[LIBERTY TRIKE THEME MUSIC] Hi, everyone. Yasmeen here from Electric Bike Technology. I am their Social Media Manager, and I'm here with the one and only Jason Kraft, the CEO. So, today we're just, you know, wanted to have some time just to so, today we're just, you know, wanted to have some time just to have an open one-on-one discussion about the companies. You know, specifically, the Liberty Trike brand, and then you know, we'll kind of
dip into something like a brief discussion about the industry as a whole too. So, Jason, thanks for jumping on, and without further ado, let's kind of just get right into it to start, you know, can you just tell us a little bit about, you know, you and maybe some history into the company and just how it all got started? Yeah, sure, so Electric Bike Technologies, as it is now, actually started back in 2008, almost 15 years ago now, and back then, the company was called E-BikeKit. Which is our first brand, which is a conversion system and so I've been in the business for, yeah, almost 15 years now, and so we've come a long way.
At this point, we have four brands behind us. We have Electric Bike Store, ElectricTrike.com. A lot of people don't know that. We still have the E-BikeKit. We have over 800 dealers, and it's all B2B for that brand and a lot of bike shop still, conversion still and then we have the Liberty Trike, that we're going to talk about a lot today, which is what you see behind me, and the Liberty Trike has become very popular, and about a week ago, the leading E-bike company. Right, the one who spends the most money on marketing for sure came out with something similar to Liberty Trike. So we're here we are to discuss, go over some of the value propositions for that trike in particular. But yeah, the history is 15 years, started with a conversion kits, an E-BikeKit and here we are. The rest is history. Awesome! So, can you kind of tell us where the
company is now and you know, what does EBT do, and you know what's been your recent focus on company? Sure so right now, we have about 30 employees, we're about 15 minutes north of Philadelphia. What you see behind me is, is a real backdrop, it's not a video or anything like that. 18,000 square feet here and under that flag is a whole other room where we where we have E-BikeKit brand and the shipping that stuff out in the back. Awesome. Yeah, okay. So, you know let's kind of hone in on Liberty Trike. Can you tell us more like specifically the features and the value propositions of the Liberty Trike? And but before you do with each one, can you kind of compare what others have brought to the market recently and how Liberty Trike compares, you know, to this new offer offerings on each one of these features? Absolutely and let me just tell you, I mean Liberty Trike, I think we just crossed the anniversary for 7 years on the market. We started out back in 2015 with two successful crowdfunding campaigns. One of them is GoGo and the other Kickstarter and yeah I can't believe it's been 7 yrs already but we've been working in this market and the we've learned a lot and yes, so last week the leading e-bike company came out with a new trike. It looks similar, specs are a little different. But yeah, I
love the opportunity to go over each one of them and kind of explain, you know, why we do certain things, why we don't do other things, and what some of the benefits are to Liberty Trike. Sure, that's great, I mean can we maybe focus first on the pedal assist, you know what is this and how does it apply to the Liberty Trike? Sure, there's some obvious value propositions that, that others have come to market with very recently and they're touting some things that Liberty doesn't have and one of them is pedal assist. People may you know, I don't know what people think about why Liberty Trike doesn't have it, but I'm glad to have the opportunity to explain that. So I don't assist means that you're having some automated actuation of the propulsion system on the trike, and that is that in electric bikes that means you're pedaling and it's either picking up torque or your cadence of your pedaling and then it's automating the propulsion. And Liberty Trikes does not have pedal assist because Liberty Trike was designed for seniors and if you're over 70 years old and you're riding a tricycle and especially in a a cadence type situation with the pedal assist, not to get too much, but it's basically around the crank of the tricycle and as you pedal around it measures how quickly you're doing that. So based on your cadence, then it will give you a little bit of throttle. Now can that be can that be smooth or not? You
know, you could do some things with programming to kind of smooth it out. The problem is for seniors though, that if you're it, it can be unexpected. So, let's just say that, you know, somebody is on the trike, a rider and they're getting up to a stop sign. It'd be pretty natural to take another revolution on your on your pedals, on your cranks, and in doing so, it might thrust forward. So, I would say that, you know,
knowing our market, we've never thought that, that was like such a benefit to put pedal assist because the downside is that you have a lot of people who are over 70 years old, who might get an unexpected thrust and unexpected, you know, thrusts on a bicycle, when you're out on the road. Especially if you're a senior, it's just not, not a good thing, in our opinion. So, you know with Liberty Trike you have a throttle-on-demand, and you can pedal and they're separate and so it's much more simple and so I think once people get, you know pedal assistance kind of, a one of these pieces of jargon, we're using the electric bike industry that is really good if you're on a 2-wheel bike. You're doing something else, but for
our market, for our riders, for the majority of them, it just doesn't the added benefit, does not make sense when you consider the risk. Right, so it's definitely a safety thing, and it's something if you ever thought you did it to you, definitely do it. But you're specifically not doing it just for safety reasons. Correct. Got it. Okay, fair enough. So, let's talk about fenders, you know why? Why not? You know, what's the story behind the fenders? Yeah the fenders, I mean yeah you know it's come out recently has fenders and that's and that's cool. You know fenders, we could maybe we'll do that at some other point,
but we have other things to get to that, I think are more important. And the other thing is you know when you really know your market. When you're not just trying to put you know bullet points on a value proposition table, sell things. You understand that seniors are not riding in inclement weather. They're not trying to; they're not using this to get back and forth to work. They're using this to go down to the corner store or, you know, to go watch the kids itself. You know, the grandkids soccer something like this.
