April 2009 Newsletter
Greetings from the LucidLights team! It's been a while, with lots of changes in both the LucidLights and LucidBrake arena, and in the overall economy and playing field too. There's a lot to report, so let's get caught up!
Meeting the economy head on
As we all know the current state of the economy is making a lot of business activities challenging. These changes have slowed down our progress, but rest assured that LucidLights and LucidBrake are going to be successful! Capital raising has slowed, so we are working hard at creating capital in-house to be able to take each of our next steps securely and assuredly to get these products on the market. Our plan to get this done is working well to date. The name of the game is patience though, as this process will take more time for the required growth.In a nutshell, here is just a sampling of some of the ways we're raising in-house capital:
Secrets To Creating Passive Income, coauthored by EJ Thornton and John Clark Craig. In today's tough times people are looking beyond real estate and stock market investing, or even a full time job to increase their streams of income. This book presents dozens of ideas to help you do so. This book is selling well, and we're putting these ideas to work ourselves as part of our capital raising strategy! http://tinyurl.com/lucidlights
Advanced Book Marketing, by EJ Thornton. EJ has been teaching this subject at CFU for years, and her authors who've put the many ideas into action have experienced excellent book sales growth. Again, we're putting these ideas to work ourselves as part of our capital raising strategy! For example, those of you following John on Twitter (@jccraig) have read tweets from several book signing events recently, held at major books stores such as the Borders at Colorado's largest mall. http://tinyurl.com/ccjz7a
Android Cell Phones. John is strong into the learning curve for developing applications for the Android-based cell phone market. You'll be hearing a lot more in the near future about Android phones, as these are predicted by industry insiders to overtake the iPhone within two years. The list of creative application ideas is long, but two of them are worth mentioning here. Using the built-in accelerometer John is creating applications that mimic both LucidLights and LucidBrake operation. The T-Mobile G1 display is not as big or as bright as our LED based products, but the results will be interesting, marketable, and most importantly, will provide built-in advertising for the "real" products. YouTube video clips show well on Android, so imagine using your cell phone as an inertial brake light, followed by a video clip such as the one we currently have at...http://LucidBrake.com
Book Publishing. EJ's book publishing business is growing and doing very well, and some of her authors are fascinating people! Cynthia James used to be married to Lou Gossett Jr., played "Lexie" on Days of our Lives, and now is a spiritual leader for thousands at Mile High Church. Jim Hall parachuted into Mexico in the 50's in search of lost gold, arriving faster on the scene than could the Russians or Germans, had Mexico's parachuting license number 1, was the inspiration for the hit TV series "Ripcord" from '61 to '63, has a letter of recommendation from Congress, is a retired Brigadier General, and has many amazing stories, even some that can't yet be told to the public (stay tuned!). Othneil Sieden founded Doctors to the World, a volunteering organization that provides medical assistance in third world locations. His thirty books cover a wide range of fascinating, useful, and timely topics. Otti, as he likes to be called, has teamed with us to grow the publishing business in several ways. http://BooksToBelieveIn.com
LucidLights Progress
A few months ago we redesigned the core circuitry to use a Microchip microcontroller instead of the SX chip from Parallax. These new chips are more industry-standard, they come in a full family of parts which allowed us to pick exactly the right capabilities and at a better price. Also, because of the enhanced technical features such as increased memory and easier programming, it allowed us to add several powerful and cool new features. Here's a summary of the new capabilities the user experiences:- Much more stable horizontal and vertical images than before.
- Improved horizontal and vertical image timing and resolution.
- Now operates on either one or two batteries (instead of six).
- User can toggle through up to 64 sets of unique, long messages.
- There are now half a dozen safety modes in addition to messages.
LucidBrake Progress
If you haven't seen our 30-second, self-explanatory video clip showing LucidBrake in action, please take a moment to view it on our web site... http://LucidBrake.comLucidBrake is an intelligent, inertial brake light for bicycles. Here are key points about it:
- Can save lives and prevent thousands of injuries each year.
- Requires no wiring or mechanical hookup to the bicycle's brake system.
- Adjusts automatically for any mounting angle.
- Adjusts automatically for steep inclines, up or down hill.
- Blinks during normal riding for high visibility.
- Bright brake light lights up during deceleration.
- Brake light stays on longer for longer braking.
- Strobing bright light during extra intense braking.
- Shows very well in video clips and is self-explanatory.
- Consumer interest has proved to be HUGE!
- Over 150 individuals have now called or emailed to express interest in buying a LucidBrake as soon as they become available.
- The Salida, Colorado police department contacted us to discuss providing LucidBrakes as incentive for citizens to register their bicycles.
- The CEO of Inspired Cycle Engineering, a UK manufacturer of high-end recumbent "trikes" (with 58% of sales in the U.S.) called us to express interest in putting LucidBrakes on each of his thousands of trikes for 2009, and to offer them as add-ons for his previous customers and in his catalog.
- John Brown wrote from his bike cooperative in California. He wants to offer them to customers preparing for the night-time bike rides they hold each year.
- Catalin Hustea contacted us from Romania desiring to be a distributor there, both for bicycles and for horse-drawn carriages, as they have a significant safety issue there, and LucidBrakes would provide an ideal solution.
