Any runner who has ever bought a bottled water with the fiver in their
shoe can understand
VitaBand, the new product from Philadelphia entrepreneurs at VitaProducts that allows athletes to carry the contents
of their wallet right on their wrist. But in fact, the VitaBand started
from a much scarier place.
One day in 2007, co-creator Jason
Brown was on a 10k run when a car nearly clipped him, sending him diving
onto the shoulder. He made it home safely but what if he hadn't? He
hadn't left a note, no one knew where he was and he didn't have his
wallet. How would medics locate his medical information? How would they
contact his family?
"Had I been hit, I wouldn't have been found for days," Brown says. "Being the type of guy I am, I got home and started to look around for products that might be used for identification purposes for athletes and found that this might be a good business opportunity."
Company co-founder David
Waxman looked beyond the bracelet, which is not unlike existing medical ID bands. Along with bringing a point-of-sale payment option to
the VitaBand, allowing users to swipe their wrist to pay for that bottle of water, he began licensing the technology to manufacturers
of everything runners use: cell phone cases, exercise gear and other
proprietary partners. Waxman and Brown hope this bifurcated strategy will give the Vita technology life as both a product and a platform. After completing a first angel investment round
last year, the company has received a second round of investment and
looks to launch its pilot product, the original VitaBand, in January.
"When we came up with the concept, we wondered how to make this into a mass market product without a $200 million marketing budget," says Waxman. "We looked at the
Intel Inside model or the
Dolby Digital model, creating a bracelet to jumpstart the market for the licensing component of our business so we can focus on the payment and medical records and let our partners do the heavy lifting getting the products out in the marketplace."
Source: Jason Brown, VitaProducts
Writer: John Steele