Springfree Trampoline: Keith Alexander & Steve Holmes

I decided to invest in some fundamental research and I wanted to ask myself one question. Did any retailer in America? believe that trampolines were dangerous. So dangerous that they wouldn't sell them. The answer was yes, and that was Costco.

The CEO of Costco was a man named Jim Senegal, and Jim said I will not sell trampolines. Well. And um so I made it my mission to try and sell Costco trampoline. Rom and PR, it's how I built this.

show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Guy Rise and today's show How a shy New Zealand professor with a crazy invention and a Canadian businessman who believed in its potential? Teamed up to create Spring Free. They call the world's safest backyard trampoline.

So you might remember a while back, we did an interview with James Dyson, and Dyson, of course, is the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. And he described how he came up with his vacuum. He worked in his backyard shed. He built prototype after prototype after prototype. testing and perfecting his invention. And for a lot of inventors, that's a familiar story, right? Finding a problem, tinkering until finally. A solution. But the next part of the Dyson story, the part where James Dyson manufactured the vacuum cleaner, scaled his business, and then became one of the wealthiest people in the UK? Well

That's not exactly typical inventor story. Because for a lot of inventors, the end goal is the patent the patent that someone else will buy and take to market. Because a lot of times inventors don't have the time or resources or ability to go into business themselves. So today on the show, we're gonna do something a little different. We're actually gonna tell two stories. The story of one man, Keith Alexander, who invented a safer trampoline, maybe even the safest trampoline ever.

And then the story of Steve Holmes, the man who took that invention and made it into a commercial success. Because even though Steve and Keith aren't technically business partners, Spring-free trampling couldn't have been a success without one or the other. Keith Alexander grew up in New Zealand. His dad was an engineer.

And at first Keith wasn't really sure what he wanted to do with his life. So he joined New Zealand's version of the Peace Corps, and for a while he worked as a grade school teacher. But then He decided to go back to the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, and he found that he actually really enjoyed engineering.

Yes, I started doing my engineering degree at Canterbury and Suddenly realised that was what I Loved. I found I could get eight there quite easily. So I did a master's and then did a PhD.

And were you like were were you the kind of engineer who just always loves to tinker in in like a tool shed? Like were you always Tinkering away at things? Well uh yes, I was always tinkering, especially through my PhD and had to have a workshop. You always had a workshop. A bench with tools and equipment. That's right, a bench of

Put up a bench somewhere if it wasn't there, I had these tool racks that I made with all the tools on and I could take them off the wall, pack them up, take them somewhere. What would you make? Well, I m made all sorts of things, didn't I? Art exhibition. Uh I made a six foot Mouse trap for that art exhibition, a collapsing chair. Um I made walk on water shoes. In fact I funded myself through my PhD by winning Walk on water competitions.

Let's break this down a little bit. Walk on water shoes, uh Radio Avon, which was the uh radio in Christchurch at the time. They said to their audience, hey We have a competition. If you can figure out how to walk on water, we'll give you a thousand dollars. That's about it. Okay. At that time my father had been

developing some walk on water shoes in Auckland. He and I had been playing around with it'cause we had a dinghy and We've been figuring out. How to do this. So that's a tinkering in the garage. You need some flotation. Yeah.

The competition put limits on. Flotation things could be. You won't allow it to have anything um longer than one meter. Yeah.

Didn't take much for an engineer to work out how big the piece of polystyrene had to be so he could carry your whole weight. Okay. So you you were coming up with Some kind of flotation device that you could put on your feet. And you could sort of walk on water with that device. That was balanced, that would allow you to kind of you know, hover on the surface of the water. Yeah. That balance thing is is the first big step. And

The solution is put your feet on the bottom. So you cut a hole in it. And you put a bit of plywood on the bottom so your feet go right through to the bottom and then it stays upright by the time. Oh so the st the polystyrene is around your ankles? That's right. And you invented this?

Yes, my father and I invented this. We had to make it fit the the competition for it. So I I flew back from Auckland where I'd gone to stay with my parents. And I built these shoes to compete in this competition. Uh And I managed to win the competition two years in a row.

And then won a third one in Auckland and that helped fund my PhD. Because you got a thousand bucks. Yep. Back then a thousand bucks was quite a lot more. It's more like five thousand now. Wow. So what what were some of the things that you Invent.

Well, for the art exhibition we had uh there was quite a few there. Uh one one of my Enduring experiences with having a haircut. during my PhD at university and this young Ditsi lady was giving me the haircut and she said, Do you realise you're thinning on top? It was really embarrassing, so I thought that would be a good thing for young guys to have because you can never see the top of your head.

So I made this um Board patch inspector. what I call it. So you look in one mirror and you could see in the other mirror and you could move the levers and it would adjust the mirror so you can see the top of the top here. Yeah, you could stand in in front of the mirror, move a lever, it would reflect the other mirror and it could Show you the top of your head. Exactly. Yeah, and you could see whether you're going bored. So what did you do, uh, once you finished your PhD?

Well At first I thought if I want to come back into academic life I really need some engineering experience. I don't think I'm a valid So with a PhD You decide I've got to go out into the world and get some experience before I can come back and teach. Absolutely, that's right.

So I moved back to Auckland and Got a job in an engineering consultancy. What kind of work did you do? I started off as a valuer. They wanted a valuer. I knew nothing about it. what valuation was. It was looking at a piece of machinery and and working out how much it costs. How old it is. Okay.

And uh After two weeks I was getting pretty good at it. Yeah. After two weeks they found I could do other things as well. Working for a consultancy you got a variety of things. There's there was quite a bit of insurance work, there was uh crash investigations. There was a bit of um court work as well. So it was quite a broad range of stuff. But um I wasn't particularly happy with that because it all comes down to the money. In the end it's all how much have you been able to invoice this week?