- The owner of a motorized bicycle shop in Lebanon, Missouri contacted us to discuss buying LucidBrakes for his products at wholesale.
- Paulo Almeida wrote from Portugal to ask about distributing LucidBrakes to his "over 60" bike-shop clients, and to sell them from his web site to other customers.
- Bob Circosta, founder and CEO of Home Shopping Network, wants to put LucidBrakes on nationwide TV as soon as we have a minimum of 2,000 ready to ship from their warehouse.
- Gord Norton is setting up a rental fleet of high quality powered bicycles in Alberta, Canada. He reports a new Alberta law now requires him, and other similar manufacturers, to install head light and brake light systems, so he called expressing great interest in LucidBrake as an ideal, cost effective way to satisfy these new requirements.
- The CEO of PediCab, a Colorado company making 3-wheeled bicycle "taxis" (something like 800 of them run around New York City alone) invited us to visit with him at his factory. He has brake lights now, but he's investigating how LucidBrakes can be more cost-effective.
Because of the economic climate, several of these companies are showing much more willingness to think "outside of the box" to help us get the first manufacturing run accomplished. We believe this provides a win-win opportunity for us to get beyond the manufacturing startup hurdle, and for these local US companies to gain a long term local business partner.
For example, Arrow Electronics has gone out of their way to meet with us over half a dozen times, providing free sample circuitry parts and technical suggestions and advice. Mountain Molding has met with us three times, and when the CEO returns on April 15th from his overseas trip he wants to discuss our business plan to see if he can bootstrap a manufacturing relationship. Two other plastic companies in Colorado Springs expressed interest in doing "half off up front" arrangement to help.
We are also checking into opportunities for grants, such as through BikesBelong.org, and we have a couple of sources who are actively pursuing capital for us through the small business initiatives and funding that might arrive any day now as a result of the administration change. A big hurdle is the up-front cost of "tooling", or creating the injection molds for our plastics parts. Recently we visited with a plastics company in Colorado Springs that creates aluminum alloy molds, instead of using the more durable steel. We'd been told aluminum is not a good option, because the molds are only good for a "couple thousand" injections. However, this company explained how they were thinking outside the box to utilize aluminum molds as a very cost effective solution. They use a tougher aluminum alloy, sometimes even nickel plated, to extend the life of their molds to "hundreds of thousands" of injections, then they developed a unique system to shave off 1/8 inch of the surface and re-tool the mold cavity as an extremely cost effective way to refresh and greatly extend the life of their molds. The up-front cost of their tooling is much lower, and they guarantee to create as many parts as you want for as long as you want, and they will cover all costs for any retooling. They also agreed to get started for half the fees up front, making this a great way to get our first production run started.
How You Can Help
Put your name on the list. Want to buy one of the first LucidBrake's to come off the assembly line? You can add your name to the list, and we'll contact you once they're ready. Just go to http://LucidBrake.com and click on the "How To Order LucidBrake" link. There's no obligation, it's just a way for us to let interested parties know when they become available. Note that LucidBrakes will be a great gift idea for all the bicyclists you know!Have you authored a book, or do you know someone who has? As part of our passive income plans, and following our own advice as set forth in Advanced Book Marketing, we've created a powerful way to promote books on several thousands web pages, with high-rankings in the Google and other search engines. This automated system of software and web page marketing and promotion is proving to work well, and our fee for the service is very low. An increase in sales of about two books per month covers it, and results so far are proving to be much, much better than that! Read more at...http://AdvancedBookMarketing.com
Amazon purchases. Did you know you can buy groceries or just about anything imaginable under the sun through Amazon.com? We find their prices, service, speed of delivery, and ordering security to be top-notch, and we've saved money by ordering a lot of our family and business purchases through Amazon.com.
And now, at no cost to you, as part of our passive income efforts you can help LucidLights (which helps all of us reach profitability sooner) by clicking on the following link to enter into the Amazon site.
Please bookmark this link! --> http://tinyurl.com/lucidlights
Here's how it works. This link takes you to our Secrets to Creating Passive Income book page on Amazon, using our affiliate ID tag. From that page you can go on to explore all of Amazon, search for anything at all, and if you buy anything at all we receive 6% to 7% of the sales price, just for bringing customers to their site. You can save money with their hard to beat prices, save gas and time by shopping online, and this passive income stream helps LucidLights and LucidBrake to get ramped up. It's a win-win for everyone.
Fundraising opportunity. When we're slightly further along, LucidBrake brake lights could provide a great opportunity for fund raising in parallel with the sale of other safety devices such as bicycle helmets. Please keep this in mind, and as the right opportunity presents itself at the right time, you'll recognize it. Let us know…
Commissioned sales. Thank you to those of you who have expressed interest in selling LucidBrakes and/or LucidLights at a variety of venues. If you think you'd be able to sell LucidLights or LucidBrakes please email EJ at the address below. We've designed a plan that includes a generous commission.
Thank You!
With gratitude we thank you all for being a part of the LucidLights family, whether as an investment partner or as an interested party.-John & EJ
EJ
Cell: 720-879-3495
Email: ej.lucidlights@gmail.com
John
Cell: 720-879-3493
Email: john.lucidlights@gmail.com
Twitter: @jccraig