthritis and asked why ordinary tools hurt hands. OXO responded with a wide, oval handle designed to be easy to hold no matter hand size or grip strength. Benefit: lower pain and higher control for users with reduced grip strength, while improving comfort for everyone. Lesson: designing for disability can produce better defaults for the mainstream.

Why it matters

When everyday tools assume strong grip and fine motor control, people with arthritis or limited dexterity experience repeated pain, slower routines, and dependency. OXO explicitly frames Good Grips as benefiting people with or without arthritis, which is the universal-design payoff. The benefit is broad adoption: once a more inclusive handle becomes familiar, it raises expectations across the category. Call to action: identify where your product hurts hands, then redesign the core interface, not the instructions.