From Brain Surgery to Breakthrough: How Kenny Perkins Built the First E-Bike Helmet for Kids

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Kenny, great to have you in the studio. We're in, again, Manhattan. This is the fourth one I've done today. Great to have you in. Thank you for making the journey. I it wasn't so straightforward. Not quite as far as mine, but you know.

Wow, yeah.

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Yeah, no, a little bit different than I expected today, but not bad. Brooklyn? Brooklyn. yeah, I stopped by the office in Industry City first, was expecting an express train and a couple different stops, Yeah, it's been a bit of a mail today. little bit longer than expected.

Where have you come in from today?

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Yeah, well, it's great to have you either way. So we were originally introduced by our mutual contact, Jordan Norman over at Sprouts. I believe he's done some work with you on Osmo.

Yeah, yeah, we actually met years ago while I was in Boston when he was still at Sprout and then stayed connected and then I knew he was somebody that we'd like to work with and he helped do some of our branding.

That's awesome. Yeah, he's a great guy. Super connector as well. just loves connecting with design. yeah, but back to yourself. You're the founder of Impact Lab and Osmo Helmets. I'm going to do that again. So back to yourself. You're the founder of Impact Lab and Osmo Helmets, two businesses with a shared mission of building safer, smarter, better designed protection products.

Your background spans watches, sports equipment, ingredient technologies, and now you've built your own consumer brands, which we'll go through in a bit. But all of them, at the heart of all of them is great industrial design. So yeah, we're going to dive into your career today, what drove you to launch your own ventures, and what you've learned about product leadership, and doing things a little bit differently. So I'm good.

Yeah, sounds great.

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I mumbled my way through that, that's the tone for the...

I'm sure I will also through the rest of the interview.

Yeah. Well, from this point on, I basically say nothing. I just throw a sentence at you you just take over. So we get on. But we always start on this show with the question, why design handy being in person, I can point to the side for those. that's what the pause is. So. So Kenny, talk us through kind of why why design? Where did it all begin? You know, for you, how did you get interested in?

Yeah, sure. I feel like maybe my story isn't so different than a lot of other origin stories in design from at least my generation of industrial designers. It kind of started with a love for understanding how things worked, Legos, Technics, all these different things, taking things apart. And then also an aptitude for art. But I think I was really inspired. My father was incredibly or is incredibly handy with everything. It could be from cars.

, I bought a: 1966

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and it wasn't then when I realized that I could kind of merge these two things. Yeah, and at the time there were only really two schools for automotive design, Art Center in Pasadena and CCS in Detroit, and when it came time to look for colleges, I applied to only one school, and it was CCS in Detroit. And that's where I discovered beyond automotive design was industrial design and product design.

I've interviewed so many people on this show that started off kind of automotive design, but then realized that they weren't quite as passionate about automotive design as some of their peers on the class, but that there are lot of parallels and some of the topics were industrial design and that's where they...

Yeah, it's a very rigorous intense program. think while I was there the school was still it was much smaller than it is now and about 14 to 18 people graduated with automotive every year, which was intense you know, and so I think the other thing that I realized was there's a small few that get to actually design something kind of in total and from concept and I'm fortunate to know amazing automotive designers who have gotten to that pinnacle. Yeah, but I found that I wanted to have a little bit more

and complete control. And so that was a beautiful thing to find in product design and I've launched hundreds and hundreds of products from soup to nuts since then. So that's been really rewarding and then getting to see all these different products and market is really amazing.

rs ago, we're talking back in: 2013

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Mm.

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if you can find me a junior car designer, I'm hiring. I'll look at their portfolios. And I said, what do you need to see? What does good look like? He I just want to see radical. OK.

how much you're paying is like 150,000 pounds for like someone with next to no experience, which is alarming. The average graduate salary at the time was like 22, 23,000. I was like, okay, I'm in. I'm going for this.

I just chased my tail for a month trying to find someone that was radical because every time I put what I thought was a awesome portfolio, Frank would just say, it's not right. It's not radical. And I said, can you give me some guidance? He was like, I'll know when I see it. I was like, no.

But you know it's true isn't it that kind of to make it at that end it's like it's not something you can really write down it's just something that you feel and see and you know at that time and I've never really maybe that's what put me off automotive design.

Yeah, there's just a smattering of my friends. mean, we've been out of college now for longer than I'd like to name. I mean, they're Rivian and Scout and just spread all over. And then of course, the big three in Detroit. There's plenty of people there in some pretty amazing roles and working on some pretty amazing cars. So it's been very cool. then tons of other friends that are in product doing amazing things from everything from tools and watches and all kinds of stuff. So it was a great experience to go to the CCS was much

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smaller than it is even today and by today's standards it's still a very small school and I think it outputs some pretty amazing talent. It's really great to see alumni throughout the industry and just bump into people all over the place.

That's awesome. So you touched on watch design there. That was your real kind of first kind of foray into design, wasn't it? So you started it, I remember thinking you started at Fossil Group. So was one of the more recognizable.

Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, I graduated in: 2008

sn't until around February of: 2010

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I actually kind of broke through and they had reached out to me through somebody else who had seen like a blog that was popular back then. I was creating like daily sketches and all this different like recording of what I was doing to try to further my understanding of design and kind of continue my education post CCS. And yeah, I'd never designed to watch and they reached out and did an interview and then asked me to do a two week long project. And oddly enough, know, at the time,

back then. And so by June of: 2010

are there from young people all around the country. Amazing offices that had basketball courts and auditoriums and Starbucks and all these things there. So and it afforded me the ability really quickly to understand how to work with factories and soup to nuts product design, working with sales teams and know, Bonobos and Macy's and all of our, you all these different aspects that don't really get taught in school that are so important in the role and integrating with the rest of all these other departments and

Within about six or seven months, I was at my first factory in Asia. So that really kind of kicked things off and began to set me apart in my resume from others being able to do all these different things and experience that. So, yeah, I'm not wearing a watch today. Sadly enough, I forgot in my mad dash to get here. But yeah, I still love watches. I have a lot of friends in the industry working on a side watch project now for a couple of people in an old factory partner of mine. And yeah, so it was an amazing role to blend

fashion and design and sales on a company at the time that was having a meteoric climb. so, yeah, I stayed in watches for about six years and half of that time was at Fossil in Dallas and the other half brought me only two blocks away on 39th Street and Broadway. So I for a company there for another three years, yeah.