Yeah. And I really like spending time on things. more time into it and thinking it through properly. This is like um I guess the the mid Nineteen eighties. Um

You were Late thirties, early forties. Yes. Re married? I got married and Nineteen eighty five, yes. So it was while I was at the engineering consultancy in Auckland. And Did you have kids pretty soon after?

Yes, uh about two and a half years later. Nineteen eighty seven. Your first child was born. How many kids do you have? We've got three. So

Uh my assumption is you are Doing consulting work. Got a young family. And This is a probably a pretty steady

Lifestyle. Right? Yeah. So when you would come home from your consultancy consulting job Would you come home and and go into your The work bench area and

Tinker and Much to the regret of my wife, yes. S So you were like the mad scientist in the back of garden working on

Your Crazy ideas. Not all the time. Well, the early ones was a a magnetic flying machine, which was supposed to use the Earth's magnetic field to fly, but I was very proud of what I did, but it didn't work. Do the laws of physics actually support that idea?

Yeah, yes. In in the end, one of the best ideas would be to go to the south magnetic pole and put a big ring o of conductive material around the magnetic field there and put a huge current through it and it would actually fly into space. Wow. It's kinda hard to get there. Yeah, it's not a very good place for a spaceport. It it sounds to me that

Like what Like what really motivated you was just this idea of trying to solve problems. Like is that right? Like is that how you would explain it? That's pretty good, yes. Uh if other people haven't been able to solve it, I wanna solve it. That's a real challenge for me. That's something that excites me. No one else has done this. I I wanna do this because no one else has done it. So okay, so what like what was it that eventually Like made you start thinking

Trampolines. Well, when I when I was a kid, I'd love the trampoline. I just love the idea of being in the air, but you couldn't buy a trampoline in those days unless it was a gymnastics trampoline. And we We had one at the school and in the gym class you get thirty kids there and we had to get on, jump three Three bounces, seat drop, get off, the next person. That was a that was my jumping. And you love this thing. And I love this thing. You can only get three jumps. Yeah, and that really frustrated me. So when they started to become available in the shops. And I had a young child. I thought, right, gotta get one of these. Of course. Of course. She's only eighteen months old. But you know, let's start her young and then I'll be able to bounce on it too.

And so I said to my wife, you know, we've got to get a trampoline for Katie. She said, No, if I take it a place center, they don't have a trampoline at Play Center, they're just too dangerous. This is nineteen eighty nine, yes. And she said trampolines are not safe. I think, all right, well I'll just prove her wrong. I'll look at the research and see what I can find. So I looked at the research and

Sure enough. Even in New Zealand, there'd been some research done on the increase in injuries from trampolines, and I thought well they really are dangerous. Maybe I can do something about it. I'm an engineer. I should be able to do something about this. And that's that's when it started. See you look at his research

And you s you you you realize your wife was right. Trampolines were not safe. Damn. My my wife is right. She's right. Damn it. Yeah. Yes. But you wanted a trampoline and you wanted one for your daughter. So I had to think of a way around that. So what'd you do? So I thought right, well If I can design one, I'm I'm sure a trampoline's pretty simple. Surely I can design I've got a PhD in engineering. Sure. And I love designing things like this. I sh surely I'll be able to do it. So let's design one that she'll accept.

And maybe you could even sell it. I don't know. So so take me back to that moment. You're thinking I wanna see if I can come up with a trampoline. Where do you start? I mean, do you there's no internet at the time. I mean there's no easily available internet. Uh

How did you even start to Think about How you would do this. Right. So I'm going to come up with a trampoline Well what are the issues here that we have to solve and and the traditional trampoline has got a steel bar around the outside edge and springs right beside it, and then the then the mat that you jump on in the middle.

And I can see that it's dangerous because the accident rates have gone up and it's pretty obvious. You give this nice bouncy things to kids and and they'll bounce all over it and they'll lose control and they'll fall on the bar or they'll fall down the hole between the springs. So Or they fall off. Or they fall off. But the thing they'll probably hit first is the steel bar around the edge. That's the thing that impressed me most. I thought that steel bar, that's not fair. Let's see if we can get rid of that steel bar. That's that's a good step. Huh.

So I'm thinking well Inflatable things are soft. What if we replace the steel frame with an inflatable ring? Just like a beginner tube and then stretch the trampoline mat across the top of that. Would that work? Oh I see like a giant heavy duty inner tube tire.

And then you would have like a s The canvas Inside of it and the springy part would come from the inner tube. At first I thought, right, well put springs on. I mean we can put rope around there to hold the springs and we could t uh have the mat connected to the springs. So I I sketched this up and I got a a canvas company to make a mat. And I got some trampoline springs and some rope.

I borrowed They called it a C biscuit at the time, which is like a big inflatable Like a zodiac but circular. Yes, that's right. And you towed it behind the boat. That's what that's what it was for. So I borrowed one of those from from the canvas company actually. Tried it out and it seemed seemed to work. At that time.

My son was about two and a half years old and he bounced on it. He could bounce on it all right. It was only about the height of a a chair. So if the kid fell off. They didn't have far to go, and the edge was Inflatable rubber. So you actually literally made this. You stretched canvas over this.

Giant rubber. But Dingy thing. And uh and you had your kids jump on it.

That's right. First one then I thought right let's make a purpose built one. So the one that we Just head the Met.

Sown into the top edge of of this big ring. And that was good for the kids at the time, uh And your wife was happy with that? She was totally comfortable with the She was really happy with that. This is something the kids could actually pick up and cut round the back yard. And this was like uh h how big was it? That was About eight feet across. Okay. The mat, of course, was m more like five feet because it was o on the top of it.

The big problem or the well, several big problems though. Number one. The material cost for them. was about eight hundred dollars. Back at that time, just the material costs. So there's no manufacturing in that at all. Uh and it always leaked.

