Listen to the amazing interview we had with Mark from  Max Mobility, the inventor of the SmartDrive MX2 wheelchair power assist in the 3rd installment of the Living Spinal Podcast. Mark explains the beginnings of Max Mobility, why the SmartDrive MX2 is priced where it is and where Max Mobility is headed in the future. We also cover the Handy Bag carrying solution for wheelchair users, a crowdfunded Kickstarter campaign. Also, Andrew tells us his injury story. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes and Google Play and leave us a review on those platforms. We'd love to hear from you!

Available on  iTunes and Google Play

Living Spinal Podcast - Episode 3

Video Interview with Mark from Max Mobility, the inventor of the SmartDrive MX2 Wheelchair Power Assist

Show Notes: The links will open in a new tab. Videos will play on this page.

SmartDrive MX2 Wheelchair Power Assist

Handy Bag - Carrying solutions for wheelchair users from Kickstarter

WheelAble - Shower Chair and Commode that's Travel Ready

Top 5 Wheelchair Products

Transcription of the interview with Mark Richter, the inventor of the SmartDrive MX2 from Max Mobility:

David: All right everybody, welcome to the interview with Mark from ‘Max Mobility’. We're really excited to talk today with him about the SmartDrive and see what's going to happen in the future. How is it going Mark?

Mark: Great, Thank you for inviting me. Appreciate it. It's great to be here.

David: Absolutely, and as usual we have Andrew with us from Living Spinal. How you doing, Andrew?

Andrew: Very good, how is everybody doing today?

David: I am hoping that everyone's doing well. So, all right, First off, Mark, where you located?

Mark: So we're in Nashville, Tennessee, the heart of country music. Doesn't mean I'm a fan but I mean we are in the heart of country music.

Andrew: Yeah my wife actually was just in Nashville for a ladies weekend and she said that it is a crazy town. She said, besides New York City, she hasn't really been many cities there is hustle and bustle of his downtown Nashville.

Andrew: So I think we're number 2 for bridal parties and for bachelor parties. We're second to Vegas.

Andrew: For a single guy, that’s not a bad problem.

Mark: Right, a lot of life.

David: So and then, Andrew, you are in Florida. I know that much and I’m in sunny San Diego right now. So the first question that we've been asking people outside of who they are is what was the last T.V. show that you watched and I’ll start first so that you can think about it? The last one that I watched was THE TIM FERRISS EXPERIMENT. Have you guys ever seen that or you know

Andrew: Oh yeah, we know what that it is.

David: So this dude wrote a book called “The four hour work week” It’s a total cheese ball title, but really good content then he wrote another one called the “Four hour body” which got way more press. Then he wrote the Four Hour Chef. So his whole idea is that he's a human guinea pig for whatever, like how do to bulk up really quick or how do you cook great food or how do you build a business? So he did this for like eighteen episodes or something where he tries to learn parkour in 3 days. He tries to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu grappling moves in 2 days and tries to learn the Filipino language in 2 ¹/₂ days. And then he tries to prove that he knows what he just learned. It’s like a quick way to hack learning essentially.

Andrew: It sounds like the ‘Matrix’, when they download…

Mark: Yeah, totally.I'm currently living the matrix by the way. I don’t know if you know that. So you guys are in it, I'm out. I can do all that shit. I'm going to show up next to you in a minute.

Andrew: If you give me a doctorate, real quick, that would be great!

Mark: That’s awesome, you’re in! I guess we are going around?

David: Go for it, Mark.

Mark: I'm a Netflix guy, so I don't really watch cable, so I don't know crap what's on camera now, but for me I've been watching something called ‘Person of interest’.

Andrew: Oh yeah

Mark: It’s kinda cool. I didn't think I was gonna really to like it but I'm kind of digging it. So it's like, basically some billionaire computer code guy. He got tasks to try to filter out all of the surveillance camera and chatter and figure out if there's a terrorist threat or not. So some massive kind of AI, big data machine and it sort of sold that or did as a contract to the government but they didn't care about it. So the chatter also revealed when somebody else was going to be in danger, like an individual, like just a regular Joe like me and you were about to get killed and we didn't know it, right. So I don't know we piss somebody off and they're all talking about ‘We're going to hit him from behind with a sledgehammer and this is the plan and so basically he has the machine spit out security numbers of individuals of interest whether they're the killer or the killee we don't know. So they go in and just try to figure out because he did it, kind of covertly, so he doesn't have any data other than just who it is, it's kind of fun because there's like action scenes where the guy's like a super commando, killing, taking people out, groups, and then there's just like some kind of cool coverty stuff, that happens to kind of style like

David: Is it like a Netflix Original, is it brand new?

Mark: I think it is a Netflix show.

Andrew: It's been around for a little bit. I got very addicted to that show as well. I've watched every single one and kind of crushed through it. It's a fun show for sure

David: I got to check it out.

Andrew: Guy that he's got hunting these people down for them is a pretty bad ass.

David: So he's like Dog the Bounty Hunter?

Andrew: Yeah, pretty much

Mark: Yeah like superstar version like he's like covert, he's got spy background; he's a military trained dude. Sometimes it can kind of get… I think it gets old is that why you stopped watching it, maybe, like eventually I can't handle this guy anymore.

