Join our entertaining cast as we talk with Dean, the master distributor of the  FreeWheel Wheelchair Attachment. We really get into the back story of the FreeWheel, how it works and what their plan is for the future. We also discuss the SoftWheel, a wheelchair suspension solution that's 100% in the wheels. Now any wheelchair can have suspension added to it.

Living Spinal Podcast - Episode 2

Video Interview with Dean from Epical Solutions about the FreeWheel Wheelchair Attachment

Show Notes: The links will open in a new tab

SoftWheel for Wheelchairs

Top 5 Wheelchair Products

FreeWheel Wheelchair Attachment

Transcription of the interview with Dean from Epical Solutions who sells the FreeWheel Wheelchair Attachment: 

David: Ok, so we have Dean here from ‘Epical Solutions’ and we wanted to talk with him today about the FreeWheel. It's one of our best selling products on ‘livingspinal.com’. Let's get into it. We have been featuring the FreeWheel for quite some time. We put it into our top five wheelchair product video that we put on Facebook that got 31000 views, 540+ likes and over 600 shares. People are really digging what you guys are doing with the FreeWheel. It's one of those ground-breaking ideas where people think ‘Why didn't I come up with this? We've seen people traveling with the FreeWheel or rolling around snow grass sands, you name it. Those things go anywhere. So, Dean can you explain to someone who's never seen the FreeWheel before? Explain what it is. 

Dean: Sure, We experienced the same phenomenon obviously. The product is just what I call simply elegant. It's a product that was developed for a person in a rigid wheelchair initially, The inventor is Patrick Dougherty and he was quite an athlete and travelled the world kite surfing and windsurfing. He was a big motorcycle, motocross rider and unfortunately became a quadriplegic from a motorcycle accident during a race. He got tired of dumping himself out of his chair. To be honest with you, married with kids and rolled off his career into the grass and then ended up on his face and being an engineer, he's a mechanical engineer, he said ‘That's not going to happen again, if I can help it’. So he riddled it and put his mind to the problem and came up with this solution and basically what it is it's a twelve inch wheel . It’s under an arch that attaches to the foot rest of a wheelchair and when it rotates underneath the arch, it elevates the front of the chair and picks the caster wheels off the ground. That’s it. It's that simple and it allows somebody in a wheelchair to traverse many more challenging versions of terrain out there and not have to worry about always being on a flat surface or if they're not on a flat surface, worrying about what kind of a minefield they're rolling through if it's sticks and stones and cracks and crevices and the paving stones and cobble stones and railroad tracks, curbs, you name it, tree roots. I mean I could go on and on about all the obstacles and what it does is it you get somebody back their freedom. It allows them to be more independent and it really allows you know we talk about someone that's traveling overseas, for example, we get quite a few pictures and thank you's back, electronic postcards if you will, from people that are in some of the older cities in Italy and Spain and France, that we are amazing. They said ‘I feel like a tourist again I can actually see the sights because I'm not looking down to see what's going on around me instead of looking down to see, if you know what pit falls might be in the way’. So it's pretty, simply elegant solution. There's not a lot to it. I think Pat did a really good job of engineering it to make it easy for somebody to use and as easy as possible for somebody to try to use them sell, and obviously since the product has been introduced, we sort of broaden the use cases, to both the left side and the right side of the spectrum from where Pat sort of sits in the middle, high functioning quad fixed chair. We're also applying it to quite a few other situations that people find themselves utilizing a wheelchair for. 

David: Yeah I know when we did a shoot with Mia Schaikewitz from the Push Girls and she hopped in the FreeWheel and that's what she said. Her real first comment was saying ‘I don't have to look down at the ground anymore’. So I think it's one of those things where it's always running in the background of your mind to know what's in front of you, if there's a big crack or a rock or whatever but you might not be focusing on it or know that you're focusing on it that much right when you throw a FreeWheel on there. It's really that added freedom and mobility to go anywhere you want. 

Andrew: Yet it really makes you realize how much you staring at your feet in the ground. I think one of the funniest stories that I ever heard was at a friend's named Keith who got one and his girlfriend had a cat and they would love to take this cat for walks. They would like bring it down to the Boardwalk and then walk along the ocean and stuff and he said ‘I never realized on these walks how much it was staring at the ground, when I finally had FreeWheel and I was like looking up in a looking at the ocean and looking around the world. 