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Have you met Jordan's friend?

Yeah, yeah, very familiar with that, yeah. And actually I got to hold his most recent watch just a couple weeks ago during New York City Design Week, so yeah, it's pretty cool.

Pretty special things.

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, traveling to Basel Faire, which is I think no longer in existence now. I think it's switched over. every year we'd travel to Basel Faire in Switzerland and it's basically the largest, one of the longest running trade shows in the world. And on scales like you would never imagine where salespeople are being ferried around in Aventadors and know, booths are, you know, 10, 15 million dollars with elevators and shark tanks. And it's just a whole thing. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Yeah, it's a wild experience to be there and yeah, it was great So watch this was a really really interesting and fun way to kind of cut my teeth and get into the design world. So

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That's awesome. So, yeah, as you mentioned, they took you a few years. Yeah. Post grad, obviously went through the accident and then, you know, working kind of was a part time or kind of

Yeah, I was just working at a restaurant and just like designing and designing and sketching and putting things on a blog and you know sending out resumes and doing anything and everything I mean I even like flew to Austin to try to introduce myself to a job opening I was really excited about only to Basically not get past the lobby because they were under a government contract and so like yeah I felt I'd never felt more defeated than that moment, but you know after

play for giving it a go.

Yeah, just like what else can I do, you know, just trying. And so, you know, pick myself up after what was just like really tough experience. And I ended up like walking to every design studio that I could possibly find in Austin and just asking if I could do portfolio reviews. Yeah. And so I sat down with like seven or eight different design studios throughout Austin. And, you they didn't turn into a job or anything, but some people I stayed connected with and, you know, gave me a lot of feedback. And it's funny enough, I'd never been to Texas.

flew to Austin and then within four or five months I was living in Dallas. it was really serendipitous and odd how that all came together.

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It's something that, you know, I speak to a lot of young designers who, you know, getting your first job out of university is like, that's the hardest it's ever going to be. know, regardless of any kind of downturn or layoffs or whatnot, know, when you're at the start where you've got no tangible experience, you just got kind

Everyone seems to want two to three years. Yeah. Yeah, it's like where do you start?

But it's a great lesson in perseverance and just putting yourself out there because, know, the worst case, the worst thing you got out of those portfolio reviews was advice and feedback. It just made the next portfolio better, which ultimately, going through a process led you to watch.

Yeah, and I think that's like, you know, something I, the mantra is like roll with the punches as best as I can. Cause I could have just like stopped, gave up, went to the bar, but instead, you know, just like, well, who else is around? Who can I try to get into? Yeah. And just see a whole different, you know, side of things. Cause that was a consultancy design space that I've been interested in. But yeah, ultimately I ended up in, you know, in-house design, you know, pretty much from there forward. So.

Awesome, So you spent a few years at Fossil, then you went to Geneva Watch Group. But you mentioned on our kind of intake hall, you're quite a sporty person, outdoors person. remind me of the sports that you're into.

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Yeah, I mean, growing up, I the joke was the people at the ER knew me. I was pretty rambunctious and radical kid. It was anything from we had like half pipes in the backyard, dirt tracks. think I got my first motorcycle, which also was old. was a 1976 YT80 Yamaha metal tank bike my dad bought me. So it was a vintage enduro bike, but only in 80 cc. I was about eight when I got that. Had multiple dirt bikes growing.

was very active. yeah, around: 2000

around and certain industries get really...

internalized, incestuous almost. They just kind of like grab from other groups. Shoes is a very good example where it's just like a round robin of Nike, Converse, Puma, Jordan, Nike, so on and so forth. And I saw myself kind of getting stuck in watches and not necessarily wanting to be in watches. And it wasn't that I didn't like them, but with smartwatches and Apple Watch, we were rapidly working on other things with Kennecoil and all these other connected watches and they were never landing. And the Apple Watch was really kind of taking off.

seeing this downturn of Fashion Watch, which is what Fossil really tapped into and was growing and I saw like kind of a hard stop or a cliff and so I started to apply to some other jobs.

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Looking at consultancies here in the city got some good interviews and then you know I found myself applying to a job in Boston at burn which I'd heard of and again I'd mentioned like the fixie gear culture and they're kind of a one of the original helmets to kind of go into that urban style and space and work for that type of rider and So yeah, I'd never designed a helmet I had some friends that have worked at like warrior and other lacrosse companies and they warned me they're like this is very masochistic when you go into products that are safety certified

the burbs and so yeah in fall: 2015

We had some graphic designers, but no industrial designers. so, yeah, there wasn't someone I could draft from either on how to kind of go about making a helmet product. So was really trial by fire. But yeah, within two weeks of being there...

I was on a development trip and visited their factory for the first time. And so, yeah, I've been working with them and talking with this factory and others since then. So it's been 10 years now.

Wow. So you were there for six years or so? exactly. Then you moved over to Winpact as VP of Design and Development. And I think that's the same, that then links quite nicely into Impact Lab. Yeah. Was that the brand that you took on?

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Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so, you know, was burned from 2015 to early 2021. director there in that time launched 10 different helmet products. So as a team of like one, I eventually hired another.