Andrew: No, I watched all of them

Mark: Oh, ok good, because I don't know what's going to happen I'm just I'm watching them all serially right now, so I guess. All right, there you go. Thank you

David: So, what about you, Andrew? What you watched?

Andrew: So, I'm gonna go actually with a movie that I watched last night. I watched Tarzan and it was pretty awesome. It’s like a real version of Tarzan where he is raised by these gorillas and he is super hard-core, can just cruise through the jungle and he has to save everybody and save the Congo and it's definitely worth a watch.

Mark: Yeah, I’ve watched the equivilance of that kind of stuff. I think this is real film right, and not animation?

Andrew: It's a real film.

Mark: Yeah, I got to see that. That sounds cool.

Andrew: There's a little bit of animation like there’s certain moments and you can tell on the side, it's pretty clean that you don't even really know, because he does have to fight his brother gorilla at one point.

David: Ok, well good to know. So the thing is Mark, we find ourselves talking about the SmartDrive MX2 almost every day, honestly. It's one of those products, I think really excites a lot of people and we've received just dozens and dozens of comments on Facebook every time that we post about the SmartDrive. We have over twenty two thousand views on our SmartDrive MX2 video on You Tube, so you've really hit a home run with this product and I was wondering if you could just explain to everybody what the SmartDrive MX2 is, for somebody who's never seen it.

Mark: Ok yeah, so I maybe give you a little bit of background first on what I've done and why I did that, because I think it's going to set the stage for maybe why people should like it, because sometimes I think there's this weird thing in your head that it's ingrained from physical therapy so in physical therapy they say use it or loose it and that's totally legit, nothing wrong with it, it's true. It's like if you look back at the Vietnam War era when you had a lot of vets coming back and they were in chairs and like for the first time they were trying to integrate in with everyone else able bodied and they were using the crap out of there. They were playing basketball in hospital chair right like unprecedented shoulder usage and those guys are suffering today, because they were pushing some really unergonomics, so use it or loose it is definitely true because they got us to where we are today with basketball, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis everything you know got invented from this. But what's kind of amazing is what we didn't know at that time back then because they were just trying it, to see if that would work, is use it or lose it ends up leading to degenerative chronic pain problems, you end up wearing down those shoulders and you end up not being as happy pushing around because you've got pain in your shoulders. It's kind of just that simple. So the new motto that I preach what I'm talking to therapist, clinicians is use it but don't abuse it. Everything in moderation and it makes sense when you think about it this way. It's like all right. This makes sense. So in the past the motor was kind of like the devil. You want you don't want to go to a motor you don't want to go to a power chair. So, how do you figure out something where you can still access a motor and make your life just easy enough that you don't have to? So the pushing isn't a pain. There's that fine line in for every person it's different but for the most part I would say almost everyone has a period of time even if it's just once at Disney World where they wish that they weren't pushing that chair but they were still moving with everyone else.

Andrew: That be every single day.

Mark: Yes, and that's the SmartDrive, so it depends on who you are, you have a guy that just uses it all day 24/7 or whatever and you got the guy that uses it once you're at Disney World. But, I would say on average, it's probably a third of the time. I don't know for sure, maybe it's more or maybe it's half, but that's the beauty of the SmartDrive so the smart ride in essence, is a small lightweight motor that easily connects to your chair with minimal changes to your chair it doesn't change tippiness. It doesn't really even change the weight of your chair only because the weights on the ground. So it's like a little mini trailer that's following behind you. The worst thing that happens is there's a little bumpiness because it has a special wheel called an ‘Omni wheel’ and it stands for on the Omni directional wheels, straight out of robotics like a bomb diffusing robots has these things where it goes in like a RC car and diffuses a bomb. Those wheels allow for multi direction of movement so that one wheel that one little motor on the back can be used really for turning and pushing. Right now we don't power you into turns, we allow you to naturally glide with your two hands when you turn. So that's the basis where the Smart drive came from. It was a rethink of how people get power system in the past.

I want people to be able to still use their chair exactly like they normally do. So it feels very freeing, very natural, but you’ve got a motor pushing you ahead and that's what the SmartDrive does. So it's a motor but it has a freewheel built, kind of like a bike. So technically, the bike can go faster than the pedals. So you can push chair and the motor can then catch up. So we use that to our advantage and basically what happens now is you give it a push you give your chair a push and it sets the speed of the motor at the speed of your push and it catches up behind you and just starts cruising you at the speed of your push. It can go super slow, it can go fast it can go. You can start slow and build up faster. It’s super awesome and easy. When you see someone use it the first time there is this huge smile on their face and all I can say is that it's like a new experience. Right. I've noticed that like a lot of them, specially the really cute girls in general go gaga over it, because I feel like, it makes them feel like a runway model like they can cruise with their head up and the wind in their hair and like they're just like I'm hot, right. That's what they can do. Whereas if you're pushing, it's like you're kind of focused on the pushing and you don’t feel as sexy, right. Well same thing goes for the guy because you can look cool right; you can be cruising around like what’s up! Yeah, I'm in a chair but I'm doing nothing here, I’m cruising. I own this. That's the feeling that I see, when I see people use it.