Yes, it was supposed to be. Yeah, tight. It didn't matter how many times I pull it apart and try to find the leak and there's a problem. Two problems there. Third problem It just wasn't bouncy. I mean I couldn't get any height on it. This did not bring you back to your school days where you had those three jumps. That's right. Those massive giant jumps. Where you could get lots of air. You were getting flying a foot off the ground, maybe.

Twelve inches or something off the ground. Which is pretty safe for kids. You don't really want them at three years old, you don't want them jumping too high. So it was great. It was great. For the kids to have it. But it wasn't what I wanted.

So you start to realize that this thing is just not gonna fly. This is not gonna be the thing that I mean, it could be fun for a while for the kids, but it Can't jump very high and and anyway, you can't market this thing. So so what do you do? Do you go back to your to the garage and and and Start again.

Well, a around about that time I I sat down and summarized all the sketches I'd got and all the ideas I've got,'cause uh this is not bouncy. I've got to come up with other ways of doing it. And I went through a whole range of ideas and came up with a Several quite complicated ways of using springs. So at this stage I was

Working at the University of You got a job at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch. Teaching mechanical engineering, I'm assuming. Yes. I had a contract, only a contract. It wasn't a full time job, so I didn't have tenure. But I had a job there. And that meant that I could, for educational purposes, give students projects to do. So the final year of engineering.

The students get an individual project. Uh that would go the whole year. So I put that up as a project. Here's an idea for making a trampoline completely differently with springs in a different way. What can you do as a student, what can you come up with? So just to just to get a sense of when this is, we're talking about the mid nineteen nineties here, right? Like ninety five, ninety six, somewhere around then?

I started at university in ninety six. I ran a couple of university projects in uh ninety six, ninety seven. Uh and I gave him pretty close guidelines'cause I put a lot of thought into it. Here's a way I think we could do it. Could you build one?

Uh could you do the analysis on it? And Time. I had this

idea in my mind. And I found it very difficult to imagine. I've never seen anything like it. It was a bit like a basket with the These are these are things say like fishing rods. Obviously if you've caught a fish on the end of a fishing with a fishing rod, that's gonna bend its it'll keep some tension on it. Maybe I could make one like that. Something like fiber fiberglass like a fishing rod material.

And I thought if you stuck a a fishing rod in the ground over there and you stuck another one over here and you tied something between them, you get the tension, but then they're sticking up. These things are sticking straight up. And if you're on a trampoline on the top and you fell on it. because they're vertical, if you fell right on the edge you can impale yourself on them. So what if we laid them over so that they're forty five degrees? Then if you land it on them. that bend out.

So that was the idea. So just to picture this in my mind, the idea was could you get some kind of material that's like a fishing rod, like a but but shorter, obviously. Yeah. Uh and and angle it at forty five degrees in a circle, let's say. And stretch canvas over that. And essentially.

That would be the trampoline. You would bounce on the canvas. That was laid over these Angled. rods that were bendy. That that's a pretty good description of it.

So you had students working on on making a like a prototype of this new trampoline design, but by the way how big are these things? They made full size ones, eight foot. Diameter. Uh and and how did it work using using those like

Fiberglass fishing rods? The fiberglass? That that seem to work all right. That seemed to work all right, well, certainly it was more bouncy than the inflatable one. So I was going in the right direction. It had more promise. It wasn't exactly there yet, but it had more promise. Yes, you're right. I I was thinking I need to get a commercial person involved by this stage. I don't know how to commercialise it. I don't know whether it's gonna be commercial at all. I had no idea. Let's contact someone. Alright, I I wan ask you about What I would imagine was s a slight complication, which is at this point.

You weren't Keith Alexander uh Backyard Tinkerer, you were also Keith Alexander. Professor at this university What did that mean about

all the work you did, right?'Cause'cause oftentimes as as is the case in the US When you work on something, the university's their property, if it's MIT or Stanford or Harvard or whatever. Well that's exactly right. What I'm supposed to be doing is Publishing papers. But they did have this

New policy that just came in. A couple of months after I'd started, they said, if you come up with an idea that's commercialisable, you've got to tell this new commercialisation office that we've just developed. Uh that you've done it. And uh because it belongs to the university. A hundred percent. Or and I thought, Well, I have already thought of this. I've been doing this at home for a while and now I've got a job at the university.

Well, I can't commercialise it. I don't know how to do that. They say they know how to do it. Five I'll sign the paper. I'll sign the paper. So now every idea you have They own. Which is not uncommon. So I went along with that. I'll let them have it. If they can commercialise it, great.

So I took it to them. Showed them, they said, Oh that's fine. That's a kid's toy. See what we can do. And but in the meantime, they They were just like, Yeah, do whatever you want to do.

Yeah. They they were not paying attention to you. They're not paying attention. What they wanted is something that's gonna make. millions of dollars. They don't really want a child's. They want like a biotech. Nanotech. Yeah.

Nanotech. Yeah. So I looked in the yellow pages, I found the biggest trampoline manufacturer in New Zealand. He was selling four hundred trampolines a year. I rang him up and he said, Yeah, I'm interested, send me some photos. I'll I'll be in Christchurch, I'll come and have a look. Huh.

So he came. And I had them all there for him to try and have a look at. He jumped on them? He jumped on them. He said, Well that inflatable one I like that. But not as a trampoline. I like It's a great pool toy.

Um The one with the rods? Yeah, that's got some promise. But It's too low. It's gotta be high, it's gotta be dangerous. It's gotta make the kids think it's dangerous.

And it's gotta be bigger, it's far too small. So I want something that's ten feet diameter. And it's got a uh Packed down so it can be shipped. So you have to be able to pull it all apart and assemble it. And it's gotta be able to be assembled by a solar mother with no tools in half an hour on Christmas Eve after she's had a glass of wine.