And we kind of really reset a lot of things at the brand culturally. And for a while we had, we built a whole new team. We created a whole new office, new product development calendar, you know, everything really reset a lot of things, set up new styles. And consequently we had a lot of really great years. And we developed the first, you know, Virginia Tech five-star rated helmets that Bernadette ever designed. We launched the first e-bike helmet in the United States. Yeah. So was really great.

back. So I was in Boston from: 2015

south of the city. But around: 2021

somebody I had met, the founder of WinPact, I met years before and talking about kind of my situation and what I was looking for and you know, they had an office out of Northern Virginia and I'm originally from Virginia, not too far from the area and have lots of friends and family there and have been working remote and semi remote for a while and so we got to talking and he was like, I need somebody like you to come on and he had created an ingredient based tech company and so what that really means is

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instead of building your full product, think like Gore-Tex or Vibram or something along those lines where a brand will incorporate your ingredient that has some sort of special technology and some IP into their product. And so he had created a multi-impact technology or solution that he was working on.

opment there in the spring of: 2021

of factory engineers and then me try to like just impart my knowledge. And so it really opened up a lot of doors for my, you know, deepening my understanding. you know, aside from that, every product, you know, across football, across, you know, all of these different protective rec sports type, anything that matters in impact, they have different standards, different requirements, different ingredients, different manufacturing processes. And I had only really been just learning cycling.

And so this was an opportunity to kind of.

disengage from that one product category and start to understand the red thread that connects all of these things, which is just impact management. And so, yeah, it was really interesting. We got to work on so many amazing projects, everything from cricket helmets, lacrosse helmets, football helmets, military helmets, head surrounds for automotive racing, doing sled tests back in Detroit. So there are a lot of synergies there and yeah, it was really interesting.

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So yeah, I was there for about two years. And yeah, it was a great eye opening experience to get to do that. And while I was there, I started to like really think about how entrenched industries can get, you know, due to all kinds of factors, existing manufacturing channels, supply chain, standards that haven't changed in a very long time. But you know, they basically

you know, their requirement and with timelines and sales and all these other things in play, you only ever innovate so far because you don't want to go so far on the branch that you can't deliver the product because, you know, not many brands can allocate true R &D where they don't need a product to be released on a certain date. And that kind of stagnation really started to resonate with me. And then I started to see all of these other things that could cross pollinate from these other products.

who were willing to bring these ingredients and technology and methodologies back into another one that maybe they could disrupt. So in the back of my mind, I was thinking of what was gonna be next and what was an opportunity. Yeah, so that's kind of like how things got formed out from WinPak.

So you started impact 23.

y incorporated in the fall of: 2022

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has helped though in terms of you already knew each other.

Yeah, no, it was amazing. Yeah, so, yeah, she's fantastic. Yeah, couldn't do it without her for sure. And so, yeah, in the fall of 22, it was pulling this thing together. I feel like I've had an entrepreneurial spirit for a long time. In fact, like, I don't know, what happened?

The screen's gone off. It's okay, this is actually pretty good. My marketing coordinator wanted me to have some blooper rails.

That'll work.

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Quite a niche comedy though.

Yeah. What do we got going on? What are we going to stream?

not too racy.

Yeah, I can't tell what it is.

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Almost.

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There it is.

Don't look at all those.

going. Almost. Now this is where she's like, it's slightly lower than it was before. The continuation. That's awesome. Thank you.

to continue.

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That's okay.

We're still rolling, yeah.

Cool, great.

Awesome.

Yeah, so I think I was just talking about Casey, yeah, and knowing. Yeah, and having, yeah, so, yeah, she's like that 1 % unique kind of employee and or colleague and mature well beyond her age and.

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Yeah, it's been super exciting and very fun to be partnered with her and like watch the development and learn and then learn a lot from her as well. And so yeah, we've been working together for two years and in the fall of 2022, I kind of pose an idea that I had and there was an opportunity to kind of create a continuation of the work and customers and clients and things that she and I and some other team members had been working on at WinPath.

And so that allowed us to pull together a deal where we could actually continue with those customers. Okay. As Impact Lab, our own incorporation. So we're fully incorporated and through some, you know, documentation and everything else that we had to sort out. And by the grace of, you know, the universe, convinced Casey to move up from Northern Virginia, from living with her folks post-covid era to Brooklyn. And so her first place.

in Industry City in April of: 2023

what was happening, why it was happening, and settling things down and getting all of our things together, all of our processes, and trying to flex muscles that we would need later when we were larger. So we would have that memory. we, you know, how we account for things, what systems do we use, what software do we use, how can we look as professional as possible. And yeah, the underlying tone was, okay, how do we scale this, how do we grow this, how do we, you know, squeeze the lemons we have.

and provide more services and sustain ourselves with this revenue and all while using those funds to kind of create something of our own. So if we have all the tools, all the ingredients, we can cook for ourselves. And that was kind of the idea to create Osmo. So that was in the background. We didn't know what the name was gonna be, but I had inklings of what the helmet or the product and the consumer would be for quite a while.

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It sounds, yeah, lot of opportunity, right place, right time, meeting the right people, but also seeing that kind of.

Yeah, yeah, I use the analogy a lot of like, you know, design and staying, you know, part of and being relevant and relevant at the right time is really important. But it's kind of like surfing. So you've got to like kind of learn to read the wave and start paddling long before it crests and that allows you to kind of the wave. So, you know, this was something that I, know, an analogy I started using when we first started designing an e-bike helmet at Bern. It was not something that was very obvious and it wasn't something that was

obvious in the United States and we had to fight to kind of bring the product to market. But then it became one of the best selling products there's and then before you know it like everyone was designing and developing products into that standard. So you know I look for those little things you know those data points that are going to become something later.

Yeah, fantastic. So in terms of kind of diving into impact lab and Osmo then so my understanding is that impact lab is the consulting kind of wing with a view to funding kind of your own own ventures. So how did you know you mentioned there's a few clients you took over from impact? Did you get more clients on and how easy did you find it or hard?

Yeah, so we you know, we took an approach of we have this idea we only had so many resources that would allow us to like start it ourselves without you know, immediately needing, know funding and And so when you when you're a startup I've seen so many times, you know the time and energy that goes into finding your funding your trading bandwidth and you're taking all kinds of meetings and you're you know, getting lots of no's and and you know, there's a lot of resiliency and in startups

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and founders and raising funds. And then I've seen the desperation of raising funds and getting the wrong investor or mismatching ideals or expectations. And so what I realized was that no matter what you do, you've got to trade so much of your bandwidth to getting capital. And so our idea here was that, you

we likely will raise some money, maybe institutional money. But if we have these clients and we look at growing more clients, getting more clients, there's a cap to where our bandwidth was going to be too high to facilitate developing our own product. So we looked at this as a very specific trade-off of how much were we going to be putting into fundraising? And let's draw a line on how many clients and what type of work we have.