Andrew: When I'm pushing there is sometimes especially if you get on a little bit of an incline or whatever that you're like, hey! I don't want other people who feel like I'm struggling right now. You know what I mean. That relief all the feeling of other people preceiving you as struggling is something that is a big part of it

Mark: I never heard that insight before, that's dead on. I can see why that would be, because you yourself could just hunker down and get through the hill or whatever. But, especially when you're dressed up or going to dinner or something, you don't want to look like you're struggling much less actually struggle and break a sweat. Right?

Andrew: Yeah exactly. It's kind of like, I'm getting towards a door, people always want to run to it to open it for me, it's like you know look at the guns on this guy I don't need you to open the door. It’s the same thing like you don’t want grandma to come over and push you, ‘Come on Grandma’ I can get up. I got SmartDrive me on me.

David: And I think what plays into it too is that, like how you said, it's really intuitive. It's somebodies chair that they already spent 24x7 and by just attaching that thing, it's boom, you have a power assist and you're already everything is perfect for your body you already paid thousands of dollars to have a custom wheelchair. Why pay twice that amount to get a power chair? And its bulky and heavy to load up is not transportable as easily.

Mark: Yeah, it's the most transportable way you could ever get power. I mean it's literally its only twelve pounds as motor which doesn’t seem like a lot, that's more than a juggernaut. It looks like a juggernaut when you look at the picture. I mean 12 pounds is just 12 pounds pound but it's still not a typical power assist. It's two times twenty five. It’s fifty pounds.

Andrew: Yeah

Mark: It's astronomical compared to twelve pounds. We took all of the most cutting edge technologies that we could and brought him to bear on this SmartDrive. Oh, it is next generation Li-Ion battery, not like this scary kind from hoverboards that are gonna bring the house down or Samsung batteries. None of that stuff. Super stable battery technology, Li-ion phosphate we've got great motor control, really smart system. So it's something you don't often see in every product but some products like iPhones and things like that. If it's smart and it's really like it's able to try to predict what you want to do and make your life easier; that's what it's trying to do and we've been continually evolving this SmartDrive from the beginning to get smarter and smarter and smarter and we're working on the next generation and let me stay tuned. It's not that far off if you've been better. I mean I don't I'm just perplexed as to how this is getting better yet again.

David: Well, can you explain the original prototyping process that you went through the whole brainstorming side of it? The aha moment and then going down the road to make the first one?

Mark: Yeah well and so, this kind of goes back to, I started doing R&D in this field way back before there were ergonomic push friends. So like I did, you guys may or may not know the Spinergy Flexrim. So it's one of the ergonomic realms that you don't hear much about, but it's a high and a low impact push rims. I was the inventor of that, so I've been I've been trying to solve the over use and the taxing problem other ways other than a motor for a long time. So what I knew was it's got to be minimal, It's got to be low weight, It's got to be almost no impact on. You can't change your life or it needs to fit your life and that was the goal. So when I looked at power assist, I basically exhausted everything except for a motor before I got the motor. I did ergonomic push rims, I did ergonomics set up of your chair like, how well your chair fits your body, I did a whole set of clinical fitting tools to make sure their best didn't screw up and botch your chair right. I did studies on how you pushed a chair and I invented more ergonomic ways to actually push the chair, so like your push technique itself could be improved, You could squeeze 5 to 10% efficiency more if you like do a really long smooth stroke and you think about it and it really only works on level surfaces. It starts breaking down when you go up steep hills or on carpet where there's no roll. These things you can kind of do what they're all really really tiny, so I tried to do a minimal, basically I figured that you would be less accepting of a big change and a small change and if I could create a bunch of small changes together, well turns up that it didn't work. Ergonomic push rim wheel chair set up push technique are all important but they're like if you combine those three together and you put it on the table and say these chips are going to save your shoulders. You know for long term, it basically gave you about a year of pain free shoulder, extra, like instead of ten years, It's eleven. It's not enough so I knew I needed a motor and push. Power assist has been around for a decade before that it. The emotion type, two motor systems. So the billing code existed. You could get them if your shoulders hurt, but nobody wanted it. So, I knew something's not right, it's too big, too bulky, too medical looking, too permanent like you're not going to carry a spare pair wheels around so you're not going to like swap between them very often. They're hard to put on the chair so you're probably never going to take them off the chair like there's so many things that were negatives. So I thought OK how you make a motor that's like less than ten pounds. That's almost indiscrete like you can even see it on the chair and that was the goal and you don't have a throttle but somehow it's magically works; about the time that Fitbit first came around, you guys kind of remember this, but before that it was on the wrist. It was actually like a pedometer that you wore on like a belt loop, clipped at your belt and it was just like a pedometer and it measured like your oscillation of your body when you walk. So we decided to try to see if we can measure that for pushing because that's a lateral acceleration and when we realized there was notable acceleration that were easily counted, you can count your pushes by just counting those accelerations. I realized I could actuate a motor, I could turn on a motor based on you pushing and there's very few times that your chair accelerates that it's not you. There's a couple though by the way one name was curb cut even if you don't push, you roll down, it looks like a push to me since we had to weed out what we didn’t know and it wasn't a lot. So it was kind of amazing we're able to create a user interface out of what you naturally do in your chair which is kind of amazing so that's what sparked the interest. It was like cool crazy robotic looking thing, coupled with a really amazing interface and so that first prototype while it was pretty cool, I mean it was very cutting edge, had a lot of limitations and so every year we've evolved it, every year and a half and it's been mostly the user interface, how can you access the motor better. I don't want to get in the way, but at the same time I've had to do what I've had to do to, because your hands are tied to the rims. So you know you can't just grab a steering wheel and a gear shift, your hands are busy and this has to happen with hands free I guess it's almost like brain wave you know if I could tap into your brain you'd be like ‘Go motor’!