Dean: And that's consistent I think with what we hear too, is that people travel, they want to travel. It's already quite a challenge to travel with what airlines can do to a wheel chair. Many horror stories there, but when they finally get to where they want to be, being able to actually see the sights, that if it's the old country to see the castles that they want to go to, or a winery to actually get down and actually travel in and out of the wines and you know off the beaten track. It's so much more rewarding when the experience for them with the FreeWheel. 

Andrew: I keep mine in the back of my van all the time just leave it in my car. I remember one of my favourite uses in my owner experience was wheel chair user myself. Basically, my friend has just gotten a weird experience where he became the kind of ground keeper for a Boys and Girls camp called Camp Fire in San Diego and there they have a cabin on site and they get to live in this cabin on seven acres right next to Balboa park, downtown, San Diego. So they can see the elephant enclosure from this property across the 163 and it's just a really neat. I would say were seventy acres there's like bow and arrow, hay bales, well, I get out the car and I’m like so excited to go check this place out and it's all wood chips and it’s like I do wheeling the whole time. You know it is a bit of hills throughout it and all certainly it just light clicked in my head like I have my FreeWheel in the back of my car. I grab that thing, put it on in between power assist wheels and a FreeWheel. That combination can be just unstoppable on dream. 

David: You know and some of the cool features with the FreeWheel so you have one that perch that goes on the back of a chair so you can really bring the FreeWheel around and if you had to park, you can have it attached at the front and then, when you want to go inside to a restaurant or a bar and you're taking up a little bit more space, just put it right in that perch and you don't have to go back to your car, and the other thing too is that there is that dampener on the front. So you can tighten it or loosen it and what that dampener does is it allows, for people listening, it allows the wheel to pop back to center on its own it's essential like spring loaded. So when you're pushing in your chair and you're on a camper like yeah that of a road or crossing a driveway or something like that, your chair is going to dive down the hill, when you have the FreeWheel on there and you have the dampener tightened a little bit. It will keep going straight on camper. 

Dean: Yeah that's a great feature. We get a lot of people that really appreciate that. 

David: When did you start Epical Solutions? 

Dean: Well we started ‘Epical Solutions’ specifically to market the FreeWheel in Canada. I had a cousin in saskatewan that was in a diving mishap and is a five six incomplete quad and is in a chair and had been very active athlete and was in the movie business, building sets up in Canada and still with quite a challenge. I was in Idaho, actually with a software company, that my business partner and I were running in Meridian and actually I ran into Cindy Cree who's with the FreeWheel company. She and I grew up together here in Michigan and I asked her what she was up to out there, and she told me what Pat was doing and at that time, Pat and his twin brother Mike were actually welding the FreeWheels in the garage. They were building one at a time and I thought it was very interesting. They were about a year in to it when I ran into them and I immediately thought of my cousin Joel, who was just coming out of rehab. He was just in a chair, a short period of time and really trying to get used to his new reality. And so, I asked them, if I could you know have a FreeWheel from them, and we talked about different business plans and how they were going to expand and they were nice enough to allow me to send one up to Joel and get his feedback. In the meantime, Cindy and Pat built out quite a business internationally. Next time I saw them, many months later, they were in about twelve countries and had just received their first shipment of the product in a container from a larger manufacturer so they've kind of graduated from welding in the garage to actually having it mass produced and having international customers. So, what the feedback from Joel about how great a product it was, I approached pat and asked if we could be the reseller for Canada and they were nice enough to agree to it. Cindy set us up as the distributor for Canada and we started. That's how we got into the business and for about four or five years, we were doing pretty well in Canada and seen the impact we're doing pretty well internationally and we decided to try to expand our business a little bit. United States wasn't quite getting the attention that the rest of the world was getting when we were a small company. I think they were kind of going where they were being led, and we felt that the U.S. could use a little more support. So made the request to take the US on, and we did that almost two years ago. 

Andrew: Is it been there longer any? 