So that allowed us to keep everything moving. And honestly, we were able to, surprisingly enough, design and develop this helmet in about the same timeline as I was doing at Burn with a lot more resources, with a lot more team members, all while designing and developing products for our clients. And so basically, it just meant that we were working 15 hour days, seven days a week for as long as it is now. But it was a great trade-off.

because you know she and I own the whole company we have been able to raise you know a couple hundred thousand dollars in friends and family over the course of that time and you know when the the time comes and with the right investors you know we'll look to do that but yeah so we didn't set out to find a lot of clients we were able to find ways to expand our services to the existing clients yeah which meant we didn't have to go you know hunting or gathering we could just work with what we had and then

existing connections, we were able to show our value with them and that would, kind of partnering up with them gave us really long-term and consistent sight line to our revenues and that really kind of changed a lot for us and it allowed us to start paying ourselves a little bit. It allowed us to expand the resources in the office, look to marketing and then of course be self-sufficient.

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efficient in the development of our first product in Osmo.

fantastic so do you want to you Osmo with you haven't you so we're looking up to have three cameras so literally hold it anywhere in the air and yeah sure

I've got a couple different goodies here. yeah, Osmo, this helmet, first and foremost, came out of kind of, again, those data points of how are people riding. So when e-bikes first started really coming around, the industry was very speculative. It's like, it's not really riding a bike. There was a lot of hardcore people talking about what it was, and what I saw was what it wasn't, or who it was going to bring in.

So e-bikes facilitated use for riders that didn't use to ride. So if you wanted to commute but you were a little bit too far away, you were worried about maybe getting sweaty, you lived in San Francisco where there are a lot of hills and maybe you're not commuting because of the hills, maybe you're not in the best physical shape, all kinds of different things that e-bikes could do. And now studies are showing how riders of e-bikes are going out more often and longer rides.

And so it's being adopted at an amazing rate and you know when we started developing this it was nearly ten years ago You know the helmet for burn and so what I started to see through lots of early work with Micromobility when that term was just being coined with lime and bird and all these scooter services was this new way for people to get around and move around their you city or their urban area and You know choose between public transit if it was available sometimes it's not choose, you

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alternatives to their car. And what quickly started to become one of the fastest growing segments was cargo bikes. So bikes that literally are designed to move people or things. And what was happening and we were seeing it rapidly happening throughout Brooklyn and DC and other urban centers was parents ditching their car because one, you don't want to a car in Brooklyn, generally speaking. ditching their car and taking short trips with cargo bikes and their kids. So it could be to daycare, could be

this realization that the NTA: 8776

So speed is only one relative thing, but it was this understanding that more of the head needed to be protected and it needed to be protected to hire G-Force. And what I had noticed was I saw an e-bike helmet I had designed on a father and two kids helmets I had designed on kids in a marketing campaign, realizing the father had a choice to wear the right matched protection, but did not have a choice to buy that for his kids because the industry had failed to recognize kids as a part of the equation.

As now they are passengers removed from cars with you know years of innovation and years of infrastructure and you know You're still putting them in a car seat You're still like strapping them in and you've got a safe vehicle going about the same speeds as bikes on infrastructure meant for cars Yeah, now they're on bikes. So that set the wheels turning Why has no one created a kids helmet that passes that standard? It's a long before we had the name Osmo That was kind of the root thing that we wanted to develop was

is the first kid's helmet to pass that standard. And the basic result is something, a regular bike helmet's around 14 miles an hour is kind of the rating. And these helmets are rated to protect you up to 28 miles an hour. And so some pushback on that is, how fast are people traveling? Some of the bikes are regulated throughout Europe to be 15 miles an hour or so, et cetera. But really, the environment is the biggest thing, because you could have someone on a moped

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I mean, if you just walk out into the city, you see it's a melting pot of vehicles doing all kinds of different speeds. so kids needed to be a focus. And so many brands put kids last.

because a lot of the larger helmet brands, have their most hardcore segment, the one that's their most known for, they sell the most of. Then they have trickle down segments, and then kids kind of fall at the bottom. And so when that happens, they kind of shrink it and graphics. Those are the things that make it a kid's helmet. And so we thought, well, that's really a disservice to kids. We saw an uptick in more premium kids' products, whether it be from furniture to learning and toys and all these things.

why are we skimping on safety? And so that's what we set out to create was a premium product. Then also like we realized if you were to ask, you know, 10 people to describe an urban bike commuter, I would have you bet that all 10 would not describe a child. But if you were to follow that question up with what are some of the features that you might want in an urban commuter helmet, they could probably answer. And so the other thing that we realized is that we needed to have one part of

the really be great for kids, obviously. One part for the parent, because they're purchasing it, so they have to feel comfortable with what they're buying. And one part for the environment. What is the use case? How can we be intentional with the design so that it's got features and benefits that both child and parent like? And yeah, so the other thing that's really functional about this and was really important in a patented aspect of the product is kids drop everything. Kids treat things very poorly. And we realized

this kind of discrepancy between real-life use cases of all bike helmets to how the standards require them to pass. So they're made of rigid materials, they're made of EPS, they have one test that's required to pass one time. So unlike football or anything else where it's multi-impact, because that's how you're crashing or getting injured.

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You're really only expecting and hoping to never crash, but not more than once before you replace your helmet. So that's how the test is set up. But every day you use the helmet, it's taking micro damage. It's getting dropped on the ground. And when you put that inside a kid's hands and in an urban setting, what we realized and started to kind of observe was that these helmets were getting really destroyed and they were becoming less and less safe. So we set out and did a study on how the efficacy of EPS and how it's handled.