Andrew: I was actually up at UC Irvine robotics lab, and they have a helmet you can put on and that helmet actually is detecting stuff. So they've got a computer interface where they have a gentleman who's walking and you just think about getting him to walk and he starts walking and then you think about stopping and you can stop him at the stoplight. There are certain people researching what you're talking about but we’d have to wear a SmartDrive hat.

Mark: It's not walk. Yeah. So while it's technically possible. Imagine if I sold you a product with a hat with a bunch of sensors on it and if you have like, even it had a battery and stuff like you do like, I kind of look, I'm not a hat guy and then usually they take the hair down and you have the contact with the scalp. You know like, to get real electrical connection, so sure somebody is going to really have sensitivity, those sensors and they are gonna be putting up the ball caps and cool but until that day, you used something else and it's kind of simple for us because it's pretty much just except the speed at a speed like a throttle on a gocart or something like that, that's all we're doing, it’s just the speed control, just one, button. We don't have brakes in the SmartDrive. So it's basically on and how fast and then stop.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: So for us, we decided to put a little accelerom on the wrist and that's the fundamental that's where the breakthrough really happened was I can tap my hand and tell the motor what to do with the taps. So we use that to turn the motor off. But in the future, it’s a spoiler alert. You're going to use your hand to tell it to go. So, not to diminish Christmas time sales here, but it's just next level. So if you love this SmartDrive now and it's frickin awesome now, it just gets better and better and these are software upgrade type stuff, so it's not like you're wasting your time, if you want one and then you want to upgrade or don't want a upgrade, it's a firmware update, simple.

David: Oh, that’s huge.

Mark: So, we get smarter and the next generation is going to have an app and you're just gonna be able to just stream down for firmware so things are going to get just better and better and better, SmartDrive is on a very fast acceleration from the Smarts.

David: So backing it all up, how did you get into the wheelchair industry?

Mark: So it was kind of, it just happened. So I when I was an undergrad engineering student, I took an internship with a small company and the guy who owned the company was in a wheelchair and he was it turns out he was like a brilliant dude, like he is the grandfather of wheelchair standards. So in other words, back in the day a wheelchair could be made really crappy and even though it's a medical device, if it fell apart it's like, Oh ok whatever. It's just that wheelchair. Well, he basically said wheelchair should be durable and they should be affective and he created test methods like bang up the chair and it has to survive at least as many bangs to be a medical device. He's the founder of all that. He is really cool guy. He ended up creating all kinds of other standards for accessibility. He is a Paralympic, from back in the day, Paralympic gold medallist for downhill skiing. So, he did the first shock absorbing downhill monoski and he basically did it by innovating. So there weren't any shock absorbing monoskis. The closest they had was a leaf spring version where the guy bounced violently all the way down the hill. He put a Fox monoshock on that thing and just killed everyone. He's just like boom boom, killing it on the slopes. He had a good little reign before everybody got the same technology. Now everything's is made that way.

Andrew: He's an athlete and an incredible advocate for the community, that's really cool.

Mark: The guy was pretty amazing. He still alive. His name is Peter Axelson and you can look them up. He's really sweet dude. He's on everything from, like dancing like adaptive dances to, he flies a Cessna, adaptive seating for canoes, you name it, the guy was everywhere. He developed trail mapping systems for like Yosemite and Yellowstone where they just map the trail for accessibility. They just tell you like the trail gets narrow, doesn't tell, doesn't make the trail accessible, information almost like a double, this a double dime, you want to go to others trail it's a double time, you better be ready. This is a green circle. That's what he did for trails, it's kind of amazing. He's done so many cool things and it was all federally funded, so he would get grants, the money to do the work and release it in the wild, and so I learned that model, as a grad student. I was lucky enough to get to go to Stanford for a Ph.D. and there’s a real lot of really smart people there, I didn't think I was one of them, to be honest with you. Those are the smartest people from around the world. I'm from a small town in California. So I’m like a rural guy, like a country guy, but around those people that up my game, I was able to tap into the Federal funding stuff that he did and I was able to tap into the technology that I saw all around me at Stanford and put those two together and with financial resources and scientific know how you can do stuff, and once you get a team, I got a really great team engineers and before you know we're just churning stuff out, if that was a good idea. Let's solve it. Let's try it. Let's do this. It was a fun like it was like summer camp for kids like Geek Kids. That's what it was and we just ‘Trial and error’ ‘trial and error’, I mean some of the first SmartDrives were downright dangerous. Quite frankly, you couldn’t stop to save your life. I actually taco’d a Q7 frame, I shouldn’t say that model, haha! I like ground it, like with a skateboard, and one caster went off and literally the motor was set so hot that it just took the frame out, because I couldn't stop the motor. Hindsight is 20/20 you know, based on how the SmartDrive works now, but if you never did it before like the first time it wasn't exactly funny and there was a time when I almost gave up. I was going to repurpose the SmartDrive as an aging population share with a gas pedal on the footrest. I couldn't do it, but I figured it out and then somehow something clicked and then also and we were run in and I was like ‘Oh wow, that was a miracle how’d that happened?’ Some setting, some threashold, you know it's crazy it's just like one little number makes all the difference.