Dean: It has, really time is flying by. Our company really was built around the FreeWheel. We don't have a lot of other products. We’re in the process of looking at some other technology and maybe bringing some more technology to market that's a little more unique. We're not trying to distribute just any product. We've thought that product was pretty worthy. We brought a couple of other products to market ‘Fit grips’ that we get out of the U.K. and then we're doing the wheel Blades. Now we're looking at some seeding technology now, some corrective seeding technology, that will be proprietary to us and will be our next, for after the first of the year. We're in the mobility business but we're kind of specialized in, really trying to take on products that we think can make a big difference and won’t cost too much money. 

David: So what would you say is your overarching mission? Is it to add mobility or to add comfort or how would you state or explain your mission statement? 

Dean: Well our mission statement right now is to get the FreeWheel on as many wheelchairs as we can, in the territories that we can have influence over. We feel that this product changes people's lives and I know 

Andrew: and you guys are in the business, you see lots of different products out there. There are many very wonderful, new technological, marvel type, mechanical products out there, but they're very expensive and they're very unique and they're basically one off, very custom. The FreeWheel is a product that everybody can use. I mean, we say that, but almost anybody in a wheelchair and recently within the last year and a half or so, we expanded the market segment that we can reach by introducing the adapter for four more wheelchairs which there's many more folding wheelchairs on the planet and there are fixed wheelchairs. So, that broadens the target market for us and makes it even more target rich environment. The benefit is not just the person in the chair. You know I'm a Baby Boomer getting on you can see by my hair and a lot of my buddies are getting hip replacements and Knee replacements and suffering the consequences of a certain age related and also disease related. People are more dependent upon chairs, but also dependent upon care givers and the FreeWheel is a benefit to the care giver as well. That somebody, a spouse or a loved one or just somebody that you're taking care of that standard chair and depended upon that for mobility and can't push for themselves or have difficulties pushing, for whatever reason and you've got a caregiver. The FreeWheel makes it much easier on the care giver as well. 

David: Yeah we've done a few campaigns as you're well aware of, where we had university student’s sign up to win a FreeWheel. We gave out a lot of those. We also had a guy who, in San Diego put a FreeWheel on his wheelchair and then did the FreeWheel. I think it was the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon. 

Andrew: And he was not a pro athlete or a guy that is training constantly or anything like that and the FreeWheel allowed him to get in there and participate and he did the whole think so. That was a tremendous thing to see an everyday guy who just wanted to get some exercise and go after something huge in his life like Marathon and FreeWheel really all day. I want to touch back on something that you had mentioned. For people e that maybe are listening, that are care givers or an individual that is in a manual chair a lot and they're being pushed, you had a good point of view, it's easier on the caregiver and wanted to touch on it. It's also if you've ever been pushed in a wheelchair before, it's terrifying. You have to trust the person who's pushing you and you can see right in front of you, but you feel the whole time, like your head is kind of blocking their view of where you're going and they're going to just ride me into a big rut and dump you out, because they're pushing me faster than you normally go or whatever and when you're in a wheelchair constantly lifting your front edge, to relieve the weight so it doesn't grab on something where is that person just heave ho pushing away. So, with the FreeWheel on, it's peace of mind is amazing and that's the kind of point I was trying to get to there is that, one step FreeWheel is on, there's no way that someone pushing you, could ever dump you out of your wheelchair, for which is a cool aspect of it. 

Dean: Unless they really wanted to, my dad used to dump my mom once in a while just because, but it actually is a peace of mind thing and I know when you when you're trusting somebody that you know is pushing me from behind you, and you panic because you can see but probably better than what they can see, that is gonna to be the pitfall for your caster wheels and some of the cases that we've seen, where you've got a husband and wife team, for example, The husband is in the chair and he's six foot five and the wife is pushing, she's the caregiver and she's five foot three. She's looking from one side of one ear to the other back and forth, because she can't see over top of them and even looking side to side, she's not going to see what's down in the front so many times they go off the side of the sidewalk and next thing you know is that you’ve got a little accident and then you've got somebody potentially that's on the ground that the caregiver is not strong enough to help even get back into the chair. So it eliminates a lot of problems but I like what you said. The peace of mind has got to be huge. 

Andrew: It really is. 

Dean: I mean the panic, that somebody else has got control over your physical well being. 

Andrew: Yeah, I mean it's to the point where, David do you remember where we were recording for that one video with Mia from Push girls. One of the first things she did and I've done this before too is she just went right up to the top of the hill and bomb down a grass hill. There are a whole lot of things you can you do that with when you're in a wheelchair as far as bombing down the hill. So it's pretty cool that with just plain old manual chair, you can make that happen. 