Because I always get people ringing me up on Christmas Eve saying, How do I assemble my trampoline? So you've got to sort that out. So if you can sort out those problems, I'll be interested. And you thought. And I thought okay, there's a challenge. Uh and we've got a company now that's interested. And I'll pay one of these students who was happy to work over summer to build this ten foot version and see what we can do. So that's what we did over the next year, we had this student.

Working away? He built up this ten foot trampoline that was higher. We could test it, we could pull it apart.

Uh we couldn't assemble it in half an hour. Yeah. And We found that there was another company in in New Zealand that was quite a specialist in portrait of fiberglass, in fact. They had used it in as a spring, and we were using it as fiberglass springs. and their experience of that. So we started forming a relationship with them.

So he formed a relationship with him. And this company who would making four hundred trampolines a year. And we started to Build.

Some prototypes for customer trials. Five prototypes for customer trials. And had it turn out. Well it it was I was pretty pleased with it. I thought we were going to market at this stage because I had a commercial person. I h we had five Products uh with customer trials.

And the guys from the commercial arm of the university came along to have a look because there was a bit of tirah going on. They had a look at it and they said. This is not market ready. You need another fifty thousand, hundred thousand dollars to make it market ready. Uh And then they went away. The university said this.

Yeah. And so what does that mean? Well it's I thought that was the end of it. Really, I thought

I can't get a hundred thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars. I thought it was market ready, but I was very depressed. And you needed the university's permission because they owned it. They owned the IB. They owned it. Uh I didn't have to do any more. I was doing all this work Supervising this and try to get the money to s to support.

Making these customer trials. So the dream Guys. Over it. That I

I always Just Like challenges. And my mother in law She'd ring up.

to talk to my wife and when she'd get me on the phone she'd say And Keith, how's that trampoline going? I hope you're still working on it. So This was an idea I really wanted to persist with. Mm-hmm.

This was a problem in the world that needed to be solved. I'll decide to keep going. Around this time the commercial arm of the university hired another person and he'd actually taken product to market before. And he had a look around New Zealand trying to find if there are any investors in New Zealand that were interested. In the end he looked in Canada and found someone in Canada and said.

Keith, we got someone in Canada. I'm gonna send him a photo. And we'll see where we go from here. We come back. Almost 15 years after Keith started tinkering on a new, safer kind of trampoline,

He gets to see his invention finally come to market. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. from NPR. Welcome back to how I built this from NPR.

So it's the early 2000s and Keith's University find an investor who's interested in the trampoline. And his name is Steve Holmes. And at this point, Steve's in his mid-30s, he's living in Toronto, and he's already been involved in a couple of successful small businesses. So Steve knows some investors, and he's got access to a little bit of capital. And eventually, Steve and Keith get on the phone. To start discussing the details, of Keith's invention. At the end of the phone call, I remember saying to Keith, Okay, Keith, can you mail it to me? Can you send it to me? Ship me the trampoline. Yeah. Just ship me the trampoline.

And there was a pause'cause I think the money was an issue, right? You know, like how am I gonna ship the trampoline? Keith try try and figure out I said, I'll send you ten thousand dollars, will you ship me the trampoline? ship you the trap. So he What do you remember about that call? It was s similar, like you were on the phone with Steve and you you just kind of explained.

This invention to him? I find it pretty hard to remember. Um I was really anxious about anything like that. But that call would have made me would have freaked me out. Yeah. And shipping something overseas. I don't even know that you had to dial zero zero one to get to America first, but One of the things that did make an impression though is Steve said, I'm sending I'm sending you guys ten thousand dollars so that you can

Do what? needs to be done to get me information that I need and get me a trampoline. And I didn't have that sort of money. So when someone says, please ship it to the other side of the world, it's a big deal. And when someone says I'll give you$10,000, that was a big deal. So all right, so so how long did it be? Did take For it to arrive a couple weeks. Uh we at the time had a backyard which really didn't have any grass, so that was a problem. We had a patio and so

When I got it. Um It was a little overwhelming. So I assembled it. It probably took me about three hours And several bruises. And um My kids interesting that the time were sixteen, fourteen, and twelve, and so my twelve year old daughter

Jumped on it. She loved it. Alright, so so so she she's jumping up and down this thing. And you realize from that. Maybe there's something to this.

You know, when it comes to good ideas, I believe you measure it by the reaction of the people you hope to sell it to. And there wasn't a kid in the neighborhood who didn't want to jump on it. Well anybody that we'd let in And so you you get caught up in the enthusiasm of your kids. When did the like the switch go off in your mind where you thought, Okay

I'm in. Like I need to pursue this thing, because at this point You'd sent ten thousand dollars. But th you did not have a business. You were not in business with the university. You didn't you didn't own this patent. Not nothing. It was just a you just had One really great trampoline in your backyard. Yeah.

You had presumably a lot to consider before you were gonna invest the money in buying this patent. You had to find out How much it would actually cost to manufacture it. 'Cause you had to model this out, whether this was gonna be a viable business. Uh did you do that? We did.

Um October of two thousand two we had secured the patent with effectively a letter of intent, agreement and principle. We had locked up some period of time. And first thing we did In Las Vegas, Nevada, which is like a toy. No, it was it used to be the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association. Okay. This is it what you this was two thousand January of two thousand three.

I went to see what the reaction was. Built one and and you displayed it there? We took a prominent Spot at the show. We hired uh some dancers from Siegfree and Roy to be our jumpers along with my daughters. Uh, my youngest daughter and her three friends, and we just said

Like this is go big or go home. Did you I mean how how big was the trampoline market at at that point? Well, I would have said it was pretty small. I I I think that we had measured that we thought that the trampoline market that maybe it was a five to six hundred million dollar trampoline market globally. So you were looking for a bite out of that five to six hundred million? Yeah, I've never been greedy. A small business can be a good business. Absolutely. I guess we took a philosophy internally which was to think big, but start small, and so we tried. And what was a what was a reaction at the show? Like what did people say to you? What was really quite amazing actually, we had lots of different reactions. The first we had was from a retailer who came up and said, Well you can't sell this in America, you don't have an enclosure.