Right. It's not like they're out riding in the rain and they're just not. Maybe some are, but for the most part they're not and so the rear fender when you when we thought about the packaging and everything else and they can get bent, I mean we might put them on later but you know, it's something that, that people ask for once in a while, but not so often and it's also not a safety feature and it's also not as important as you know, others coming to market might think and they don't have a market intelligence as we do. So, you know, maybe we'll do that later. There's other things we'll talk about, that I think are far more important. Got it, perfect. So, I think this is important, so the width and stability. So
how does, you know how does the Liberty Trike stack up to this? I mean what's, how is that important when it comes to Liberty Trike? So, the width stability, I mean I'll tell you that in the beginning Liberty Trike, you know, we used to work with Worksman Cycles, who's been making tricycles in the United States for over 100 years. We work with them for the first couple of years and we had a lot of discussion around the width because anything on three wheels, especially when it's in a delta upright tricycle position, a traditional tricycle. Position like Liberty is you get tippy and I think these new ones that have just come to market, I mean I could put those on 2-wheels and a heartbeat if I wanted to intentionally and so anything on 3-wheels including a lot of recumbents, you know we offer like 13 different models of tricycles and six-seven recumbents as well and you could do this on anything with enough speed on 3-wheels and go on 2-wheels, you know potential for tipping. Now with Liberty Trike, you're down to a 12 mile an hour top speed and you have a speed limited reverse which we actually invented in 2012 with our with our E-TrikeKit product. But you know so you don't have as
much speed to get to that tippy but also it's like that happens when people really don't know how to ride and we always recommend that people take a couple of hours to begin with for a day or two to get used to it and so once people are able to properly manage that, then they have personal responsibility not to do dumb stuff and that's a great, that's a great thing about our target market here and our community and our customers. Know them, these seniors, they understand that. They still understand personal responsibility, so you don't have to go sacrificing the ability to go in and out of doors, the portability, the maneuverability of having a more narrow rear end. Just so you know, somebody doesn't have to learn and take personal responsibility not to do anything stupid. Which means ride fast and take turns and whatever So, you know, and we have so many, we have you know, 10,000. We have such a community of people, and we just don't see that as a problem. So, if
somebody does that, I think it's a sacrifice of the product and that kind of design itself, because Liberty can traverse doorways like no problem, but if you're at 33-inches with recent, recent new offerings are you're going to get stuck in that doorway. I mean, somebody over 70, it's like I can't even see too well myself, I'm 48 years old, but you know, trying to traverse in and out and do certain things. It makes sense to have a little bit more narrow wheelbase. Absolutely no, and just someone that's constantly just as a social media, you know, manager, I'm in the group all the time and I see first-hand just, like you said, this community that we have, and I'm talking about their trike and how much they love it, that's one thing that I always hear. You know, they love that it's compact, that it fits through, you know, narrow, no hallways. It fits in their apartment; it fits through store aisles. So, I you know, I think that's what makes
it so unique and so desired, to be honest. Yeah the portability of it, the fact that it folds very easily and it separates easily is huge and other things coming to market right now they really left that out. I mean especially with the steel trike that can hold a lot of weight. I think what's come out recently is 82-pounds and there's great marketing of young men picking up an 82-pound piece and it's just like, that's not going to work for the real market that this kind of trike was, you know, the people that are actually going to ride and used and purchased. Absolutely, I mean, and you kind of, you know beat me
to that. I mean can we talk a little bit more about the folding. I know that's like one of the key features if anything that our audience and you know. The marketing budget, yeah. So I have a frame here and you can see, and this is, you know this, this is the hinge, and you can actually separate this and anybody who knows Liberty Trike knows this. There's quick-release here which is very common in the bike industry, and you get this to get this to go. Kind of holding this frame and doing it, but very easy to kind of fold. And then the other thing is, and I'll do this, you can pull. Little bit here, but if I pull the pin out, this is called Clevis Pin and I pull that out, I can actually separate the two pieces, and this is what makes liberty strikes so unique. This is a fine hinge and I think you know others could even do this if they
