All you need is one hand! Slap Bag, the Simple Little Accessory Pouch, is a novel carry-all for your bike that can be opened and closed with just one hand. Yes, that’s right, you no longer have to stop to unzip your backpack or fiddle with you seat/handlebar pack to get your gel pack, energy bar, lip balm, or phone out. The Slap Bag mounts easily and securely to the handlebars and stem of just about any type of bike with four Velcro strips while the aluminum bar at the back of the bag can be bent for a custom fit to your bike. But here’s the really special part…the patent pending closure mechanism, similar to those slap bracelet you used to play with as a kid. That’s what makes it a snap or should we say, “slap”, to get in and out of the pouch with just one hand – no zippers, Velcro, or magnets. The fabric is waterproof and has some structure to it so it won’t be flapping around in the wind, but it’s thin enough so you can hear your phone ring. Available in 6 colors. You’ll be slap happy with the Slap Bag!
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MORE ABOUT THE PODCAST...
Josh sits down with Slap Bag founders Chris Boyd to discuss where the idea of Slap Bag came from and where his company is headed. SLAP BAG is a Simple small Accessory Pouch that mounts to the handlebars and stem of your road, mountain, cruiser, fixie or kids bike. It opens and closes with one hand for quick snacks for long hauls and to carry your gear from point A to point B like a charm. Where you’re out for a quick trip or a long journey, Slap Bag will ensure that everything you bring is on hand and accessible, while on the go.
How did you come up with the idea of Slap Bag? [01:24]
Slap Bag founder Chris Boyd explains he created Slap Bags as a way to get over a hurdle he kept running into as an Adventure Racer.
“...One of the hurdles I kept running into was nutrition. I’d be totally fit for the race and 8 hours into an event I would crash…I was trying to come up with better ways to access my food...”
How did you come up with the initial design of your product? [04:12]
Chris describes how he based the design of Slap Bag off slap bracelets that snap around your wrist.
Are Slap Bags waterproof? [05:56]
“...The bag is made of a waterproof fabric, but the closure itself is not waterproof…Getting a fabric that was quite stiff and durable was important...”
After a 10 years since building your prototype, what’s taken so much time to get it to the point where you’re just now wrapping up a very successful kickstarter? [07:42]
“...Really the idea was bouncing around 10 years ago and it got so far that I turned it into a prototype; and I made 15 or so, handed them out to buddies, and everyone told me how cool they were. But, life gets busy...in the last two years is when it really came back to me...”
What is your full background? [10:24]
“...I went to college in Ohio and was a pack a day smoker...I was in college going into senior year when I was quitting, and I added up how much money I’d spend on cigarettes a year … and so I took that money and I bought the most expensive used mountain bike I could find...”
What was it like finishing up such a successful kickstarter campaign? [14:10]
“...It was a roller coast, It wasn’t the journey I expected my kickstarter path would take me on. It ended up very successful and that’s awesome…”
While you’re building Slap Bag are you involved in any other projects? [15:24]
“...I own a company in Boulder, colorado called Technology Helper. It’s a company where we are the IT department for small and mid-sized companies…”
What has your experience as an entrepreneur been like? [15:59]
“...I’m learning every time I do something, everyday is different… this is new, my only background in this industry was when I worked for a company that was an outdoor gear manufacture…”
Where did your entrepreneurial spirit come from? [17:19]
“...I suppose I have always had an interest or aptitude for that kind of path...it was a tough choice, it was a very lucrative safe place to be at this company with a great opportunity to grow or not know what is going to happen tomorrow and try to put the pieces together as you’re doing it…”
Is there anyone creating anything similar to Slap Bag? [19:07]
“...The bento bags and the bags that mount onto the frame of your bike, they do some things quite well...My phone is with me and I never felt safe to put a $600 phone in my bento box.