And the results and we were seeing products crack within a couple drops right but not visibly show that damage and that damage could result in lower g-force performance And not even pass the test required so we created a technology called damage defense, which basically is there to Protect the valuable layer on the inside And it functions with shock absorbers between this ABS shell and the EPS and it's tuned to absorb those daily drops and and falls

And so it gives peace of mind to parents that kids can treat things naturally because the idea was well, let's not change how people interact with something. Let's just make the product work better. Yeah for that natural interaction So yeah, I mean and then it's loaded with tons of other great features And benefits that we really learned through one we spent a lot of time

observing and like I said those data points but we wanted to go further so first thing we did was like you know we see tons and tons of people in cargo bikes and urban commuting.

But that's so anecdotal. So I was like, well, we live in this amazing place where we get to observe and see all of these uses. let's translate this from anecdotal to something that we can really chew on. for an hour, once a week, for a couple of months, we went to a different corner throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan, and we just sat down and we documented who rode by and we put it into a massive Excel grid. So it was data like male, female riding by themselves. What kind of bike are they wearing a helmet? What kind of.

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helmet? Is it a shared bike? Is it an electric bike? Are they with kids, not with kids? And we got a huge cross section of what it was like to be an urban commuter in the city. And then we wanted to take it a step further where we had a lot of insight and ideas of what we wanted to design, but we wanted to kind of confirm them. you know, many brands and some of the best brands, they use focus groups and other ways to kind of tap in and their own experience through development to create products that are great.

But we wanted to take an approach where we designed with instead of for so we have this amazing growing close-knit community of cargo biking Families and some of them are just like zealots. They absolutely love it and so what we did was we created a system that went from pre sketch all the way to basically pre-production of varying array of participants through different surveys and they could be from industry experts to

Like I said, the biggest enthusiasts are the pro users to everyday people. And we brought them along through the journey to, you know, confirm and deny and also add to our insights of the product. And that's paid out, you know, in spades. And it really, I think, took what was going to be a great product and made it an excellent product. And then we get to hand it right back to them. And they are already prepared and it built an army of followers along the way. And so that really is how we were able to put so many

features into the products but none of them feel excessive and it doesn't feel like fat for fat's sake.

It's really smart looking. We were talking the other week about the gibets. Is that what you call it? Gibets? Yeah, yeah. It's compatible with just croc charms, it? Yeah, exactly. kids can customize their helmet.

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Thank you.

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Yeah, the gibbet slot.

Yeah, so, or CrocCharm, yep.

(: 42:49

Yeah, we started designing this in earnest. We kicked it off around September of 2023. And we saw our first off tool samples in June. were in the factory, got to take Casey on her first development trip overseas into Asia in June. we became the first kids one plus, which is a specific denomination to ever pass the NTA 776 standards.

I see.

(: 43:19

Kids one plus also is an underserved space and the size ranges that we work on are underserved too. So, you know, the better the helmet fits, the safer it is. And a lot of brands kind of by way of the standard dictating what the head form that you test on is, they split the difference and leave a huge gap for the smallest heads. And what we're seeing is people are putting, you know, children as young as one into these and even they have baby seats for the cargo bikes. So yeah, the helmet you have now.

is our extra extra small and it's a 45 to 49 centimeter so you know really great for that one and two maybe a little bit older depending on you know kind of head size and growth but yeah so

Yeah, thank you. What's this bit here for?

Here's a few different things that are unique about the helmet. One, it's got a very thin ABS shell. Most helmets don't use ABS because they're heavy and rigid. We made the shell very thin, light, and flexible. And that's kind part of that damage defense mechanism. It's got the lowest possible density expanded polystyrene on the inside, which is really important for developing heads. So a lot of brands prioritize thinness or even weight or low profile.

And they can pass the standard, but they lose a lot of their impact performance. a lot of studies have shown the softer materials better for developing heads. So the combination of things that we've done in the design allow us to use really soft polystyrene on the inside. And the damage defense protects it. This plastic that you see along the bottom, it's polycarbonate. It's actually in molded like a lot of other helmets are for their whole piece. And that's to help basically protect the bottom, this area, because a lot of that damage can grow from

(: 45:04

We have, you know, we've

Spared no expense instead of using a lot of off the shelf parts. We've designed parts to give the best possible experience. We realized that if a parent only buys a helmet for their child, they can hope that they like it. But we started to realize, you know, in the industry, everyone will come and tell you that kids helmets need to be less expensive than adult helmets. They don't cost necessarily less to make than adult helmets. And they always say it's because parents don't want to spend more.

gonna grow out of it. So I wanted to challenge that. I felt like it was self-fulfilling prophecy. So I was like, if we bring enough value, if we have a good enough story, we can sell a premium product because why is a parent going to skimp on their child's safety? But it was less about that skimping and more about the realization that parents buy $80 Furbies for their child because the child wants it. Kids aren't necessarily coming and saying, I want a helmet, I need the helmet, I want that specific helmet. And so I realized if we switch that desire dynamic

to the parent wants to facilitate it for the child, but the child also finds so much enjoyment or desire of owning this product, then that would help loosen that idea up of what the price could be and lower that threshold because kids grow out of everything, whether it's physically grow out of them or emotionally, mentally grow out of them. So we wanted to change that trend. And so that's what allowed us to put these features together. And so I'm kind of going in

order of things I know you have to at. So yeah, one of the things that we developed was a really easy to grab. This was an idea of like how a child put their hand in play dough. So we designed, you know, kind of a custom ergonomic dial. That's really fun. You saw this go up and down. This changes up and down. can put a ponytail through the back. It also allows this to be perfectly placed on the nape of the head as needed. So that was all custom designed and tooled ourselves. There are plastic inserts.