wanted to, but they have it on these new offerings, and I think you know by next year we'll be. They'll be showing people a little bit something else that makes that even easier for our community. So that's amazing. Very important. Sorry, so I don't know another trike on the market of this size and You know capability that does that. Exactly and like I said I think that's what makes it so unique and that's
why it's just it's such a sought out you know e-trike so. That's that, that's perfect and so let's talk about, let's dive a little bit into the battery size and the placement. Can you just kind of explain that a little bit. So again, back to these recent offerings that have that have just come on the market, they actually
decided to put the battery on this area up and down. The neck of the trike and it's kind of a big battery here and you know. Clear should focus on the positive stuff, but when you put it there and you have seniors, especially if you have seniors who are a little bit heavier, right? Like you're going to have your knees banging this thing. The other thing is that you don't need a big battery. What's come out lately really is towing a 55 mile range and I don't know anybody in our community of thousands that really needs 55 miles or whoever wants to ride 55 miles. You know, it's just totally the wrong demographic if that's what you're thinking, that you need a 55 mile range. So, you know, the Liberty Trike battery is an 8 Amp hour battery that's been done for a lot of reasons. It's 36-volt and so, that battery, you know, it's
not that it's under 200 watt hours and you know without getting too much into the weeds over certain size, then it makes it very difficult for the customer to be able to return the battery if there's ever a problem or for service or things like this. It also can make it difficult for shipping out with regard to Hazmat regulations and things like that. So, you know where you can take it, what you can do with it. Gets very complicated when you get larger plus you don't need it. So why add the extra expense and why you know why complicate things when you know it's almost like a product these this products that come out recently, it's like they didn't listen to the market, they just thought like, oh if we just add to this and add more specs, add more range. That's what they're going to want. We'll just you know and by the way, we haven't mentioned the thing, I mean what's come out recently is like $2,500. Liberty Trike is $1,598. We raised the price once, seven years by 100 bucks to offset, you know some
something crazy shipping that we thought encountered over the past couple of years and had to absorb into nearly cover it but that's. That's kind of the deal. So, for $1,000 more you get a lot of specs you don't need, and the battery is one of those things. The other thing is with the battery replacement, we have it in the back. If you can see it's under the basket on the on the yellow over here. And so it's easy to slide in and out and if you wanted to get two, if you ever wanted to double your range, let's say it's 8 to 20 miles per battery, depending on a couple of factors. Liberty Trikes, you can always get a second battery and carry it with you and just double your range as well. Absolutely and I know a lot of the Liberty Trikers do that already, the ones that know they might need it or if they feel like they're going somewhere, you know they'll be triking far. So that's a great
alternative to have. Real quick, the other thing with the battery, with what has just come out recently is 48-volt and Liberty Trike is 36-volt. Well I will tell you, that you know someone who understands e-bikes, volts just batteries. When you add voltage, you might get a little more pep, which you don't actually need on a little trike like this for seniors but the other thing is, voltage equals speed and your speed is limited already, Right, so you don't need it. These things are a marketing bit and meant to sell, not to improve
what's needed actually for the people that's actually going to use it. Gotcha, no that makes complete sense. So, the next thing I want to get into was probably one of my favorite things. I know one of the favorite things of all the all the purchasers that we have, and it's about the colors. So, there's ten of them. You know, why 10 colors and you know how can you do that? Right, so
this was hugely important and again, listening to our community is how this kind of came about. So, we knew that that color was going to be important. When people are going to spend $1,500, $1,600 on something like this, you know, they want to make it their own and our seniors have a ton of personalities and they name them, and they do all this kind of thing. So, it was important for us to be control that. Not only that, we could you know what you see behind me, I mean Liberty Trikes are assembled here and one of our builders can build 4 Liberty Trikes, in one day and our assembly line and that's kind of how we do it. But let me Liberty Trike has fifty-two parts, all put together here just outside Philly. We bring things in from all over the place. They're imported parts from China.
