Morpher - Folding Helmet

Market

Target market

People are cycling more than ever: in Europe and the USA more bicycles are now being sold than cars!

And there are now over 900 bike-share operations in cities around the world with more than 160 million riders, according to our calculations and Wikipedia. This is a massive market and one that is relatively simple to target yet Morpher is not just aimed at these schemes, it is also aimed at all other cyclists. And skaters. And Snow Sports. And emergency services. And the military. Oh, and the construction industry. And of course, we mustn't forget kids.

It's aimed at those who wear helmets now as well as those who never have.

More than 100 million people ride bikes in the US each year and worldwide there are currently 130 million bikes sold per year.

More than 200 million e-bikes have been sold, a figure which is expected to rise to 2 billion by 2050. Due to the higher average speeds of e-bikes it seems probable that helmets may become compulsory for them before they become compulsory for bicycles.

It has been very hard to ascertain the total size of the cycle safety helmet marketplace as figures have not been compiled by any major Market research organisation. Whatever the accurate figure is, there is little doubt that it is climbing as both sales of bicycles and associated safety awareness increase.

In addition, there are up to 180 million construction workers worldwide, which is another market we intend to target.

Snow sports had an estimated 32m participants during the 2014/5 season.
Safety at ski resorts is a priority and helmet usage is rising incredibly quickly.

Morpher is the world's first fold-flat EPS helmet to our knowledge and the fact that it can fit into most laptop bags or backpacks makes it a natural product for commuters as well as snow sports enthusiasts. We hope it will appeal to anyone that finds helmets too cumbersome to carry around.

Characteristics of target market

Morpher helmets will of course retail at a premium over existing medium to high-quality helmets. Morpher will receive a 10% royalty for all license sales made by the manufacturer.

Some years back, I was involved in an accident. I was hit by a car and thrown off my bike at pretty high speed. I flew through the air (stylishly) and landed head first on a curb stone (a bit less stylishly). I broke my shoulder, smashed my chin, broke a couple of ribs... and if it wasn't for my helmet I would almost certainly have died... or been seriously brain damaged.

School children, in particular, are generally loath to carry helmets because they won't fit into the backpacks that they use to carry their books around. Morpher overcomes this problem as, when folded, it is less than 25% of the width of a standard helmet, allowing it to slide easily into a school backpack along with books.

All our research suggests that the market is growing at a huge rate. There is an unprecedented surge in bicycle share schemes and increasing pressure, some mandatory, to wear helmets.

During our research, we found that 85% of cyclists claim that they don't wear helmets because they are too cumbersome to carry all day on the off chance of needing one.

Snow sports helmet use is increasing dramatically with many resorts, especially in the US, insisting that skiers wear helmets. These are a pain to travel with and Morpher flat profile will solve many of the portability issues.

Marketing strategy

We have been in discussion with TfL, and they are keen to explore the possibility of including Morpher helmets in their offering at some point.

We are also in discussions with Motivate, who operate 10 bike share schemes in major cities in North America.

Our Indegogo crowdfunding campaign had a target of $35,000 but so far we have sold almost $400,000 to Indiegogo contributors. The response to the thousands we have delivered has been astonishingly good. This traction will help us to launch other crowdfunding campaigns. It has also helped to bring us many distribution inquiries from all around the world. We have already done deals with Israel, the USA, Japan, Korea, and are currently negotiating with others, including Brazil.

Jeff Woolf has been selling products on QVC in the UK and US since the mid-1990’s. Morpher is a tremendous product for QVC as it is demonstrable, simple, potentially lifesaving and innovative and QVC have already launched Morpher. We believe this will help to encourage pull from consumers and will demonstrate the considerable benefits of the Morpher helmet over standard non-folding helmets. QVC in the UK reaches around 24 million homes. If the product is successful here then we plan to show the product on QVC in Italy, Germany, Japan, China and the USA.

Strategic Sports, our manufacturer, exhibits at many of the world’s major bicycle shows and will promote the Morpher concept to its existing customers as well as use the concept to try to gain new ones.

We plan to tie in with large corporate sponsors to help to subsidise and market helmets to bike share riders.

Our helmets are available for sale through our own website and we plan to sell on Amazon very shortly.

Finally, we believe that there is a large corporate market whereby firms can offer branded Morphers to staff.

Competition strategy

There are other "folding" helmets on the market but these are all very flawed as none fold flat to our knowledge.

The flat-folding ability of Morpher is what really sets us out from the competition and is our core value proposition. Our patent is strong and already granted in many territories meaning that we have strong and comprehensive protection.

Morpher is especially complex to make as it currently consists of more than 120 parts and has taken one of the world's finest helmet manufacturers almost 4 years to perfect. This complexity in itself is a tremendous barrier to entry for competitors. Our comprehensive suite of IP is obviously another!

The other "folding" helmets retain a bulky and cumbersome shape and also are complex to open and close. Morpher, on the other hand, is extremely simple and quick to operate.

Unlike traditional helmets, Morpher can be easily vended from major bicycle hire points and this is another area that we are looking at in detail.

As a result of our awards and the resulting publicity, Morpher already has tremendous traction and as such, has excellent global awareness.

We have identified several key players that we'll approach as we move forward for possible partnerships and collaborations.

I believe that we will be changing the behaviour of many people who were simply not willing to consider wearing a helmet in the past because of the bulk, inconvenience and lack of portability.

We have many exciting plans which we expect will ensure the long term dominance in this important new safety arena.