(: 47:09

run along the side, one of the things that we realized is parents and kids that ride cargo bikes are so resilient. This is their means of transportation. So rain, shine, snow, in some really inclement weather, they're riding. And when it comes cold, the beanies come out and the helmets sit on top of kids' heads and they're no longer safe. So we worked on creating a...

a winter knit that basically plugs in to the side here and it allows the strap to

slide up through it and the beauty of this design is that it doesn't mash the ears down, it creates a cup and then this pulls the cup in. We added reflective piping because generally in the winter it's getting darker and we created little slots here so you can also put charms there. There's a winter top knit that goes inside as well, you take out the summer pads, it's a three-part system. So you can take the summer pads out, lay this warm beanie on the top, put both ear cups in. So this is an accessory.

And what's really amazing is like, you know, we just launched our Kickstarter back in March and more than 50 % of our sales have been a bundle and included the accessories, which is fantastic. And that's really great for like our business model.

parallelization as well.

(: 48:26

Yeah, exactly. People are like, make it simple for me. Make it functional. Make it work. Make it comfortable for the children. know, and if the if the kid loves it, but you put it on, it's a bad experience. It pinches. This doesn't fit right. And we have just found over and over and over again that, you know, particularly, you know, kids that have historically not liked to wear hats or wear helmets want to take them off. Parents have just come to us saying like they wear it all over. We get text messages of kids wearing it in the grocery store.

coming inside wearing it and so yeah this actually I don't have it with me today but this will snap here you know going back to what adults like and what what's happening in adult urban commuting helmets shields are becoming very popular you know it's dusty it might get misty you know certain things and so like it's becoming pretty popular in adult helmets to have those a lot of them you know slide down you wouldn't think about getting on a moped really you know or you know without necessarily a lens so adult bike helmets in the urban space

are having them and so we thought okay why not kids they're in the same environment like why aren't they getting afforded these other things that adults are.

So these two little snaps here is our version of a shield is going to attach. And so the unique thing about putting a shield on a child's helmet is adult helmets are mostly magnets, which is really fun. It's really techy. They click on, they're really, you know, pretty secure, but you can still knock them off. But you're a mindful adult riding your own bike. When you put two kids on the back or side by side, they're bumping into each other. If you were to just put a lens on there with magnets, it's falling off. It's getting damaged or it's maybe never being found again because you're just cruising down.

down 4th Avenue in Brooklyn.

(: 50:07

when you get home, they're like, where's it at? I knocked it off somewhere between, you know, and eighth street. So we also knew that it couldn't be annoying to move on and off or to come on and off in a way where if you're donning the helmet on the child, putting it on, the lens is going to be something that could snag and create a bad experience. So it's a semi-permanent structure. So the flip shield is what we call it actually snaps in here. It does have two magnets under the under cap here.

and the lens has two magnets and we patented a hinge that allows that to flip up like old school style shades. And so it flips up and holds up. And so that allows the helmet to come on and off very easily and the lens to flip down and hold into place with magnets. And so it's kind of the way that we've made this really functional for kids. And then if it gets bumped or knocked, it's not falling off. But it's as simple as pulling it off if you want to then remove it. You can pull it out of those snaps. So that's what's there.

You know lighting up a couple other features we have you know a lot of kids products are using Fidlock magnetic buckles now So they're pinch free so they're easy on and off magnetic buckle One of the other things that we've noticed is you know The dividers

So a lot of these dividers, they're OEM. And so what a divider is meant to do is appropriately set the chin up for this strap here, spread from the back of the helmet, the temple of the helmet, and around your ear. So if it's not placed in the right spot, then it's going to be on the ear. A lot of times what they'll do is they will twist and the strap will be uncomfortable. Or if they're moving, you can put them in the right place, but they slide down. And when they slide down, the helmet is less stable. So we kind of combined some of the best of a few different worlds.

(: 51:56

The ones that typically snap closed and lock they don't divide the strap so they they twist as they come off So we created our own product You know our own tooling designed and engineered this in-house Where it divides a strap as you can see it lays it like perfectly flat and then this little piece opens it allows you to pull it into place and Click it snap shut and now it's like locked. So it's basically set it and forget it Yeah, so all of these little bits and pieces including an extra pad

cool.

(: 52:26

sets, the way that you can dial this open and closed, you can pull it a little bit tighter by snapping it into another rung here, allows a parent to adjust over time as they grow and also get the best possible fit. But knowing that kids grow so fast, like I mentioned before, we're starting off with a super tiny head, is we have a kind of one-of-a-kind

Grow With Me program, a lot of brands basically put a huge helmet with a bunch of big pads and call it Grow With Me. For us, we wanted to facilitate that kind of higher cost, know, worry of parents growing out of it by a sales mechanism. So essentially within two years of purchasing the helmet, if your child grows out of it, we'll take the helmet back, we'll recycle it appropriately because it's really challenging to recycle a helmet, and they get a discount off the next size up. So it facilitates like, you know, helping the parent.

always have the child in the right

You're addressing that objection head-on on you about yeah, exactly so

Exactly, yeah.

(: 53:27

And the gibbet slide is another little patented thing here. It's like we're able to bring some of the damage defense pieces that are normally hidden onto the outside. And so it allows kids to customize this. And one of the most fulfilling moments was our model during our video shoot was having a tough time with the wind and the cold. She's only three. And so we're getting our cookies and we brought over the gibbets to hopefully distract her a little. And instead of her holding them and looking at them, she'd only interacted with the

that morning and she already knew where they went. So instead of wanting them, she pointed to where she wanted it to go. She couldn't even see it was going to be there, but she asked me to put it on the back of her helmet. And that intuition, like for the child to know where it goes and to love it and you know kind of make something you know customized and personal to them was a really powerful moment. And so yeah we're really happy with how it turned out and we're about to ship this. It's fully certified to all the standards and like I said the e-bike standard and it's in production now.

and we'll be bringing that to the United States and throughout Europe and shipping globally here in a couple months. So it's been an amazing adventure to see this come to fruition from, you know, idea and doing it ourselves.

Fantastic.

(: 54:37

It's fantastic. Are you, I know we spoke before you're heading out to Eurobike, aren't you? Yeah.