The wheels, the tires which are very important from Taiwan, many of the critical parts with the drivetrain and things we actually make here 10 minutes away with one of our partners that does CNC axles are made here as well. So, we do a lot of the finer points here, but then. You know, these individuals behind me that are assemblers, they're putting this all together here. So, it gives us this opportunity to paint them different colors and so we have 10 vibrant colors. All ten, I think are better than what's recently come to market, which tries to appeal to everybody. So, you end up with this completely gray flooring color and most ikey companies do that. So, I think it's a really unique aspect and a real competitive advantage for
Liberty Trike that we actually powder coat, powder coat here and the exhaust colors and really if somebody and we've had people do this like say if somebody wants a particular, they called an RAL number, a particular color palette for powder coating, we'll accept that you're willing to buy the bag of powder. We can actually do it in in almost any color you want. Wow, I don't even think I knew that. Yeah sometimes we do it! That's awesome! Like I said, I think I even, you know, just this this past year did a fun post about that. Just asking, you know, what color they chose, you know by asking the ones that I've already purchased, a Liberty Trike what color they chose and why. And the answers were awesome. I think they were so great that I even made a blog post about it. So, check it out if you haven't. But yeah, it's definitely a fun feature to you know. When you're in the purchasing process, all right. So the next thing, I want to touch on was the headlight.
So why are there no lights? So that's a good question. You know, we could, we obviously have the, technology available that we could right a headlight, we could get it to the battery that first of all. The headlights that you see on a lot of electric bikes, they all come out of China and they're just not that good. They're LED's, they're just not that good. They're really kind of cheap. I mean some of these headlights you can get for three bucks. You know, I mean manufactured from the manufacturer and they're just not that great. And then with Liberty Trike, you have to run a wire down and over the folding separable hinge, right? Right now, there's only one cable that runs underneath the trike and across that and across that, that point in the frame and that is the battery cable and that easily comes apart. If you ran another cable to deal with, if you did that just to tap the battery. So, it complicates things.
And the truth of the matter is, and this goes for a lot of accessories, by the way, you can go on Amazon, and you could find 100 different models of headlights that are better than that $3 you know, China, China headlight, you don't need the cheap headlight. So, it's kind of a gimmicky to just to be able to plug it into the battery just to say you have a headlight. When really and especially with Liberty Trike you can go out and get something that ten times brighter and more useful for a couple dollars on Amazon and what is cool now, a lot of these lights they have a micro USB or whatever or a battery that is internal and so you just charge them. Well on a Liberty Trike, on the handlebar, there's an
LCD, under the display unit is a little rubber cap and pull that back, and that's 5-volt USB. So, you can charge your phone, you can charge the light. So you know, you just go. We don't need to force people into our ecosystem and do things that are proprietary. Just to make more money, we're not in that business. We're in the business of making useful things and making them affordable because we understand that our community may be on a limited budget and really appreciates useful thought and not marketing gimmicks. Exactly , I totally get it and that USB thing, another thing I didn't really know. I don't even think there are some Liberty Trikers that knew that. So in case you didn't know, it is there and it could come in
handy, like Jason was saying. So that's really cool. Job on by, you know, The thing is like these big companies who bring things out recently and like they have a ton of money for marketing. But the fact is, you know, we spend most of our time trying to make things, trying to make things better.
I guess we haven't told enough people. The cool thing is we have this amazing group online and Facebook where a lot of seniors hang out. You know, this is just within the community. That kind of thing can spread. So, we'll be posting this video in there. They'll see it probably, you know, 10 more people
said. You know what, that just gave me an idea. Maybe I'll even do a posting in case you didn't. The hidden features, these guys didn't tell you about, they trying to make the trike better for you. Exactly, they love it before, they'll love it now. Now I want to you know well, I'll wait for your, I'll wait for your next question. Yeah. Well yeah. Let's just get into that and then if there's anything that we can wrap up at the end.
Anything that I missed but so, carrying cargo. This seems to be something that others you know are focusing on. How does Liberty try compare, you know. So, so this is a big one too, right, back to that value proposition that other companies are using in their marketing. It's about carrying stuff, right.