Dean: I mean, the first time I saw that, we have a person actually in San Diego and she was fairly famous there. She's got a dog that pushes and pulls or he puts his nose right between her shoulder blades and pushes her and then he comes back around to the front poles like a sled dog which she had first got in the FreeWheel. She put a Go Pro camera on the side of her chair and was filming her experience and I literally almost threw up because, the video was so right. I told her I said I hope you have a helmet. She was flying down sidewalks and across crosswalks and down hills and paths. This dog was hauling her at warp 10. She was lying and screaming ‘My hair is in the wind, I love this’ but I was getting nauseous from the video because you asked and it was such a great tribute because we heard this from so many people on either on telephone calls or they send those videos or we meet him in person at shows or some place along the path and so many people are now more included in activities and feel inclusive and activities. We've got a young man who was a boy scout he's working on his Eagle Scout and he can now actually go out and do a lot of the things he couldn't do in the field to get his badges and he can be trying out to do some hiking and things like that. And we have a woman here in Michigan actually who's been a chair for entire life and she is into growing herbs and as a botanist and when they have their annual meetings, she can get out into the gardens easily as everybody else and she actually drove up here from Detroit and we fit her chair and she has a little bit of trouble communicating as she did a little sign language and this I don't know about our audience on this one but her mother who is 65 years old. This woman is 43 smiled and signed a message to me that her mother translated and said that no she was not going to use the ‘F’ word because she said it was so freaking amazing. Her mother said I have never heard her use that language in her life.

David: Well another thing that's kind of neat that's going on with FreeWheel is they’ve recently added couple colours into the spectrum of the FreeWheel world, so you guys are now offering blue and red as well. Can you tell us a little bit how that came about out and how its going? 

Dean: It's going pretty well. It's a little bit radical for Pat and I know he'll laugh when he hears this because he's an engineer and colour doesn't matter, why would somebody want other than black but if you look at what's going on as the profile as sort of expanded for the use of the product. We've kind of moved from now at six foot five. You know incomplete quad in a fixture that’s got pretty good upper body strength and good grip and hands and improved actually from some of the other exercises he's doing but now our use cases are wide and varied and we're really kind of driving down into the paediatric world and kids like colours. 

Andrew: I think it's one of the best uses of the FreeWheel is the kids. I had been watching the kids on a playground that’s full of wood chips. The kid on the wheelchair on the side-lines just dying inside wanting to play with every body and it's huge. I've seen it many times and it’s really cool to watch. 

Dean: We're doing quite a bit of work with the Spina Bifida organizations both nationally and on the state and local basis. Of course a lot of the kids are very interested in the FreeWheel and it's a very self referencing group of people and you get a mamma bear who is trying to take care of their your kid and they get behind the FreeWheel and pretty soon everybody within the organization knows about it now and so it's a little bit of a challenge for us and that's really where the custom frames came from where the standard FreeWheel handle about four an half to five eighths inches above the ground whereas we can go up to nine and half inches with the customer and that directly came out of the more elevated raised foot rest and primarily the initial ones were kids that were suffering from Spina Bifida and you know wanting to be more active. So that's really where the colours sort of came from is really kind of catering to the kids. They want to have more fun.

David: So just to kind of explain on a little bit for our people that are listening as well. When a kid has a foot rest in a wheelchair, usually their legs are nearly as long right as an adult so the foot rest gets raised up quite a bit in a way that the FreeWheel mounts on, they actually need to accommodate for that change and the angle changes in and so they do custom, cut him out and reweld them or weld them properly the way they're supposed to be for that specific size. So, if you see one and think ‘Wow, this are going to really work for my kids chair, this is not true at all and we can easily get the measurements from you and work with you and get your kids set up as well. 

Andrew: Additionally we have a page that if you use any of the parts on your FreeWheel, you can order every individual part off of our website. 

Dean: Yeah that's important it's like any other mechanical device since it's imperative that you maintain your FreeWheel as best you can and there's a little guidelines as to what to look for in it and a well maintained FreeWheel is a great tool and it's good that you guys have those parts there and available readily. We're thinking about actually putting together a little kit that sort of like a tune up kit or maintenance kit, most popular pieces kit, because what happens unfortunately is, somebody on vacation ‘They’re in Florida, they’re in bam for someplace and they either lost it on the way or lost wallet over there and they're calling in trying to get something you know expertise or a local dealer. 