Andrew: Absolutely,as a wheelchair user myself and what I love about you Mark is that, you've come from a background of wanting to help people, you come from a background of wanting to keep people healthy and safe and save their shoulders and you started in an industry that is an uphill battle right away where everybody all of your paraplegics and some of the quadriplegics too are a mind-set of ‘No, I don't need help. I'll push myself’. You saw that they weren’t using these power assists that are out there and why and you've jumped some barriers that are huge in this industry one being that, this is the only power assist, that you can take with you into a two seater car that you can transfer, break down your chair, and bring the power assist with you. If someone were to try any of the other industry standard power assist units out there and try to actually drive their own car and break down their chair. They'd be dead in a week and so its huge and it touches my heart and I think it's awesome to have you, in this industry, and for people to build, to do it and see an interview like this with you because you're a smart guy, you care about the industry and you're excited for making it better and better for the future. So I want to thank you. Right off the bat for that.

Mark: Yeah, thank you. It feels really good. I’m just trying to do a good job. I think it's my German nature, it’s just like solve the problem at all cost and the problem, it turns out, was really important and I mean I knew it was important but once I saw the effect, once I saw the smiles and the gratitude and people tell me ‘You changed this industry, this industry doesn't change ever, you're one of a kind, while I'm like ‘Wow, I’m like Steve Jobs, I’m important, you know! Haha! Then the ego kicked in, so you gotta watch it on me. Don’t give me too much ego.

David: So how would you distill your goals or your mission for Max Mobility?

Mark: It's always been to maximize the mobility and independence of people with physical disabilities. I'd say that, I kind of graduated a little bit into the power side, so I kind of feel like, I'm gaining a lot of knowledge in the consumer electronics and new cutting edge technology of different kinds of motors, different types of microprocessors and sleep modes and like I'm getting exposed, the Bluetooth and all these things that are typical of Bluetooth speakers, and you know things, that you buy, at Best Buy. The more I can apply those to power mobility, cooler it is, like the equivalent of traction control in a sports car or Sedan. All these kind of things can be put in a power chairs like to me, my brains ending with ‘We could do some bad ass with our chairs here like with the tools at my disposal and I've got revenue now I can play.

David: Yeah

Mark: I can now play at an unprecedented level. I can play with the big boys if I wanted and that's what I think is really exciting for me. It is like, what we're doing now, like I will continue and the SmartDrive will march forward in some amazing ways I can tell you that but I think that we're going to probably start helping the other side of the fence at the power chair side. I think we're going to start kicking that some serious butt there as well like just eye opening, cool, disruptive technologies basically changing the industry for the better. Case in point, 98% of power chairs out there also use lead acid or sealed batteries. They don't even use Li-ion because the industry's ingrained in a certain direction there's a reimbursement code for these batteries but meanwhile people like literally, an end user has to go get their batteries replaced more than once a year and during that process the performance of the battery degrades or they don't even have a full day's charge before that happens, it's like insanity that this has ever had, that this taken this long to get an infusion of technology into an area. So to me I feel like ‘Ok, if I have a mission in life, it's to use my position with exposure to cool ass technology and a sensitive side to a population that can't maybe do it themselves as easily, as somehow I've learned how to do this and I somehow I can understand the challenges. I don't even know how this is. It's just some how and I know I'm a nice guy. I don't know whatever it's working, so just keep doing what I'm doing and do it to an even bigger level because I never got into this for the money that's what's crazy. I was like a starving artist if you will. I was a introverted scientist who happened to hit a product and then suddenly we had revenue. When we had revenue, Oh man, heaven helped us, so we can do anything.

David: One question that we consistently get, I think it's a valid question for some people but I'd really like for you to explain your side of it, as people say, this is so expensive for me, I can't afford this and the way that I come from that like R&D, prototyping, all of this stuff costs so much more money than what the average person understands. Can you touch on that for a little bit to help those people understand because it's a barrier to entry for school?