And I said, Well hold on, an enclosure isn't mandatory. They said, Yeah, but no retailer will sell a trampoline without an enclosure. And then I had somebody come up to me and said, You know, I have a Patent on the enclosure and you'll never sell this product in America ever. And then I had the at the time the CEO from what was a very large sporting goods retailer come up to me and said, You know? This may be the most innovative product we've seen at the show in years.

It's not dead. It's not dead. So um I decided to invest in some fundamental research, and I wanted to ask myself one question. Did any retailer in America believe the trampolines were dangerous. So dangerous.

That they wouldn't sell them. What was the answer? The answer was yes, and that was Costco. The CEO of Costco was a man named Jim Senegal, and Jim said I will not sell trampolines. Well.

And um so I made it my mission to try and sell Costco a trampoline. Okay, but before we get to Cosco. So Wha at what point did you say, All right, I'm going in. We're gonna get this, we're gonna buy the patent of production. Well, I think we were finished. We had I I was advancing all of this very quickly. I think contractually it was all locked up by probably May of oh three.

And what did it cost you? To be honest, guy, I wouldn't even remember the number. Um More than a million dollars? Yes. More than a million dollars to buy the patent. Yeah, to buy everything when everything was all said and done and all the settlements with the university, I think it was the it was probably close to that, yes.

So okay, so Keith You are a professor at the university. You come up with this invention, they sell the patent to Steve and presumably you you get a check for it. Yes, the arrangement with the university Was that

Whatever he paid would Be split three ways. So I gotta check. That was huge for for me. And I'm curious, a at this point did you I mean did you kind of have to deal with the fact that

you know, the rights are sold to someone else and and now like this guy Steve is gonna make it and like Go run with it. That's right. And that was a a a very sobering moment. For me.

And I thought. Yeah, okay. I guess that's the way it is. I guess I can let it go now. I don't feel like it, but I guess that's the way it goes. I've

There's a check coming and I've got to think of other things. And then Steve says. I'm gonna need a a bit of a helping hand'cause I don't have any trampoline engineers, so Do you mind giving me a hand with this?

Give me some technical. I said. Yeah, yeah. Fine. Okay. Yeah. And and and that came in fairness, you know, w Keith and I had a conversation once about risk and reward.

And so I asked him. What level of risk are you willing to take? versus the r economic reward you expect. And he said, Well I I I have I don't want any risk. Yeah. I don't want any risk. And so

We reached an agreement at that point as to what his role would be and how he would be compensated and and so it was good. Okay, so Steve, you are running the business from Canada and Keith, you are still in New Zealand consulting on the I guess on the engineering side. Right. Yes. So w w what was the next step? Well, Keith and I created the spring free enclosure. And we kept looking at all of the principles of our design and said, it better be soft.

Huh. Uh it can't be hard, and everybody had produced enclosures with steel poles. And we kept looking at this American patent and saying we can't infringe this. So we didn't sell any products, we didn't make any products, we just spent a year building an enclosure for the spring. That if you were gonna make this thing As safe as possible, it had to be enclosed.

And we decided that we would give ourselves a deadline. And the deadline would be the January Super Show. which was to be held in Orlando, Florida in January of O four, the two thousand and four super show. And what by the way, what made the enclosure different? How were you able to create this thing that Or safe. So Steve said we've now got a relationship with the people who make the poltron fiberglass. You've got to make the poll out of those

Same material. And I said, well, they need to be strong enough to hold this net up. So I thought, well, I can we we can try it. So had a post grad student. Who's needed some money so he's working in our backyard. We got these twelve of these around the trampoline fitted on and Tied the top of them together with with some cord.

Let's see what happens when we put a net on. post grade student, you're gonna spend the next few days finding some sort of net. Talk to all the fishermen people around the place, see if we can get us some neat on after. About four days he'd come back with some fishing net.

At the top and the bottom. So it was More or less like that. and enclosure in in a sense different than the ones that were out there. But it was this really flexible thing. So then when I came home from

University and the kids were still on it. They were bouncing off the walls. They were running into it and bouncing off. And I'm thinking, hey, this is really something we didn't expect. We've got a new play surface here.

That other trampolines don't have. We've made a rubber room now. This is way better than I expected. It's not just a safety net, this is another play surface. Alright, so you've got the enclosed Trampoline.

You're ready to introduce us to the world. Two thousand four. go to the super show uh in Orlando, Florida. And they had a competition there which was called the Product of the Year, basically. And if you got to a finalist or the top ten, you would be displayed in a specific area of the super show independent of your booth. So we made all the applications necessary and um we became a finalist. This was the unveiling of spring free. This was it.

And how did you do how many or did you get any orders? Well We got one important order. By Costco, Canada. Wow. They decided, okay, if we do it in Canada, there doesn't seem it's not as litigious. There are all really nice people there. They don't seem to sue each other. Maybe we'll try it in Canada. And they put a test in for in essence it worked out that we put in a test for four hundred pieces. Let's try sellings in Canada. So they they put an order for four hundred units? Yeah, we had about f the first order was four hundred pieces on a trial.

By the and by the way, where were you manufacturing them in New Zealand? Well, these first four hundred units we made uh I guess four hundred and eighty or four hundred and Ninety, I think, something like that in New Zealand. With one container load. One container load, definitely. And and and what was the retail price for for Well at that time the retail price we put it out to Canada was nine ninety nine. Wow. We'll clarify something.