Yeah, next week actually I head over for little bit of R &R beforehand. And then yeah, we'll be exhibiting in the startup section at Eurobikes.

So it's been quite a wild ride, hasn't it if you excuse the excuse the pun yes, the business is only two years old and you're kind of you're in production. Yeah What what would you look back on those two years if anything and think I wish you'd on that sooner or that differently

Yeah, there lots of lessons learned. know, one of the promises I made to Casey was that, you know, I wasn't going to fake something I didn't know. And so, you know, when we need a resource, you know, a specialist, you know, we'll go and get them. One of the challenges was to understand who and when and what and how to appropriately spend that money. So we were fortunate to, you know, be self-funded to be able to pay for the development of this. ABS Shell tools are incredibly expensive.

The tool just for this one shell was 23,000. So I think all in we're at the worth of six figures. But we also knew we needed a market and we needed to do PR and we needed to do all these different things. And finding the right help at the right time and scaling the business is really challenging. I think...

(: 56:11

We were different than a lot where we recognized what we were and weren't good at and when we needed help. But finding that right moment and how to spend that money, we're really frugal. But I still look back and find ways, we could have done that different. We didn't need to spend that money. Maybe we turned PR on too early and marketing on too late, certain things like that. But it's been a growing experience and Casey's a perfect partner for this and she really balances out the other side of how my

operates and her brain operates like work really well together. But yeah I think that challenge is you know one of the ones that

You know stands out to me is and it's still a challenge for us now. What do we do next? How do we do this next? And I think for a lot of designers that become founders my recommendation would be you know try to be self-aware of that. Realize what happens when you're done with development. I was fortunate through all of my time being able to be really close with sales really close with marketing. So I have just enough knowledge to kind of know that it needs to be done but not necessarily how to execute it. And so finding ourselves into this next wave

of now the product is developed, what's the rest of our go-to-market strategy? How are we selling through? so, right now, we're working a lot on pulling together meetings. We've got about four retailers already in tow, which is great. Finding that balance, dealing with tariffs, dealing with logistics, all of these things. You're gonna wear a lot of hats, but don't try to be the jack of all trades for longer than you need to be. And that's kind one of my recommendations in learning that. You have to be a certain kind of crazy

I guess a little bit and resilient as a founder especially founder and physical product because yes, it's not as easy to You know make adjustments things start to moldable clay becomes hard Money sunk and gone and you know designing and developing things that need to pass tests extra hard

(: 58:06

Right.

(: 58:14

And it's just the two of you at the moment, is it? Yeah, the two of us.

Yeah, we have, you know, a CPA that's been working with us for a while. We do our own books for a while and then we hire them on because we have corporate taxes and things like that that we aren't the smartest with. We worked with a PR agency that we had worked with for a while. They really helped us get into some different press and, you know, pull those things together and kind of establish how we should be working with social media. And we have a, right now we have an ads team that helps run our data and social media ads.

and how do we budget that and those types of things. And so our next hires are really going to be around marketing and sales and kind of like how do we grow that while we develop our next products in the background to free up some of Casey and I's time. And take on some of that road show stuff where we need to be at bike buses throughout the United States. We need to be at retail shops throughout the United States. We have some distribution partners that we're working with.

in the UK and they will help us and then an old colleague of mine has come on and started to work with us in a part-time capacity, but we've expanded their warehouse so that we have full control over where our product is stored, who's holding it. our fingers crossed, both parties want to &A that warehouse business and ours. so then those other clients will help cover our own warehousing costs in that space.

That's kind of how we're working through that scale, but it's a lot of second guessing and checking yourself and understanding, I making the right move, and what happens when you make the wrong move. You lose those funds and lose that time.

(: 01:00:02

huge. Well, you've kind of got your core team, you and Casey, but then you've got this extended network of partners and suppliers. But then, you know, looking to build on that that core team. Yeah, it's gonna be a big change. Yeah, it

And then is it in-house? it contract work? So I think we'll work to get an intern in over the summer. We'll work to bring on additional contract help. Yeah, and then everyone talks about the hustle and the grind of startups and founders. I've been, long before I was doing this, I feel like I was working hours that were absolutely unreasonable.

just because the teams were maybe a little bit smaller than they should have been, a little bit anemic, the things were like challenging. So, and I really enjoyed that. This is like, for me, what's happened now with the startup and doing this for ourselves was, you know, for the first six months, you know, essentially paying for Casey's salary out of pocket, paid for the office and not paying myself. And what I realized, and that's kind of a normal founder story, but I'm not like, you know, super well suited to do these things, had a lot of

support from friends and family, but what I realized was that this completely changed my relationship with work. So I had always been really hard worker, and sometimes I would end up justifying that work for the salary. But I love design, so it was always still better than I feel like most people are. I was really passionate about what I do. But now...

I do this and I don't even think about the salary. The salary is necessary because it's necessary to live, but it's not justifying the hours I'm putting in. It's not justifying the work that I'm doing. It's not justifying the stress that I have from it. But that perpetual grind that is in the startup culture, think be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to make some mistakes and try to find time to step away because the constant burning won't resolve.

(: 01:02:11

in something positive later. So been trying to balance that myself and also for Casey and I think we work on balancing that for each other.

Yeah, it's a much different thing there, isn't it? Doing it for your own business than doing it as an employee. But yeah, at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, you need to start delegating whether that's to contractors, freelancers, or employees. But that's how you scale, it?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and that's the tricky part, finding out who's the right person to delegate and when. We know how the full ship functions with all of the people on it, but it's finding the right people in the right seats at the right time is kind of the tricky part. But I think we've got a decent roadmap, and we've not tried to do this ourselves. We've been working with a bevy of amazing advisors along the way that we can reach out to and have as resources and kind of affirmations, or, don't do that.

that, you know, and so that's been really, really helpful for us to have.