So, the utility, well, let me just start off by saying again, if you don't really know who the market is, you might think it's younger people who really need to carry and actually 300-pounds. That said, you know, there's not a lot of that. Like within the community, but occasionally there is, if somebody wants to do gardening, something like that, right? So in the past we have offered a hitch and I don't have it on my desk right now. Maybe someone, maybe someone will bring me a hitch, but the So someone's going to bring it to me right now. So in the past we've offered a hitch like this, which is something we repurposed. This actually goes on the mirrors on 18 -wheelers, but this little hitch right here, we modified a little bit, put this hole in it. We can put this on the rear of the Liberty Trike on the frame,
see the purple one behind me? It goes right onto the back, and then you can pull any kind of trailer like this one that you see here. Right. So this is so we're actually going to be offering these again soon. They went out of stock for a little while because one of the distributors went down. But these are like these are like 10 bucks and we're again, we're not in the business of making money off our accessories. So we're going to offer them the people. The other cool thing is and people are going to start to look at this out in the community soon is that for a little while now, our trikes have been going out with a little bit of a modification to the frame and I'll show it to you right now. So something new. So if you can see
here, there's a metal tab that's been welded on. Can you see that? Yup. Okay and it's got that same kind of hole as the hitch. So if you don't have a frame with that, you can always buy the hitch. But now for a lot of new Liberty Trike users. You have this hitch that's already welded on to the back of the frame. That footage that hitch pairs directly with the coupler on this cart behind me, so you can easily hook that cart up and we went through a lot to figure out you know exactly where this should be too. You can
see it's not centered, it's actually on this side. Right. So a lot of you watching for the first time, check your trikes you might have that it's gotten recently and this part right here, you know we bought a couple hundred of these and we brought them in. So we're going to be offering them, we're going to be offering them at a really low price. It's going to probably be most of what's out there. That said, it's like we didn't charge extra for this. So the ability to carry things in that utility you can have with Liberty Trike. Only we're not thinking of how to just lock you into our ecosystem and do whatever. I don't really care if you buy this cart or not. That'll hold on 120-pounds going to make it you know very inexpensive for
for people that want it directly from us. But if you want, again if you go on Amazon, you can find almost any cart and there's a lot of different carts. Can you carry kids, carry heavy pets whatever it is we're not in the cart business, right? So if I can add a hitch, it doesn't cost me money. That's kind of value
I want to give to our users and we don't need to lock you in to be able to do it. So don't think Liberty can't pull, Liberty can. One more thing on that, because recent offerings are touting the weight. The load that their new offerings can do and I think they're at 415-pounds. Well, that's great if you are going to put a lot of stuff on there or if you're, you know, if you weigh that much them. There's still steel, the frame and Liberty Trike initially had, we had, now it's up to 300-pounds, eventually we'll be putting it back again.
The problem wasn't the frame of anything, or why we taken it down. It use to be 300-pounds when we first started, when we first came out. The problem is, it started to create problems with the seatpost. We remedy that, the second thing is we're in the business of wheels and we have been since 08', with E-BikeKit. We build more wheels back there are four full time wheel builders back there and I'm pretty sure that this company, Electric Bike Technologies turns out more hub motor spoked wheels, that we build here, than any company in the country, for electric bikes. So hub motors goes in the middle and then we build these wheels. So we understand wheelbuilding. The thing is if you are going to a much heavier weight,
then you should go mag wheels all around. Hmm okay, so you don't have wheel problems and these new offerings came out and they have these spoked wheels but they are going over 400-pounds and I don't know how that's going to turn out. But I know for us, were going to be transitioning to these really cool mag wheels and then we can start to up the weight limit. But as a sales guy, under promise, and over delivered
is always it. So we wanted to be a little careful on that so we took ours down. But you know, we have thought of these things and there's a reason for everything. Absolutely, and you guys are really great with listening to your market and really just tailoring the product to really meet the needs of the audience. So I think that's really important. So let me say something, in the business world, if you take a bunch of money and get a big investment and take millions of dollars, eventually most people will want a return of their investment and sometimes that going to force, I'm not saying that's happening right now, but that can force a product to market, seeking returns for investors, without pay attention or listening to the actual users in the market to make great things and so a little bit of that is happening recently, it's more of a cash grab and lock you into a ecosystem and then up sell you. Recently, some of the marketing out there said, their tricycles are platform Right. Well, in my opinion, what they mean is, they put a bunch of threaded holes on stuff, so they can up sell, like it doesn't even come with a rear basket, with one of these things. That's like, you know, there holding back on certain things and they add a couple of hundred bucks
or more to be able to add all of these different things and for me that's not really like a platform, for making something better. That's really a platform for taking money out of your customers pockets for every little thing that should kind of part of the design to begin with. Exactly, which is why you offer that, you know the rear basket comes with it. Absolutely. That's amazing and I think, like I said, I know that's what the community knows and respected buyers chose Liberty, such as, you know, a sought out e-trike. So kinda want to touch base on a the mechanical brakes. Can you tell us a little bit more about that on the Liberty? Mechanical brakes that they're mechanical breaks on the on