Mark: You know there's different models of how people get these but you know there is people pay cash for these, they get them on Living Spinal, they also go to the clinic and get it, reimbursed by their insurance and there's a whole hybrid of things but because insurance reimbursement is part of that market, we price things such that they fit into a product billing code, so in the grand scheme of how this works and this is all the medical products, if you look at any medical product you're always going to think, that is way overpriced. What is it, a thousand dollars for a titanium knee or something right? But then you think about it, if I was going to make titanium knee polished perfectly all these crazy complex curves, not really that easy. It's like the shell of a laptop or something that's just injected more than a plastic and churned out, one every two seconds, so this is something that takes it's kind of a crap to really do that in our industry it's called ‘Complex Rehab’ and in complex rehab every product is actually made for an individual. So like your manual chair, custom built specifically for one guy, one girl one size person and because of that, the prices are inflated because it takes. It's like a craftsman level that goes into making these things. So it's true that when you look at a SmartDrive you think ‘Oh it's a motor and a plastic shell and a little wrist wrap, if I bought it at Best Buy it should be like $995’ and I don't disagree but what happens is the big difference between these markets, if you're in the Best Buy market versus our complex rehab market Best Buy can make churn at Best Buy. Let's say FitBit. FitBit can churn out a million of these exact same things and put them on shelves, all over the place and sell those whereas the volumes that happen in complex rehab are dramatically lower. So 2 things, one, we don't have off the shelf parts, like we can't just stock a bunch of SmartDrive parts. When you box a SmartDrive, there's actually some customization to what goes in the box and that equates to the manpower, that equates to a knowledge of chairs and how to fit a SmartDrive on to that particular chair. Any time you involve manpower, it involves money. It involves time to pay your wages, to pay the overhead of the building, to pay the phone line, to get in and out. So what most end users don't understand because they haven't owned an operator business is that there are costs associated with handling anything and the SmartDrive is our complex rehab, you do handle it. Every SmartDrive is technically packaged for an individual and every time you touch something, they call minimize number of touches, that will minimize cost but we have a lot of touching in this industry. People are grabbing butts in this industry. It's a very intimate industry, a lot of touching going on. It costs a little something but you've got to remember, this is not the same size market as an iPhone market. This is complex rehab where you got much smaller volumes, costs are just naturally higher. The reason that dealers are charging so much for this is because they have to maintain all kinds of accreditation so that they can actually bill your insurance. Most people don't realize that your wheelchair dealer is much like a pharmacist actually. They have accreditations and they have inspections that come into their facility every year. If they screw up on their paperwork when they get your chair they could be liable for millions of dollars in fines from Medicare because they think it's fraud. Even if it was a mistake its fraud. So there's a lot that goes into the behind the scenes for that little mom and pop or that brick and mortar building that you go to that's a dealer or you know anywhere where you get fitted for a chair. You never realize just how much manpower and how personal intensive our industry actually is, until you get behind the scenes because now I'm behind them. I see it all. I understand and even though it seems like it's expensive. Just remember we're not in the Best Buy market, we’re in the complex rehab market, where every product is individually tailored for your needs.

Andrew: And honestly if some of those things weren't there like the accreditations and the auditing, we wouldn't be protected the way we are and I think a lot of times wheelchair users… and again myself being one, you think, ‘well, everything is so expensive for us’ but if we didn't have those kind of protections imagine the junk that would be thrown at us constantly and imagine the danger that we’d be in because of the testing standards to get the SmartDrive out to market, You've got to pass a lot of testing standards. All of that stuff, unfortunately cost money.

Mark: Yeah I mean, people don't realize because it looks like a consumer product. This is anF.D.A. approved product. We had to submit a huge multi-hundred page application that included rigorous testing that had to be done mechanical, electrical, chemical, fire like you can't, you're not supposed to be able to light one of these on fire. There are so many things that go into this that you don't realize because it's a medical device. Resistance to electrical noise. So, if you're driving a SmartDrive down the road and some guy on a C.B. radio from like a fire trucks, you know gets on it sparks up a bunch of EMI noise, you know that electrical magnetic noise. It can't deviate you're SmartDrive performance. They put these things in these massive radiation chambers and they blast them. If that SmartDrive during the test does not maintain the fixed velocity it’s supposed to, it's out, it's done, you fail. You don't go to F.D.A. So, you do all that then you go to F.D.A and then F.D.A. says I don't know. What if this guy forgets to tap? You know and he goes off and gets killed in the street and all of this has to get resolved so there's a massive undertaking just to get a product approved by the F.D.A. and then you've got to get it on the market. I mean as if it really is massive. But until you've been exposed to it. You don't understand the level the intensity and it's like getting a drug approved, right? You know it's the same kind of level it's almost like having studies very similar process

David: Yeah. People need to remember that things cost money. They should really be thankful that there are people and businesses that are bringing these awesome ideas to life because if you saw this and you said ‘it's going to cost over $5000 for the end consumer. Nobody's going to buy that I'm just not going to do it’ if that was the case nobody would even have the benefit of the SmartDrive and it goes through so many hands to take care of the people that are listening and the future customers and we do bill insurance for SmartDrives, Andrew do you want to touch on that real quick

Andrew: Yeah definitely. So you know like you were saying providers like Living Spinal we have to have accreditations so Living Spinal is an accredited supplier. We have Medicare, Medical and so people in the local area can definitely come on down to Living Spinal we can work with your doctors, your P.T’s. gets you the correct documentation that you need for pain relief and for that shoulder issue that you might be dealing with and there's a lot of different reasons that you'd be capable of using your insurance to get a SmartDrive and Living Spinal could do the medical insurance if you're in California.