How have your mentors influenced you in your business? [20:55]
“...When it came to the kickstarter choice, there was a great event here in Boulder called Boulder Startup Week; it’s a week long entrepreneurial gathering, and I went to one of them called ‘when to kickstart’ … I found a connection in that group…”
Tell us more about your manufacturing process. [23:47]
“...I actually just pulled up some online searches for manufacturing … this one we’re manufacturing with in the United States really rose to the top and worked with me a lot on the prototyping process…”
What is the culture behind your organization? [30:06]
“...Well, it’s me and my wife, and my product development team, which includes people like my children; my gear testers … It’s a family and friends business…”
What would you say was one of the hardest parts of starting your business? [33:23]
“...I think the kickstarter was the hardest part, but I thought it would be the easiest part … I thought it would take on this life of it’s own where it creates its own energy and momentum…”
What ultimately made your kickstarter campaign so successful? [34:58]
“...We were trying to get the word out to, not just individuals, but groups of cyclists. Folks who might be doing touring rides and trying to get some traction from that area…”
What would you say is one of your biggest fears with Slap Bag? [36:52]
I think just going back to something I said before, ‘Not knowing what I don’t know’...Really trying to find the right path is the thing that I’m visiting the most...”
What advice would give to someone trying to start a business? [39:22]
“I would try and ask a lot of questions of other people who have gone through something similar...I think if you got an honest opinion from a lot of people, in any walk of life a lot of people are figuring it out as they go…”
What’s in store for the future of Slap Bag? [41:41]
“...If I answered that with what I knew going into it I think what I would have said is, it would be a platform for other creative products… I have another cool product that may come out of this experience...”
What would you say has been the best part about running Slap Bag
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Do you enjoy riding a bike? This is one item our guest says is a must have for cyclists all over the world!
]]>Alright Mr. Chris, what is the Slap Bag?
The Slap Bag is quite a simple device, and as we came up with the product we actually ended up defining what it was by its own name. Now we kinda refer to it as the Simple Little Accessory Pouch, which actually spells the word SLAP.
The coolest thing about the Slap Bag is the fact that it opens and closes with one hand. There are a lot of things that go on your bike that make it convenient to carry what you want to carry with you, but none of them do it in a way (in our opinion) that is as transparent to the user as the Slap Bag. So, you’re not behind a zipper or velcro to get to your stuff. It’s very clear to you whether the bag is in its secure state or not.
So for us, that has been kinda the most compelling part about the product, is its simplicity. And the bag is constructed with a product so that the front edge of it is something to similar to a slap bracelet from when you were a kid. You know, that slap bracelet has two states: a flat state and a rolled-up state. And the bag is quite similar, it has two states: it can be closed, or it can be open, and it’s quite easy to move between those two.
So, where did the idea come from?
The idea is not new. The idea came to me about nine years ago, which is when I developed my first attempt at a prototype. I was doing a lot of long-distance adventure racing, I’d kinda caught the bug of this team sport where you could orienteer and ride bikes and kayak and rappel and you know, do it all with your buddies.
We were doing races all over the United States, and at the time when I was kinda at my peak of racing, I was racing for a local company called GoLite, and Timberland was also one of our biggest sponsors. And that presented a lot of neat opportunities, I got to race in Brazil, I got to race in the French Caribbean, and all the while I was working on getting in shape, but I was struggling with getting enough calories, getting the food in. So I had come up with this thing where I took some Ziplock bags and I took my old badge from going to Outdoor Retailer, and I took the little clip off of it and I zip tied it to my handlebars.
And I took that little Ziplock bag, and my favorite food to distract myself from the effort was Goldfish, so I put my Goldfish in there, and I’d start the race and I’d undo the Ziplock and I’d start eating my Goldfish, and we’d start racing. Except we’re mountain biking, so we’re bouncing all over the place, and my Goldfish are bouncing all over the trail, and in adventure racing, one of the components is you’re really trying to outsmart the other competitors with one of your skills, which hopefully is being a good orienteer. So the fact that I was leaving this trail of Goldfish along the path that we had chosen, which we thought was the best way to go, wasn’t a great idea.
So I needed to improve the idea, and that’s where the idea of a slap bracelet came to me. So I adjusted my design and had my first prototypes made in 2007. So in 2007, I made about 12 bags, and I gave them to my best 11 friends and I kept one or two for myself. And I got such great feedback. People were like, “OK, sweet, where do I get one? How do I get one?” And I just really hadn’t thought it through that far at that point.
And life began to change, I was getting away from racing a little bit, starting to have a family, but the idea of this product was still with me, it was still one that I was really passionate about. I still rode with mine, my friends still rode with theirs, and even 9 years later I still have my original prototypes that have been riding around on my bike and on top of my car for that long, and they still work!