these recent offerings as well very simple. So the front brake you know stopping power is important. Front brake is a disc brake and it does happen to be a mechanical which is a little bit more simpler but we are considering you know it doesn't again it doesn't cost us much like. In the back end to be able to add this. Like right now, we're in, you know we're kind of considering that maybe the next run or a couple runs with testing hydraulics, and we'll be likely adding that without changing the price. So you know a little bit down a lot. Okay. perfect. So the reverse,
you know, Liberty has it, you know, how does that, how did that come about? What's the story behind the reverse feature? Yeah, so I said, I mentioned this earlier in this interview, but in 2012, you know, we were selling conversion kits and a lot of people were trying to convert like Sun Traditional trikes, or Worksman uprights and things like this and so. We heard, we just listened and we heard from users and they said really cool if you could do reverse. And so I worked with our manufacturer and we came up with a speed limited reverse. These new offerings don't use the term speed limited. So I'm not sure if it's the same forward and reverse, but yeah I think I think we were the first to do that and implement that in our controllers and our systems to be able to have a speed limited reverse. So Liberty Trike, will do 12 miles an hour forward and all the red button on the throttle and you're reverse and then it's limited to three miles an hour in reverse and we think that's helpful. But yeah, we I think we invented that in 2012 I think. Others recently are kind of pretending like it never existed, which I find
just amazing. Well the proof is there you guys, you know, you guys have had this this feature going, so there's that is a lie for sure. It's a cool feature - good for them! Absolutely, no it's really cool. So I know we kind of talk about you know, you know, weight limits a little bit. Can we talk a little bit about the steel material on just kind of a brief discussion about that? I kind of already covered it as far as, like, you know, the trike itself is steel. It makes it heavy, which is why it's so important that you're able to separate it, especially if you're going to put this into your vehicle so you can pick it up. I know our community can't, could not pick this up if it didn't come apart because it's steel and it's heavier, right? Then the other thing was, you know, about the wheels and the problems getting up to heavier things. I will tell you that probably in 2023, we have something in the without giving too much away, but you could do this in other materials like aluminum and maybe that's happening, maybe it's not, I don't know. You got to, you got to make a couple of say we're always working to
upgrade all, you know, upgrade or kind of make things better. I think our communities used to it and they don't get too mad at us because we don't charge for it. We do this, you know, we put the tap on the bike. We didn't ask you for anything. We're just, you know, trying to make things better. We last year we had pedal extenders. We changed our stand the way that works. Um, so. Cool. You guys are always finding room for improvement, and I think that's really, really cool. So something else I would like to touch base on, you know, something that I personally liked because our market loves this so much, which is the packing, packing, sorry, packaging, unboxing and assembly and it's such an important aspect of, you know, the Liberty Trike design. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, so this is a great one and this is one where, you know, you would think somebody like me who owns a company like this and makes a living and by the way, we're so grateful to be able to make a living. I am personally, and so are all the people here, the fact that we get to make a living. Doing this and I think it's really the best going off on
kind of business tangent, but we're really just so grateful for it. I think it's the best one. We can make things that people not only use but they fall in love with, and it helps them and it improves their lives, but then it puts food on the table for the people who work here and we're super, we're super grateful for that so. This, this, this, you touched on packaging, and I think it's so important because when we started and designed Liberty Trike, the packaging was there from day one as well. So we had to kind of work backwards to make sure of a couple fine points. Now what's recently come to market comes in this beautifully engineered box. I don't know how much went into it, but it's big, it's definitely oversized and of course the rolling in free shipping right now at such a high retail price of $2,526, if you had a basket 2,800 bucks. So, that the shipping's definitely in there somewhere. With Liberty Trike, we designed the package and we work with Trenton Corrugated,
which is just over the bridge originally and we put a lot into how do we, how do we make this fit into a box that's under the volume dimensional weights for the private carriers, UPS, FedEx, so that we don't get an oversized charge, which used to be $55. I don't know what it is now because nobody pays it because we've done this design this way, so the packaging works that way. We can ship, we ship flat rate $40 and in the continuous United States and you know, and then out-of-the-box the way that this is designed, you don't need any tools, not even the smallest Allen key. We're not giving you any tools. We never will, because you don't need them. You, I don't care if you're 70, 80, 90 years old, you know 15-30 minutes with our video and instructions and the hardest part will be getting off all of the carefully you know, placed bubble wrap and little protective pieces that we put on there to make sure it's safe and you know undamaged when it gets to you. So out-of-the-box, no tools, other offerings that have come to market, you have big box, very beautifully designed but you have a whole toolkit that comes with this. Right.