This was at that time going to be one of the most expensive trampolines, right? So it was a big risk. Wha and you had to make the case that this was Worth the cost. when we had that very first product at Orlando is the same as what it is today, which is that we provide the world's safest trampoline. We produce it out of the highest quality materials. We give the longest warranty, it's a ten year warranty on everything. It's still that today. And so that was what we kept selling on the retailer side. But you were selling them for about nine hundred And ninety nine bucks.

That's a thin margin'cause it probably cost you It was more than that. We were losing money on every product. We had to do that to find out if we could create a market. Alright, so they roll them out in Costco's in Canada and how did they do? Moved very fast, very, very fast. So did they put in a second order? Um well because we'd put it on a test and that was the spring of that year of of O four, the next recurring order wasn't gonna really take place until their next spring by which was O five.

So then it was oh crap, what do we do between now and then? Yeah, because you you gotta generate some revenue. Oh yeah. And you're m still making these in New Zealand, which is presumably expensive. Um they were costing about fourteen hundred and Fifty dollars um to make one. And so We knew we couldn't continue and one of the things that had uh materialized uh at the super show in twenty th oh three and two thousand and three, I said to you that I had people come up to me of various things. I had an individual come up to me Um with a business card who said I manufacture sporting goods in China.

If you ever need a manufacturer, call me. And um when we reached the stage with Costco at the end of O four we said Okay, we gotta make the call. Which I have to assume was gonna be an important move, right? Because it's gonna reduce your costs pretty significantly. Well here was the thing that was so critical to us is that Key C was uh was essential. We had to make sure we could get intellectual property protection.

Not everything, but a lot of things are. It is. It is. You have to be careful. Um and we had to be careful. And the other thing is that um the rods that Keith had done were really They were all about technical know how So we weren't prepared to move that. So even to this day, most of the original Manufacturing components, the rods and the net. material that we use. We are using the exact same manufacturing partners.

They've come a long way the whole way through the whole journey. We've never deviated from that. But we moved All of the steel and a hundred percent of the labor associated with Yeah. All right, so two thousand f you gotta wait till two thousand five for this next big order. How many people were on your on your payroll at that point? Well I think at that point we between our engineering group

Um Our sales teams Uh we might have been thirty five. And you're burning through cash. Yeah, we were burning cash. We were hanging on.

No, I was running my payables long. We were hanging on for that Costco delivery in spring oh five. So so when Costco came back to you for their Spring of O five. you know, purchase. Three thousand two hundred and sixty five pieces. And but but you needed to finance that, right? Because they don't pay you first, they pay you like ninety days later. That's right. So we we um I hit the street and found uh Bought into a Costco PO.

So oh so this is somebody and this is interesting, this is somebody who looks for people like you who get a get a purchase order from Costco, need financing to actually make the product and they'll loan you the money at a high interest rate. At a high interest rate. Yeah. That was your lifeline.

It is the reason we survived and s and thrived. No, we weren't profitable. It proved that we because Costco represented a much bigger animal than just Canada. We went from Costco, Canada to Costco. UK, because UK was vie view as being safe. And we got to go from Costco, Canada Takosco, Japan. which made no sense to us. We didn't really know what we were gonna do in Japan, but we ended up selling three hundred and seventy trampolines in Japan through Costco. And then we got to go on Costco.com.

their e-commerce new platform for them, not in store, in two thousand and seven, I guess it was. So Costco is Up until this point, up until two thousand seven. Your biggest contract. virtually in in the northern hemisphere and and

Our only. Uh we were selling direct in places where we could, but they were basically 90% of our distribution. So you are now. in this thing. Two thousand eight.

They stop. They stop selling. Trampolite. Yeah, that was probably the hardest point. So what happened is that as we got more and more and more successful with the product in Costco, some of the buyers they were really proud and so they would Show off the product in a real

flamboyant way, you know, having it in a prominent position as inside of Costco's. And Mr. Seneco was um he opened every Costco. Yeah, he he came to every Costco opening. And there was a big opening in Halifax, Nova Scotia on May thirteenth. It was a Wednesday, oh nine, never forget the date in my business career. And um he had gone into the store and at the time he was still opposed to trampolines, even though we were being really successful. he was still uncomfortable with it. And and so w he walked into the Halifax store, I get a phone call from the president at the time of Canada, Costco.

And they said We're done. I said what do you mean we're done? And they said, We're done. I said uh no no no I don't understand. We're we're not how can we be done? And and and we skip a part guy which is in two thousand and eight we decided to build our own factory in China because we weren't satisfied with the quality. So I invested about five million dollars in building a Chinese factory. We did it because this was Costco. We were gonna be in store. This was gonna change the face of everything. And so we had been we opened that factory in October of 2008.

And all in preparation for our two thousand and nine with Costco and on the May thirteenth we were told we're done. And it was just'cause they had gone overboard in that store. They had made the trampoline one of the th single biggest highlights in this grand opening in Halifax. And he was just Best. The CEO. Yeah. Because because it was so present and visible, he walks in there and says, What is this trampoline doing in the center of my Costco? That's it. Those are the exact words. I don't think he really knew. I think we were below the radar. We were doing great numbers. We were doing great numbers for sporting goods. And so I was told if you need to talk to Mr. Seneca, you got a call on a Saturday morning in Seattle. I was given a telephone number to his directile to his desk. And you called?

And on the Saturday morning, shaking in my boots, I called. He was extremely polite. Shared his Reasoning within reason and he said, I I've made my decision, mister Holmes, but I will honor any purchase orders. that we have issued up until the end of this month.