Andrew: It shows a lot to the FreeWheel that you're caring people on vacation a lot, right? I mean they are going on a vacation and everybody's suitcases is as full as possible but they still make room to get a FreeWheel in their suitcase and the fact that the FreeWheel can fit in your suitcase, is a huge thing too. I bring it with me every time I go on a trip, especially if I'm in Mexico or somewhere where the roads are going to be a little bit uneven. 

Dean: Yeah and It is funny that it's heart warming to know that when people when they first get their FreeWheel. A lot of people I've seen it and maybe they didn't get it and they've thought about it and a friend gets it and then they're just about to go on vacation and they realize oh my gosh I want to get the FreeWheel now and so they'll try to get it and they'll be so excited that we'll end up getting pictures emailed to us from all over the world, ‘Here I am on the beach’ ‘Here I am on the volcano’ ’Here at the cathedral’ ‘Here I am at the winery’ and all these places and it's amazing how much impact it does have especially for travel. 

David: Yeah, for such a simple and elegant idea, it's like exoskeleton that lifts people off the ground to allow them to have more freedom that costs you only two thousand dollars. I wanted to ask you can you explain the different addons and attachments that you can buy for the FreeWheel? Dean:. Sure. Well the first one we talk about a little bit is the adapter that's for the folding wheel chairs and it doesn't fit every folding wheelchair but it fits quite a few of them and we just actually came out with a modification for the adaptor tab just finished we did some testing out and just finished the fabrication for it for the new motion composites each year.

Andrew: That’s an amazing chair. 

Dean: That's a great chair. We're getting more and more people asking about the adaptor so that's now available and I think we’ll be able to ship them soon. That's a good one, but the adaptors is one that I think are remarkable in that. It really allows us to go after the largest portion of the market which is a folding wheelchairs and what it does is it attaches to parallel bars beneath the folding wheelchair and it kind of provides a hitch that emulates a solid foot plate in the front. And the FreeWheel, out of the box, just a standard FreeWheel, nothing special, will attach to that and give that person using the folding wheelchair the same benefits that we bring to somebody in a fixed wheelchair so that's the first thing. And the second thing called the Carry All Rack. It actually rests on the arch of the FreeWheel. So it's a three point connection, two points on the chair one that's worth sitting on top of the arch for support and it will hold up to about twenty five pounds safely and comfortably so that the impact that really came out of us using pat as our Luggage Dolly going through airports. They always have four or five bags on his lap even see where he was gone since he was pushing them. We're flying through airports and they travel the world like that. And I think he decided that he needed to have a little more scenery but it also allows him to go to the grocery store and throw a basket on their bags of groceries or you know his ski equipment when he goes sit skiing or just about anything. It's a nice little add on, pops off real quick. This is not a permanent addition; it's when you need it.  

David: Have you seen any products outside of what you guys sell that just collaborate and work so well with the FreeWheel? 

Dean: Well 

Andrew: touched on it briefly earlier. Any kind of propulsion you know like the smart guy for example is an absolute perfect match for it. Pat uses it on his chair. My cousin Joel uses one as well. It's just a great combination for when you need to really be going a long distances and you've got multiple terrain challenges ahead of you. It’s good even on the flats and you can really haul. 

Andrew: Another product that even has a marketing campaign going out right now and I don't know if you've seen this yet, Dean. SoftWheels is even showing how well the FreeWheel works together with SoftWheels. One of their Facebook marketing ads right now is a guy going through Pompeii on all the cobblestone roads that are just up and down and all over the place and of course he's got a FreeWheel in front of him and he's got SoftWheels in the back which, I don't know if everybody that's listening knows what those are but they're basically another product. It's a suspension inside of the wheel so, instead of spokes it's actually like suspension little hydraulics so when you hit a bump or something like that, it can be absorbed into the wheel. So, another great product that is working well together with the FreeWheel. 

Dean: Yeah we saw another product similar to the SoftWheels but it's called ‘Loop wheel’. Well that's out of the U.K. so we saw them over at Ria care and they were demonstrating their wheels with the FreeWheel as well and kind of going head to head with SoftWheels. So yeah it's a good complimentary product and we see it use with a lot of the different proportion wheels. Some of them, you are pushing and its got energy, some of them got handles and you are pumping and but the FreeWheel makes it a lot easier. 