(: 01:03:11

Yeah. That's awesome. Well, we're kind coming towards the end of our time here. We're going to quickly get booted out of here. But I just wanted to ask you, in terms of podcasts or book recommendations that you might have, if you've got time to be absorbing any books or audio books at the moment.

man, you know, I'm, when I was driving, I was always listening to how I built this. That was a great way for me. Yeah. For me to get from, you know, New York solo to Virginia for a five hour drive. I would pop those on and loved listening to those. It's been a little while since I've, I've put on a podcast. To be honest, I'm a, I'm a weird person when it comes to music or, you know, when I'm listening to things, it comes and goes. I feel like I want to listen to the

Okay.

(: 01:04:02

podcast intently.

But when I'm working, I feel like all of a sudden I realize I haven't paid enough attention. I do love to read, you know, I think I've read Shoe Dog like three or four times. Phil Knight's book about the, you know, starting a blue ribbon in Nike. Really, you know, pretty amazing book. And then, you know, I've, they're blanking on me right now, sorry. I've read three or four of the kind of typical, you know, business books that have been really good, some around marketing.

Right,

(: 01:04:37

around connections but I'm, I apologize, I'm blanking on the titles of the...

That's okay. It'll come to when we have a beer later. The book, I'll write it down and I'll get it wrong and it'll be a horrible mess. that's awesome. And then finally, what are you most excited about? It seems a fairly obvious question, but for the next kind of 12 to 18 months, the product's going to come out.

Yeah.

(: 01:05:03

Exactly. I'm so excited to deliver this product to all the families that have backed us so far and get this out into the world. You know, we took that Kickstarter incredibly serious. Instead of being at like stage five out of ten where we ask the backers to kind of show up early and take a huge leap of faith, we showed up with a fully certified product at like stage nine. So that way, basically, our campaign closed April 11th and two months later people will be getting the product. You know, the tariffs slowed us a little

bit down, so we're about 20 days behind and I'm taking, it's like gut wrenching for me. It's like light years better than pretty much any campaign I've ever followed or participated in, but still knowing that I had the potential to deliver this like an original timeline and that kind of got, you know, taken out from under us. You know, I'm just so excited to get this in people's hands and see where it takes us from here and, you know, we've got some other amazing things with our consulting group that are taking

off other brands and products that we've worked on that are coming to market or in market now that are finally starting to really climb. New manufacturers we brought on for those clients and their sales. We work on everything from designing and developing and testing in-house their products to providing them insight about their website and marketing and all those things. So watching those bits and pieces for another solopreneur or entrepreneur come together after years and years of working is

So.

(: 01:06:33

incredibly powerful. So we've got a lot going on. But yeah, the helmet by far is the most exciting and we've got a lot of work ahead of us. We've got a lot of demand for a larger size. And we've got a lot of demand from parents wanting to wear helmets as well. And so we'll be working quickly on a larger model for a different model and larger size for adults and then a larger size for the sidekick. So that will span three sizes and yeah, but we're super excited.

Okay.

(: 01:07:01

Do think you'll continue with the Kickstarter kind of model or now you've got...

Yeah, so, you know, a lot of people do. You know, we put in different inputs in, got different outputs, you know, went pretty well for us.

Yeah, I'm not sure. We might use that as a way to continue to communicate with and to launch products. We see a lot of the other brands in our space that were born there and grown up there. They're kind of coming back to them. But we're also seeing a lot change with Kickstarter. And what we've realized is it doesn't seem to be the brand launcher it once was. It also doesn't quite seem to be the product launcher that it once was. So we're seeing, you know,

brands put less energy in, get less out, and so I think it may start to dwindle down in some ways for maybe our types of category. But yeah, we'll evaluate that next go-around. It's always really helpful to get your biggest fan, to reward your biggest fans with a discount, all while getting some cash flow in for the intense product development costs that come with physical products and with helmets.

Thank

(: 01:08:13

Absolutely and it used to be a really solid kind of investment in marketing as well. Yes Yeah, it's in their interest to push it as much.

Exactly. So what we've noticed is, know, brands that are there are more brands succeeding now on Kickstarter that are on their second, third or fourth campaign. Those campaigns seem to be doing a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less. Yeah. But I think the inputs are a little bit less. And so they take it as almost like low hanging fruit because, you know, maybe you wanted a quarter million, five hundred thousand or a million dollar campaign in the past. But now if you have one hundred thousand dollars of development and you're to get a hundred thousand dollar campaign and you can keep your marketing budget pretty

close to what your marketing budget would be without Kickstarter, you know, that's it. The biggest campaigns have the biggest and longest running email lists and the largest marketing dollars put in. But one interesting thing for us is we have a, I think it's, I don't know what it is now, but probably north of 30 % of our backers, our first time backers, which is super unique. So Kickstarter's really enjoyed us bringing new people to the platform.

But we get a lot of people, we do all of our own customer service right now for the time being. We get a lot of people like, how do I buy? And we've got advice there and we've done all kinds of things to help them, but they're still asking. And so we know that when we launch our website in the next week or so and start to turn off Kickstarter and turn on our own direct to consumer, that that threshold will be lowered. And so we know that will kind of be what it is the next go round, but the fortunate thing for someone who's done a second one is they're just hitting the original mass of people.

And so, you know, that was interesting for us and I think more than 50 % of our backers have bought.

(: 01:09:57

or just under 50 % have bought more than one helmet, which is another amazing thing for us and amazing for Kickstarter is because it's a kid's product. You know, one, we have the challenge of you're not buying it for yourself. So other products, you're buying it for yourself. It's really easy to open up your wallet and go for it on Kickstarter and take the hedge, the bet. What we found was, you know, we're kind of one of the first and only kids helmets to solely be kids helmet, not adult helmet in a smaller size being sold on Kickstarter. So that, you know, has its own challenges.

But what's really great is we needed less backers.

Because they're selling twice as many. exactly. Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing you stand at Eurobike. Yeah, thanks a lot. It's a little but mighty, I'm sure. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, Kenny, thank you so much for spending the time. Appreciate It's been great kind of going through your journey and kind of going through that with you. thanks for making the trip down. Yeah, awesome.

So.

(: 01:10:51

Of course.