We know, like I said earlier, you know I have to wear this glasses to see the difference between flat and Phillips, these days and again I'm 48, so you know, we try to have empathy. We have a big rule here at this company and it goes from people on the phones and everybody behind me and doesn't matter what you do here but you, number one you have to have empathy. It's so key, to put yourself in other people's shoes and we try to do that with Liberty and with regards to what is what is that person going to feel like and what is that process going to be like for them. We don't want to make this a hassle for you. So have empathy, be fair, be kind, be cool. That's our mantra here. So, so just so everybody knows. So the packaging was critically important. Now there's another aspect of this and this is a huge one and it started to dawn on me as I as I see these kind of similar products come to come to fruition and be offered to the market now as last week and that is that, you know the returns process. You might not be, you might not
feel comfortable on the Liberty Trike or any trike, it doesn't matter. Let's say, you know, someone buys this for a gift for Christmas, for example, and they buy it for the grandmother or grandfather or whatever, and they're just not comfortable. That's fine, like we offer, we offer a 21 day, no risk returns. And what means is if you get the Liberty Trike, you try it out, you know, for a mile or two, if it's just not for you know and that's totally fine. I mean that's direct consumer model. You have to be like that, you can return it within the first 21 days and all you have to do is like put it back in the box, we'll send a call tag, meaning you didn't even have to print anything or do anything and UPS or FedEx will come pick it up.
We'll throw a label on it, you just put it back in that original box. Where you get, when you get really complicated with the box, the packaging and I don't know who's going to be able to put it back in to that very oversized box and then how much is it going to cost, you know, from retail to a business with that shipping is so that return it costs more than it does when we ship it out of here from a business to retail. These people should just know that and so I don't know what that's going to be like. I just can't imagine anyone from our community. getting one of these new offerings, with this huge, complicated box toolkit and then not liking it and then wanting to return it and having to put things back into this box and then what is the bill? Who's picking that up on the return? So you know, you really have to think about that aspect of the trike and I think it's a huge selling point for us that people are able to try it out. And to be able to return it so easily if there's a problem. I will say one more thing on this particular topic and that is service and so one of the cool things about our company is we do have a couple of brands and I've mentioned you know E-BikeKit, right, the conversion system. 800 dealers in the country, there's a lot of local bike shops. We have relationships. So ultimately if somebody needed,
take something to a bike shop to fix they could. But way before they even consider going to a bike shop, the Liberty Trike was designed in a modular way. And what the what that means is everything can break down, and especially the electronics on it. You don't have to get your multimeter out, you don't have to be an electrician to be able to sort this out. We have something
we call a Rescue Pack and what that means is if anything goes wrong electronically, we can send you the key components, the LCD, cables, throttle, the brake, you know, whatever it is electronically in the system, and those just by, by a process of testing, a process of elimination, you can literally swap each of those modular electric pieces to find the culprit. And then we can warranty it or you know, take care of it, that point. The other thing is because it's so easy to break down by hand all of the mechanical parts. We can also ship that. Let's say you know something happens to the rear end and you know it gets hit by a horse and buggy, something happened. So can you or gets hit by a car, God forbid, something happens to
the whole front. Right. You can send the whole front out, or you can send the whole rear out, or you can just send a wheel, or you can send a front. Very true. What you could just send the seat, like just a basket. It all breaks down. So, when you think about these things, you have to think how modular it is in terms of service and how that works and I think just, you know, having this experience of the past seven years with our community and doing it so much. Really focused in on making that process, no hassle and just as pleasant as possible for our, for our customers. Absolutely, no, I mean that's the best it's going to get, if you ask me. I mean I've worked with a lot of brands and a lot of businesses honestly I've, I see first hand just how much praise, you guys get with your customer service. So it's, it's, it's truly amazing and thank you.