So any purchase orders that are issued up until the end of the month will we'll honor those purchase orders. And I hung up the phone and I went. Oh crap. And my next call was to every Costco buyer I could find. Give me a P.O. Give me a PO, give me a PO. Because you knew you had a month left. I had less than a month. I had'cause that was the s that was the sixteenth of May. It was a Saturday morning. And uh

I had fourteen days and P.O.'s took longer than that to get usually. Wow. So what'd you do? Well, it was a really good business skill learning f session. I stepped back and I said, Okay, we have a product that has unbelievable safety, quality, and innovation characteristics. We have customers who love our product. I mean Our best marketing is on existing spring free customer. If a spring free customer has a spring free trampoline

If a parent who says, Boy, I really don't like trampolines, they'll sell it for me to other friends and neighbors, and fifty percent of our sales came from our customers. So we said Wherever spring freeze are in backyards, we have to make it really easy. And our biggest market at the time, based on Costco delivery addresses, was California. N Seattle. So we opened our own first spring free retail store on the off ramp of the Costco headquarters. In Seattle. In Seattle. So in two thousand Well, this is in late two thousand nine. So there you had a showroom, people could try it, kids could jump on'em. Yeah.

We called it we called it the Spring Free Experience Center. And that store proved to be Phenomenally successful. We were blowing the doors off the profits and we were just going like there wasn't I think there were very few retail stores that were doing The profit per square foot that we were doing out of that store.

I mean they were just Not flying off the shelves'cause it wasn't off the sh not a shelf, but that store started to just I don't know. Let me say this. We had a great dealer network we established as quick as we could in the US. They had trampolines on parade floats. They they went to every fair, they went to every neighborhood, they connected with the communities because we knew where we had shipped. So we had, you know, we had these, whether it was a pop-up store or whether it was a permanent experience center.

We went to consumers. We went out there, we did the shows, we had the stores. And showed that there was a business model which was Different than Costco. And so we took a direct to consumer model. And we use Keith?

That's the face of the organization. So he was the one who conveyed The story. The the attributes And the commitment to safety and quality. So he

How did you like so so so all of a sudden like you've got to represent this? product right to the world. You can do media interviews, you gotta do TV Like you are a self described introvert. I ca I I I can only imagine that was somewhat torturous for you to do. Yeah.

Yeah, y yeah, you're right. You're right. Steve Did give me warning. He said, W would you like to be the Dyson of Springfree? I said, What on earth do you mean? Well, you know Dyson, Dyson Vacuum Cleaners. So I went and had a look and there's

Dyson doing his thing, I thought. I suppose I could do that. If I come across well, you know, maybe they can use it. Maybe they it'll help with selling, so I said yes to Steve. So then he says, Right, well come to Toronto.

We're gonna have a week. A week of Filming. And I'm thinking Right. This is big deal. This is not just

Afternoons. So it was one of the scariest weeks of my life, really. So I end up in Toronto. In this big studio.

And find myself with Three cameras there. And lights, people all around, and microphones in front of me and they say, Right, well just talk. Yeah. And you did. So so I talk and then they say, Oh, you come across really genuine. You know, it it's it's you you really come across well.

And how did it come out? Phenomenal. Yeah, it was okay in the end. Okay. So here's my question for you. I mean it sounds like you were actually

Expanding pretty fast at this point. Yeah, we were over four hundred employees. By this is by by By late 2010, yeah, I guess by then we were four hundred employees and what I'm trying to understand is how did you expand to that number of employees when just two years before that Costco pulls out? Well they You know. Sometimes you do stupid things and what we did is um we decided to uh we could have gone home when Costco pulled out, but we actually went deeper. So we increased our commitment in the factory in China, we increased our direct strategy, we increased our ability to open in direct retail stores. Did you have to raise money? Um fortunately enough, we had we had been reasonably

Wise. We had been saving for those expansion opportunities and rainy days. So we needed to raise uh we probably invest maybe five to seven million dollars in the factory construction and a couple more million in some other stores. I think we had a debt raise of about

But I have to assume 2009, even maybe 2010 were tough years. Yeah, they were very, very tough years. But we didn't stop investing, we kind of said like you know, this is that risk. We we kept thinking that that opportunity the big big opportunity was just ahead of us. When did you start to see That Yeah, I'd say 2010, 2011. Um 2011 to 2013 were phenomenal years for us within the globally we had what happened, uh why? Well, I give lots of credit to Keith.

His design was Always flawless. So that that issue of safety that we kept talking about we now had Eight years of experience. So instead of saying we're the world's safest trampoline, but we've only sold two thousand?

You know, we were actually saying, Well, we've got there's a couple of hundred thousand trampolines out there and we actually have statistics now. And Keith started writing research papers and of of measuring our statistics and we were going, you know We remove ninety percent of the product related injuries. So He's taken his design has removed ninety percent. And so we got that message out Keith's videos and the way we distributed them, and we got traction.

And we got real traction. How much um how much does a Uh spring free trampling cost today. Well, we have of six different sizes, so it ranges anywhere from probably uh sixteen hundred to twenty four hundred dollars. So this is a premium product, and this is a very this is a an investment that you're gonna make for a while.

Yeah, Keith always said that when he put a spring free into somebody's back yard and I've agreed with him and we've continued that it should be that's it. They should pay the money, it should go in the backyard, there should be zero maintenance costs, and there should be zero s uh you know, support costs. So in other words If they got a problem, we back it. So we have a ten year warrant on The whole product. And how many of you selling? On average every year now.

You know, we we look at the you know, our probably thirty thousand is our annual volume and and um we build our business model around that. We've had years that have gone much higher and we've had some years that have been a little lower based on some of the economics. I mean, we opened a factory in two thousand eight, we lost Costco and there was a global financial crisis. I can tell you that wasn't the best year. Yeah. Um so we we had a tough you know, we had a tough year that might have been an eighteen thousand piece year. I can only imagine this first four, five, six years. It was nonstop.