David: So Mark is there any particular industries that you look at for inspiration like Power Sports or what you mentioned before robotics.

Mark: I tend to look mostly at consumer electronics. I think because of the kind of slick user interface is kind of what I saw everything from so I'm looking at smart watches you know that's so like the SmartDrive band evolves in the direction of kind of smart watches and Activity Monitor. So that's happening behind the scenes and then there's some really crazy stuff that happens in robotics like the world of self balancing vehicles right you've got state ways you've got hover boards and then there's some next gen stuff coming out like if you guys watch Star Wars that E.B.A robot or some stuff that's on the periphery that's like oh mind blowing like a ball that just rolled by itself multi-directional you know and that kind of stuff is what we're paying attention to. It's like you know that could be like a ball rolling wheel chair or whatever you know and it’s like how we could do it? what's the in, what's the out, what’s the a safety factors you know what could we make this thing work and just kill it and that's what we're doing we're looking at it's honestly the most cutting edge stuff you can find on the Web. It's not that good as we speak (39.30) and that's what we're that's what we're looking at or ingredients. So future mobility products.

David: That's exciting. Do you have any other products that is outside of what you guys sell that complement the SmartDrive really well that you recommend to people?

Mark: Well I mean, I've got I've got experience and I've got the product called the Flexrim which I licensed to Spinergy. So it's a Spinergy product and it's a really cool ergonomic rim. Outside of that you know I would just say any ergonomic rim that feels good in your hand, I would go with generally so because you're still in SmartDrive you're still pushing around right. So if you're so obviously you want to really good fitting chair. You want to good CG and these are things that we've developed over time and created guidelines and tried to preach everyone. You want us to be as reasonably possible because it puts the weight on the big wheels and off the front wheels which allows lower rolling resistance. So you go further with every push you're also a lot less sensitive to side slopes. So what means both people don't realize when you're A-B is that every sidewalk has a cross flow to facilitate water drainage to the cutter and without that the world would be full of potholes because all the water would be sitting and you would be able to lift so no matter what we do with EDA right? guidelines and efforts as well. You'll never get rid of water drainage just a primary factor that will over supersede anything a wheelchair user needs. So to make your chair impervious to side slopes you wanted it to be as possible because basically it's much like a front heavy shopping car if you can remember pushing the shopping car on a side slope and you have to fight like crazy to keep the front end up, the same thing applies for a wheelchair because it's made the exact same weight. Rear wheels are fixed, front wheels are casters. So basically, if you can get all the weight on the fixed wheels, it doesn't fall down the side slope. You can track like a mother. Going straight on a side slope the more you've got on the back obviously tipping this is the counter effect. You don't want to tip over. So but basically finding your personal limits so that ergonomic rims and just a reasonably you know tight fitting chair not too wide, that your arms aren't like pushing way out here, you want to keep that as tight as possible both for accessibility and for push ergonomics. So to me that's what I offer you. It's not actually products it's actually just information that can make your life better and this SmartDrive just complements those. So you want those things no matter what because if you have a SmartDrive or not, sometimes you don't use the SmartDrive and you need your chair to be as good as possible as high performance and efficient, ergonomic as possible. So step 1 get your chair tuned upright and step 2 put his SmartDrive on it and you know I'll see you when you're 80, you'll still be like chased by chicks.

David: He didn't interview last week with Dean from Epical Solutions who is the distributor for the FreeWheel and we had mentioned that the FreeWheel and the SmartDrive are a pretty amazing combination. Because with some power assist you've got more ability to go forward and there is a possibility of catching on something or whatever and it's going to allow you to be able to go on grass and go more off road a little bit. So with the FreeWheel Out-Front the combination is kind of watch out, here we come.

Mark: Yes. Yeah so even though we never say the SmartDrive is designed for off road use because I mean off road can get gnarly real quick. Things that you need an A.T.V but reasonable off road usually works and the SmartDrive got an incredible amount of power like for how tiny that thing is, people are surprised every day. We have a 350 lbs weight limit and we don't have a max grade that you can go. From a tippiness perspective it's just as deep you want to go. So it's got ridiculous power, ridiculous torque. So on grass I mean it'll just churn through whatever usually your limitation is the small little casters dig into the divots on the grass and they basically stop you. You could almost fall out of the chair. So like what I typically do if I'm playing around in grass in a chair, I go into a wheelie and I cruised in a power wheelie with SmartDrive all the way across that takes a lot of skill right but if you have a FreeWheel, it's gravy. I don’t have to think about anything you just go, I mean that giant wheel or not giant but that large pneumatic front wheel out of FreeWheel is just like it just goes over everything. Its floats over grass, it floats over you're going to like South America where like this really the streets and the road and the sidewalks are like it's like an amusement park for a wheelchair. The ride is the sidewalk. You're going to want to FreeWheel because you can't get more ten feet before having to do something like you've never thought you'd have to do in a chair. This is not the US anymore. I've left. I'm not in Kansas anymore. It's a different world down there. So a FreeWheel and SmartDrive that combination both grass and anywhere outside in developing country, you're going to be thankful. Cobblestones in Europe. You're going to go to Europe and you'll definitely be well served having a FreeWheel SmartDrive combo.

