Glenn Smith had cooked with onions for years, but no matter how often he chopped them, he could never find a way around the sting. He and his wife Maggie tried all the usual tricks—refrigerating the onions, breathing through the mouth, cutting under the fan—but none of it worked for long. Glenn hated how the fumes filled the air around the cutting board. The irritation was instant and always worse when he was in a rush. They started wondering why there wasn’t a simple tool to move the vapors away.
Glenn had worked in operations and sales. Maggie had experience in customer service and marketing. Together, they decided to try making something themselves. They weren’t looking to invent a new appliance, just a small kitchen fan that did one job: clear the space around the cutting board and keep the user’s eyes from watering. They mocked up a few rough versions and tested different fan angles to see how air moved across a countertop. They realized quickly that the airflow had to be close and direct. A ceiling fan wouldn’t help. Neither would anything mounted on a wall. The fan had to sit on the counter, right next to the chopping area, blowing sideways to redirect the vapors before they reached the cook’s face.
They called the device Fanion. It was a small, cordless fan shaped like an onion, about five inches high, weighing less than half a pound. It ran on four AA batteries and had three angled blades in a compact housing. The outer shell was designed to resemble an actual onion and came in four color themes: Red Onion, White Onion, Yellow Onion, and Sweet Onion. Glenn and Maggie wanted it to feel friendly and familiar—something lighthearted that you wouldn’t mind leaving out on the counter.
To use the Fanion, a person simply places it to one side of the cutting board and turns it on. The fan pushes the vapors sideways, away from the user’s eyes. There’s no app, no remote, no settings. It does one thing. The fan itself was designed with help from Product QuickStart, a Georgia-based product development firm. Glenn and Maggie handled everything else on their own—website, branding, customer service, fulfillment, and marketing. They kept the price at $15.99 and launched it quietly through a direct-to-consumer website in time for the 2023 holiday season.
Glenn posted a short announcement online the day they launched. He called it “perfect timing for Thanksgiving cooking,” and hoped people would consider it as a gift. In early 2024, they began collecting reviews and reposting customer feedback. Glenn encouraged buyers to share honest impressions so other people could see that the product worked. Early reactions were positive, and they restocked inventory several times in the first few months.
Fanion is still a small operation with no distribution through large chains or third-party sellers. Everything is shipped from the company’s own fulfillment process, and sales come primarily through word of mouth and social media.
What began as a personal kitchen problem became a physical product through trial and iteration. Glenn and Maggie weren’t trying to change how people cook. They just wanted to make it easier to chop onions without tears.