The neat thing about it is that when I decided to kinda reawaken the idea, I used the same fabric, and I think it’s important to know that it’s a new product, but it’s been out getting its paces through some of the tougher adventures for quite a long time. So we feel like we’ve blocked ourselves from one of the common problems with new products, and we’ve done quite a bit of testing. Over the last 18 months, along with finalizing our patent pending status for the closure, we have refined the design of the closure in kinda two significant ways: one, reduce the sagging effect that the bag was having when it had a lot of stuff in it. And the other thing we did that we thought was kinda novel was for the velcro attachments that attach to your bars. We sewed in the loop and hook a little bit differently on the bag so that the bag could actually hang underneath or against the bar. And the reason that became important was we were testing it on our cruiser bikes, and as my life had changed we were doing more of the “Riding into Old town Louisville with my family” and every time I get on my bike I typically have one or two of my cell phone, my keys, and my wallet, and today I’m carrying Band-Aids for my son who’s skinning his knees on his little bike.
So the uses for the bag are kinda up to the owner. In my own time with the bag, I’ve found quite a few uses beyond just going on extreme races. It’s really a great fit for the recreational use as well.
Chris Boyd during his racing days
So what moved you from making your personal prototypes, to now 7 years later, trying to hit the market with this?
I’m an idea guy. I just seem to have this interest when I’m doing things. I’ll be out on a mountain bike ride and I get kinda away from it all and my mind just starts to connect with what I’m doing, and I’ll just start thinking about what I’m doing and how I can make it more enjoyable.
So I’ll come back from all these rides and I’ll have all these great ideas, and this is one of those ideas. And it came down to, I had had enough ideas that I had not pursued that I had seen come to market, and I didn’t want this to be on that list. I wanted to find out, I wanted to prove it. I wanted to prove to myself that I had actually come up with something that was really good, and I wanted to follow through with it and I wanted to bring it to people and let them say “hey, that’s a product that we connect with. That’s something that I found value in.”
So that’s the driver. I didn’t want to see it on a shelf and think “oh man, that is my idea! Why didn’t I do that?”
So a little over 18 months ago, I started working on the patent. And I started working with a really good patent attorney who does quite a few of the patents for Pearl Izumi, trying to just make it so that if I go through with this that I’m protecting what I’m creating.
So where are you at now with your patents?
Our patent pending status was accepted in December. Now the process from that point can be kinda slow, they usually say it can be a year for them to go through the review process but there was quite a bit of legwork that happened before that for us to get the submission in.
We were doing patent searches, looking for previous existing utility patents that we were unique enough that we were a different product and not something that already existed.
And it turned out to be novel and unique enough for us to go through with the utility patent, and we’ll find out in the next 6 months here if it was novel and unique enough for the patent.
So where and when can we expect to get a Slap Bag?
So the when is now and up thru July 28th at 6pm. That when is being kickstarted through Kickstarter. We thought that Kickstarter was a great place to launch this and the reason was that I really wanted the market to tell that this is a great idea, and Kickstarter is a great place to do that. And building up to this Kickstarter has been a real fun adventure. Including writing a script, setting up shoot days, getting all your friends out, meeting up in downtown Denver, heading out to Red Rocks, riding our bikes up Flagstaff, mountain biking all over, just catching footage.
So the Kickstarter launches Tuesday [June 28] at 6pm. We are having a Kickstarter launch party down in Denver at a brewery called Joyride Brewing Co. They happen to be some close friends of ours and they’re quite bike focused, and we just thought it’d be a fun way to kick it off, get some friends together, and launch the campaign from the party, and get it out to the network. Hopefully, we can get people beyond our network to start giving it some exposure and doing a lot of sharing, trying to get the name out there. We’ll have the campaign open for about 30 days.
As it relates to when people get it, we won’t know that we’re fully funded. Our goal is to get $20,000, and if we get that, we’ll get the contributions people committed, and then we’ll start to ship bags. Right now we’re working with a cut and sew company out of Washington. Right now we have our first final goal samples already approved and ready for production, we have our first mini production that’ll be finished before the launch party. We made 100 of them to try and get some more exposure during that 30-day window when that Kickstarter is open. Then our lead times during full production is somewhere between 4 and 5 weeks. It’s short like that because we’re making our first set of runs here in the United States.
We want to get it in people’s hands as soon as possible, and we don’t want to miss our wonderful summer as best we can. As soon as we get some traction, and that we’re gonna get funded, we’re gonna start making the product.