David: We're talking about travel a little bit. One of the big concerns people have with any kind of power device is going to be that lithium ion battery, so it is as we know safe to fly with, can you touch on that a little bit.

Mark: Yeah absolutely, so the only regulations that do exist for lithium ion batteries have to do with the fact that, probably five to ten years ago there were actually lithium ion batteries that were powering some of the internal stuff in planes and at one point they tried rapid charging those and they basically end up creating a fire. So they realized a lithium ion if not done right could lead to a fire which on a plane is catastrophic. So they have increased sensitivity to lithium ion batteries on a plane and they have maximum capacities that you can as a regular able-body. You can only bring so much on an overhead band right or even in the plane at all. However because this is a medical device, there is a special exemption that supersedes all. So you as a wheelchair user and can come on that plane with something greater than that and that limit. It's a medical device exemption

David: Is there Max ceiling to that?

Mark: I don't believe there is I don't believe there is, again all medical products first have to pass safety requirements for the F.D.A. in the U.S. they take into account that we've done that testing right. I mean you don't just want to fly by my chair that's not F.D.A. approved on an airplane. I think they kind of do a double check for the quality of the chair itself but you know we still get F.D.A. approved products so its exempt, It's that we go allowed to have it and it's normal to put it in the overhead bin. You're actually not supposed to put it in your luggage. So the beauty of a SmartDrive you can ride it. I mean it's fantastic for airports because they have really long stretches of carpet and you've got inevitably doing the last gate. So you're golden. You ride all the way down to the plane and then you just hop on the transfer seat and that you tell the attendant how to take it off, if the SmartDrive off your chair and they give it to you or they put in your overhead for you when they bring it to your seat. It's super simple and then just reverse the process when you leave. We have an exemption that you can actually get printed out on our website but you'll never need it. You just you rarely hear anybody run into trouble in fact most the time the people like the T.S.A. people and people from the airlines themselves, that's so cool, never seen it you know you never really get slack. You guys just get like more and more encouragement.

David: Mark one of the things that's probably been fun as a business owner that the SmartDrive has brought you a little bit around the world can you share with us. How many countries SmartDrive is the authorized dealer?

Mark: I think we're now in thirty two countries around the world and it's funny that need I talked about where it's like everybody needs this and the product wasn't there just to meet it. It's like the same thing happens like a vacuum around the world. It just gets filled. Usually it's a matter of just learning about it like people takes a long time to get exposure. It's not like this thing is has Super Bowl ads you know we're not run in Super Bowl ads so not everybody's talking about it. So usually what happens in this industry, you learn about from a buddy or you learn about it when you come get your new chair every five years. So you know that it could have been on the market for four years, you never even heard about it. You walk into a clinic or look into Living Spinal so I don't know what the hell is that? you know and you don't have innovations every day. It doesn’t happen real frequently so just it's just learning about it. Once you learn about it you are hooked and you've got it for life. So I always say that I think everyone's going to see it within five years, one way or the other. That's worldwide because you come in to get in a chair about every five years you're going to get exposed to it inevitably somewhere in that timeframe.

David: Yeah exactly. And what are the largest countries that are using SmartDrive?

Mark: So there's the natural thing is any developed country that has kind of an insurance model like us that can actually pay for medical prices because everything is again expensive everywhere. People have to pay a premium for medical devices. Germany and entire all of Europe, Northern Europe. That's hot. Switzerland, Germany, France , U.K. even Netherlands those are all hot but for some reason I know the reason but there's this. We've got one little special pied piper advocate down in Australia. So we talk about sales and per capita like per million of inhabitants right like population normalized sales and they are about double the U.S. normalized sales, they sell essentially twice as many SmartDrives as I do in the U.S. per capita. Basically if you're in a chair you're getting a SmartDrive in in Australia

David: Australia Insurance coverage is really good. I've worked with a ton of people from Australia because their insurance coverage is like sure wherever you want to do insurance will cover everything. So that's awesome.

Mark: Yeah I mean it's just something about that country they maybe they rethought how to do it and they kind of knit pick, sort of hand selected, how to create their system to be smarter than everyone. So they're working well there. Because it's obvious that there's a need. So If there's ever any hoops to jump through it's just to prevent fraud in our system. Right? I mean that's all this is so if the system is kind of a pain in the ass to go through it's because people in the past have learned to take advantage of it and the government has to fight back a little bit. If it's resistance as long as you have a legitimate need just push lean on it be your own advocate and you're going to get what you need cause the need is clear. Therapist will get behind you. Whatever you need there's going to be resources to tackle that you just ask around get some help and how's it normally done.

David: People were probably really sick of not being able to keep up with Kangaroos.

Mark: That’s awesome, so the jumping SmartDrive is next right?

David: Andrew, do you have any other questions?

Andrew: No, I think that's about it. Thanks so much for being with us today, Mark and again kudos to you that you've done an incredible job in a really uphill market and now everybody can go uphill.

Mark: That's awesome. Nice I love it.

Andrew: All right Mark. We'll talk to you later. Thank you so much.

Mark: Thanks guys.