David: Dean where do you see the wheelchair industry going in the future? What do you want to see and what are you guys projecting for the FreeWheel? 

Dean: Well I think the FreeWheel is in a pretty good position I think there's always going to be a wheelchairs that can benefit from the FreeWheel and terms of the wheelchair technology itself. I sort of see the chairs getting lighter and building different options into them to make them more versatile which is great. I think weight consideration is huge. Seating technology around making sure that somebody is comfortable, making sure they're properly seated, making sure they're not getting sores, making sure that they can get the best portion they got the least amount of torque on the joints like their shoulders and their elbows and their you know wrists and things like that. So I think the fine tuning of the chair is kind of where it seems to be going with the chairs. As far as other technology, it's interesting to watch. My cousin Joel is not our first family member to rely on a wheelchair. When my son Ryan was about two, we actually lived with my wife’s brother who was in a jeep accident and he was C-six C-seven incomplete in a chair and my son Ryan used to stand on the footplate and hold on to Scott's knees and they used to fly down the hill and my wife and I would have heart attack. So it's so we're interested in seeing what's going on but when you're close to the community as you guys are and as we have become, you start to look at some of the medical advances that they're working on in terms of nerve stimulation and some of the things that potentially around a paraplegic and quadriplegic. But even some of the things they're doing with D.N.A. around some of the things like Spina Bifida, things that can be potentially avoided through some sort of genetic engineering or some sort of fix. I mean there's just there are so many angles, I guess coming at you know why somebody might have to be relying on a wheelchair for their well, for mobility. It's kind of hard to keep up with everything. 

Andrew: And robotic exoskeletons are cool. 

Dean: Yes it is amazing technology. There's some really cool stuff out there. As far as Epical Solutions is concerned as I mentioned earlier where we're really focused on kind of a handful of things, I want to now say we are right now we're looking at some cool technology seeding and will make it more comfortable and safer. So we're going to kind of pick our shots in terms of what we think we can do that is simply elegant, affordable and working with people we like to work with. 

Andrew: You kind of touched on earlier how the growth of FreeWheel is continued and how it's become a global product. Do you know how many different countries the FreeWheel is in today? 

Dean: I do know that they're in over 25 countries. I don't know exactly how many. I was with FreeWheel at Ria care in Germany this fall. I actually helped man their booth while they had their meetings with all their distributors, so I actually got a chance to be quite a few people from Italy and Spain and France the U.K. you name it, they're there. So, yeah they're in at least twenty five countries for sure. 

Andrew: And then the other question and for you was, ‘If you were to take a guess about how many FreeWheels do you think are distributed through the U.S. in Canada today?’ 

Dean: Well first my first response is not enough. And that's part of our mission and that’s where we get through. 

Andrew: Yeah, everyone should have one. It kind of blows my mind when people don’t. 

Dean: Yeah, there's a lot of people and a lot of upside to the FreeWheel. I think that's you know exciting and we’re sort of up for the challenge. I don't know exactly how many are out there we're selling quite a few. Canada is about you know one thirteenth the population and when we took over the United States we were selling as many in Canada as they were here. So there's there was a lot of room for growth and I think we're not exponentially growing up but we're certainly health. We've got a healthy growth curve going. Think that there's a lot of challenges in the U.S. around our insurance programs and how things are paid for it. We're trying to help. Like I know you guys try to get creative in terms of helping people afford technology and things that improve their life. We're trying to do some of the same things but is a challenge around the products some Sometimes there are people that could probably influence the purchase of the product that don't feel there's enough margin in the product to make it worth their while, which is a little bit frustrating sometimes but that's the nature of big business. So I guess maybe it's a good problem to have because we've got people like yourselves that do a really good job with the product and are happy to sell the product and get the product out there so I think there's some challenges too that we have to kind of rise above, to get the product out there like we think we can, because I honestly I can't think of another product and any other industry that's as life altering simply elegant as this product 

David: We really do appreciate your insight and hopefully this will help a lot of the listeners out there. All right, Bye Dean 

Dean: All right take care. Good to meet you 

David: Like wise.