No offense. But if you were a publicly traded company I would short your stock or buy bearish derivatives.
No offense. But if you were a publicly traded company I would short your stock or buy bearish derivatives.
Same here. Brutally honest opinion: Lame and expensive.
No Offense guy wrote:
No offense. But if you were a publicly traded company I would short your stock or buy bearish derivatives.
Assuming there is a need for this type of product, wouldn't a visor/hat/beanie series make more sense? It would be higher up (and therefore presumably easier to see), and it would involve less material and therefore presumably cost less.
Just my $.02. Yay entrepreneurship. Good luck and God bless.
They look pretty cool, I like the premise. I can see someone using these if they run at night and don't carry a phone with them. However, carrying both a phone and the controller could be a pain, and the phone takes care of the alarm function. I think a big part of the security of a reflective vest is that it is immediately identifiable as a human on foot by approaching cars, lights on pants are pretty low and would take an extra few moments to ID as being on a runner, although the visibility from a further distance might negate the difference. My suggestion would be to either market the controller as a replacement for running with a phone for safety, or switch it up and have a phone be the main controller component which would give more alarm options.
At Night Athletic's lighted running clothing will revolutionalize running at night. The products are a perfect blend of comfort, utility and practicality. I have full faith that these products will help save lives and promote a healthy life style.
I forgot who said it, but I completely agree with the comment regarding safety on college campuses and for younger runners who may need some extra help in visibility (aka not as much experience running at night). I know for a fact college campus lighting is still a problem and most women on campus will feel better about running alone if they know they will be seen. I think this would be very successful in that market. Great job! Good luck!
costly driver wrote:
Tim P. wrote:Good question. My first lesson in the athletic wear industry was the manufacturing cost of women's vs men's. Women's clothes have far more cuts and sewing points than men's. This is all labor cost and that is the major cost driver of the garments.
Convenient excuse to extort more money from women.
Extort? I'm not making anyone buy anything. I get the pants made and assembled in the US. I get the technology made overseas and assembled in the US. I could compete better if I made everything and assembled everything overseas. I don't want to do that now. Hopefully people will see value in US assembled products.
track chick 13 wrote:
I second the other poster who said why does it have to be capris, especially ones >$100? For some reference, out of the ~5-10 pairs of shorts that I rotate, most were in the $5-10 range with the most expensive being $20. It's hard to justify spending $100+ on something like this when I don't even spend this much on shoes. Given that it is so much more expensive than most of my clothes, I don't think I'd be willing to spend more than $50-60 on something like this.
I know I am saying this a lot, but I want to answer all the questions:
Our product would be so much less expensive if we got them made and assembled overseas. The only thing we have made overseas is the power pack, but we bring it back over here to have assembled. We are competing against items made and assembled overseas. That might be what we have to do, but I would like to see if there is a market for a US product first.
I just want to thank everyone for their input. For the most part, it was a really good conversation with critical, constructive, and supportive comments that will help me make some of the decisions as we move forward with this. Again, thank you all!
I'm in the running/outdoor business.
First, sure, there is a customer for just about anything. But there are a lot of challenges. Clothing has to fit and perform first and foremost. The lighting/alarm is not more important than that. Second, the appeal of various clip on lights, headlamps, flashers is the versatility. They can be worn with any shorts, pants, shirt, jacket, etc. regarding the alert, there are phone apps that do the same thing and more.
I've run with many groups over the past 20 years, mostly at night and have seen / done things that are very simple / cheap for night time.
Though kudos for trying just not for me.
1) Headlamps. Great, cheap, other than interval running, works great. Cars can generally see it, esp coming at you and if you hear a car coming from behind no reason why you can't give them a glace back from ahead and then they easily know you're there.
2) 360 visibility. Addressed by two things.
a) Usually the easiest - Turn the backlight on your watch on full time. = 270 degrees of visibility. Just charge your watch after and regain the 'hours' lost.
b) people buy $1 blinkies sold by running stores for $5-10 that use the red spectrum and put them on pants at the waist, or attach to various pockets (mostly done by the female crowd
c) running with a phone on backlight - same as #2A
3) Security - if you feel unsafe run with your phone. I'm sure the ability to call 911 etc there is the same as to activate your distress alarm here. You need your arms free.
4) Panic color = red. Well as explained above most lights at night are already red. Nobody's going to think your red flashes are any different in passing. If you are screaming you are screaming device or not.
These noxgear things are pretty neat. On sale for $45 for 360d visibility and $40 for a matching outfit for your dog.