Just non stop. Hustling, working, trying to get this out to market, calling people, getting rejected. People saying to you, What a trampoline? Who who is this? What are you talking about? No, they're not safe. Is it s is it still like that today? Uh

You know, for some of our staff, there's no question, but it's fun. Like I gotta tell ya. You know. You wanna be in a fun business, be in the trampoline business,'cause there's never been a circumstance where when the mom and dad have see their kid on the trampoline for the first time after they've made a a spring free purchase that they don't go. Wow.

This is great. Most people don't know we exist, but when they see us they go, Oh I get it. Do you have a a trampoline at the headquarters in Toronto? Yeah, every every one of our offices has trampolines, absolutely. And uh we you know, they're constantly being used in various forms. Do you do like board meetings on your trampoline? Uh we do uh you can see some office meetings that'll occur on a trampoline. No, we we're still a one at a time uh trampoline company. Um so uh Yeah.

So do you Do you consider yourself To be lucky that You know, this business has managed to become, you know, sustainable? Or or do you think it's because of your

intelligence and and hard work. Well, I don't know about the intelligence part, but um out of due respect for m the employees of our organization and for my wife and my kids who suffered. Through the early days. This has been about hard work. I was very for fortunate to meet Dr. Keith Alexander, but being fortunate was about a lifelong friend that I got. And Keith, what what about you? Like do you feel lucky that all this happened or?

It's it's both of those. Of course it's both of those. I do feel very lucky to admit someone like Steve who's Very persistent. One of the ways I like to think of it for me, the invention process, it's my part of it.

Is it's It's like having a child. The moment of conception is quite exciting. And then you Carry it and you feed it for years?

Eventually it starts to meet people of Of it's almost. And then you get less control. Less and less control. And who you're Child meets and where they go and how they grow up.

It's not. Very much in your control at all. There's a lot of luck there. So In that sense.

I've been very lucky as Steve's taken over the part to get it to the customers. So it's doing pretty well. That's Keith Alexander, inventor of the spring free trampoline. And Steve Holmes? CEO of Spring Free.

Keith is still a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and he also teaches product innovation. According to the company, Spring Free has sold over four hundred thousand trampolines. Worldwide. Hey, thanks for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And today's story starts in the winter of twenty fifteen.

Cindy Heilman had just moved to Toledo, Ohio. where her husband Chris grew up and Cynthia. Just feeling super almost like depressed about the winter. For her moving from Florida To Ohio. It was kind of a bit of a culture shock. Yes, it's so gloomy. Being from Florida, Cindy needed warmth and light. So she started buying lots and lots of candles, which meant lots of leftover candle containers. If they were in glass jars, I would hold on to them. Some of them were in a drawer, some of them were up in a cabinet.

We'd buy candles and say, Okay, this is in a really nice pot, or we can use it to put our Q tips in. We can use it for something around the house. But the ones that I would buy in ceramic containers, I would normally put a plant in it. And we have tons of house plants. Now this went on for two winters, cold weather, candles, candle containers. And by March of 2017, there was one big change. Cindy had become a stay-at-home mom, which was great, except for the weather. So one day, a friend sent her a card to cheer her up. I was wondering why it had so many like little bumps and dots on it. Those bumps and dots were actually seeds. They were embedded in the paper. And instead of throwing the card away, Cindy could soak it in water, put it in a planter, and grow wildflowers. I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. And Almost felt lucky to have it. Now around the same time, Cindy found a bluish grey planter pot, and she really wanted to use it. Oh, I could put some candle wax in this and

Just try and make a candle. She said, Hey I I think we could sell these. And I kinda did the math in my head. I was like, that's gonna have to be like a$30 candle. Nobody's gonna pay$30 for a candle. And Cindy turned around me and she's like, You just bought me a$30 candle last week. That's when they got another idea. They could make a candle in a planter pot and then use that paper with the seeds embedded in it. for the label. People will be able to grow wildflowers after they're done with the container so they don't have to throw it away. So they got to work. We had no idea what we were doing. We were just watching a bunch of YouTube videos different Pinterest ideas on DIY, how to make a candle. It took two months of melting wax all over her basement, but Cindy figured it out.

And then Chris said, Okay, we think it's a good idea, but will it actually sell? So they went to a trade show to find out. I was really blown away by how emotionally invested people got into our product. A lot of the guys, they would have their girl with them and be like, This is a cool product, isn't it? Do you want one? And that day. They sold every single one of their candles and covered all their expenses. And made a thousand dollar profit. It was also a couple days worth of work. And that was enough reason for Chris to consider quitting his banking job, because Chris and Cindy had been thinking about starting a business together for years. So we were in a really good financial position to be able to take This type of step. So it really didn't feel very risky to us at all. And so Chris left his job and joined Cindy in their basement. They took$4,000 out of their savings to buy wax, wicks, pots, and seed paper. and they made 850 candles.

And over five months at more than a dozen trade shows. They sold every single one of them. I mean it's it's back breaking work going to these trade shows every weekend because Number one, we don't have a weekend, we're working really long days, and then when we get back, it's okay, we have to make a ton of candles so we can be ready for next week and the next event. Over the past year, Chris and Cindy moved their business online, they got a$50,000 loan to scale up, they hired some employees, and even moved their little candlemaking factory out of their basement. But as married business partners, they're still struggling to find the right balance. Having the business out of our home for the past year has been a huge difference.

We just pick, you know, two or three nights out of the week, like okay, these two or three nights after Adaline goes to bed, we're gonna work on our business and the other nights it's just about us. We're not gonna talk about business and it's gonna be all about family. So far founders Chris and Cindy Halman have sold more than twelve thousand Growing candles. If you want to find out more about them or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, how IbuiltThis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story. Go to build.npr.org.

And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at hibtnpr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. Thanks also to Julia Carney, JC Howard, Noor Kutsi, Neva Grant, Melissa Gray, Sanas Meshkinpur, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candice Lim. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.

This is NPR.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.