Also *SJW ALERT* Why do the guys get a bigger discount than the ladies? The ladies are already charged more!
That Nox Gear stuff is cool/futuristic looking.
The products that the OP is selling are too expensive for me.
On a positive note, Tim, that is a great photo of you with your wife and dog. Hope it all works out for you.
Cheers
These are wild:
There are a few issues that I think have been overlooked by this discussion.
One is that wearing a light does not always help motorists avoid you. Seeing one light doesn't always tell you how far away an object is, how fast it's moving, or what it is. If you live in a city and a bike with a steady white light is coming at you at night, it's really hard to estimate where it is and when it will get to you, and sometimes lights blend together (background lights from houses and so on). When you see a car coming at you at night, you know exactly how far away it is and how fast it's moving because you know how bright headlights usually are and you know how far apart they usually are on the car.
This is one reason why I actually like the idea of clothing that lights up your form/figure as a person running. Motorists know what people look like, so if they see the figure of a person lit up and moving around at night they'll be better able to determine where the person is and what it is and how fast it's moving.
I don't know about the execution:
-How much will improving leg visibility help? Shirt visibility might be better as others noted...
-Will I want to spend the money for it?
-Will the shorts actually fit me well? I own four pairs of shorts and only one of them fits me really well, two of them fit me well enough that I don't mind running in them, one of those two is so short that I sometimes get comments, and the fourth somehow causes a lot of chafing and I don't wear it unless I have nothing else clean.
-Will they look tacky/nerdy or fun/nerdy, or actually kind of good?
-How annoying is it to recharge the battery?
I think a lot of people have been loudly skeptical of the product because of the corporate undertones, but I think that if I had lights sewn into clothes that I already liked and wore regularly and the battery were already charged, I would sometimes use the lights when running at night.
I've put lights around my hat before (via light-up shoelaces wrapped around it, with the tiny battery packs just pushed under the hat band) and that was fun. I don't do it too often anymore because of the hassle and because I'm not convinced the function is worth it (wearing silly things with friends is fun; by yourself it isn't so much).
I don't think I'd ever use the emergency light function, I just can't imagine it being effective and being able to do it and remembering to do it in the case of an accident...
one of those two is so short that I sometimes get comments
Yah, that's not good...maybe swap them out for another pair
Thank you for your nice short statement in support of pantyhose with night-lights.
I don't currently run with any lights or anything, but It's a precaution I see being easy to take on night runs. That being said I still haven't bought any type of light. I do all my night runs on my usual day runs so I know what sections are rough and where to be more cautious. I agree you might have a market but for better or worse it probably isn't the LETSRUN crowd. To that end, one point I haven't seen yet is short style - I think alot of people on here balk at "running" shorts with an inseam greater than 2".
That said, one question I saw you ask but haven't seen a reasonable response to is how much I'd pay for these. Mostly I browse the clearance racks and sale sections for shorts and I don't buy them often. I'll freely admit I tend to undervalue most things and I rarely buy anything but groceries and gas within 30% of MSRP. Most I'm usually willing to pay is $30 if I feel like I need another pair or really like something. So for me to be lit up with flashers in 360deg lets say its another $20 of clip on lights, bump it up to $40 for batteries through the life of the shorts. Now $70, but I can still use any pair of shorts I want. For the sake of cost comparison, that fact out weighs the convenience of having all this in one. And that $70 is still before the $50 battery pack? Honestly the more I think about that the less reasonable it seems. $50 for a 3hr battery life on LED's? $25.
TL;DR Stepping through logically, these should be worth $70 to me. If I walked up to them in a running store I still wouldn't be motivated to buy them at that price. I'll have to pass.
I think this looks like a product with potential. Unfortunately, as Tim is finding out, it is rare to have an idea so great that it sells itself. I think the price reflects that reality.
In typical LetsRun fashion, this thread reflects the same responses as usual to any running-related ideas: (1) "if its not free, its stupid;" (2) "I am offended that anybody would dare try to sell me anything;" (3) "I am jealous that I didn't have the testicular fortitude to develop this on my own, so I am going to pick it apart and bash it;" and (4) "since an elite runner didn't develop this, it is not worthy of my attention."
Tim, keep working hard - you are doing what you need to do in seeking input from runners, however you have stumbled upon a den of terrible personalities whose input might not carry as much weight.
It is the solution to the problem that Tim has discovered:
1) bumping into other runners at night.
That is a huge demographic for massive sales.
Tim came here to test his product on the Letsrun.com Sharktank internet TV show.
The uncomfortable and dark results of the test are on this thread.