Yeah, no really. I want to say something because when I first started this it, you know, with Liberty Trike in particular, back in 2015 when we brought this to market through these crowdfunding. People said I was nuts. First of all, they said there was no market for it. Secondly, they said someone over 70 is never going to put it together themselves, direct consumer
won't work with this age group and how are they going to service it and it's going to be a disaster and here I am to tell you seven years later, it is the exact opposite of a disaster and we have figured it out. And those people are so just so cool and so self-reliant as I really love, I really love working with them. It's different than working with, you know, the mountain bike crowd or the whatever. Like the two wheeled space I kind of try to stay away from because the people who buy Liberty Trikes and use them, these older people with the no filters and the commonsense attitude. The honesty. You know, these I'm really just happy to be, to be working with them for sure. No for sure, they are a cool bunch and if you're not part of the Liberty Trike Riders group
on Facebook you should definitely join that you'll see for yourself. So I know we're kind of you know little deep into this and maybe running a little bit of time but just you know two more topics, I really quickly wanted to head on if that's Okay with you. Sure. They're not so-called Liberty Trike related, but more just general questions about the industry and how things work. So you know, one things like media reviews can just really quickly kind of tell us how that works. Well look, I think people through this with, you know, the media in general anyway, it's like just,
you know that people pay in the in the electric bike industry. You're paying for someone to come in to review or you're giving away something free to a YouTube or an influence or whatever. They're really not going to say to too much on the negative side especially. The more money is involved the more likely you are to do you know to get a good review. A lot of money has been spent recently by the leading
you know E bike company in the in the in the United States to introduce you know a new tricycle to market. And I got to say I'm super grateful. I mean thank you for bringing, so much attention to this. This, this niche of these, you know, with those 3-wheelers and that's great. But yeah, no, I mean that kind of stuff is paid for. I haven't paid for review in years. I haven't had anybody in here. We've done that in the past. But I think we don't need it anymore. I think just be authentic, you know, getting people into the Facebook group and to be able to see it and just like all the reviews and the videos and everything. I don't think you need it anymore. I really don't and I mean I could do a review and walk from the front of this trike to the back and tell people everything. We have tons of videos and stuff like that. So you really don't need somebody else telling
you. Why don't you listen to people who actually used the product? I think that's probably helpful. Absolutely, no that at some point the product speaks for itself and you know they can the reviews are readily available on the site. So I mean like I said it speaks for itself. So can you just really quickly tell us, you know about your experience with the customers that may you know may not be older that might not need that help but you know what's your experience with the physically challenged riders? So we have a lot of experience with physically challenged riders. I mean we have helped so many people over the years from amputees to people with weakness in the legs to balance issues or whatever and then just seniors who might have a combination of kind of things like that, you know to bring something out to there's some marketing out where it's like young people where they're wearing and so, you know, they have to like cut off this that I don't. It's not really amputees who ride the Liberty Trike and it's certainly not younger people. You know, we have, like I said, we have like 13 other models of trikes from the ElectricTrike.com that we offer and are more likely to get on something like that. In fact, the younger you
are if you are like an amputee or you can't actually balance on a 2-wheeler and you need three wheels. It's more than likely going to be a recumbent tricycle and we have those electric as well. So I think it's just, it's, again, it's kind of marketing to grab that and then I think it's kind of insulting actually to people with blades and missing limbs and stuff to think that they need to ride the liberty. Liberty is really for people who have weakness in the legs and we know this because we've given away over $100,000 in Liberty Trikes over the past three years. To kids with rare diseases and you know particularly SMA. If you don't know, you know so Today's Show, a year or two ago and we have this there's this whole thing with little girl that I met and kind of
committed to you know, doing, we picked this cause for these kids, who have weakness in their legs and can't move around well and we decided we're going to give them Liberty Trikes and that kind of picked it up.Now it's a very small segment in the, in the whole, you know, picture of school rides, Liberty, okay maybe it's a couple of percent, but that's really who does. There's a lot of electric tricycles that we offer, that other people offer that would kind of go more. But I mean, you know, overall do people with disabilities or with certain physical challenges, like do electric tricycles
and bicycles help them? Yeah, and it's been really cool. We've worked especially with a lot of vets. I really did find in the right solution for those individuals. For sure, you guys are doing great and if you guys do want to learn more about you know Liberty Trike for Kids. There's you know link on the site that takes you directly, you can learn about that whole program, but you know that's that definitely is a is an amazing initiative. If anybody wants to give some money, you find that in LibertyTrike.com and you can put money in there. We're not a charitable organization but we got two-hundred percent of that goes. We have, you know, our kind of our mom of that first little girl that I met.
And so yeah if anybody wants to do that, please do donate and we'll be doing something in 2023. You know we're not done yet. Oh yeah, definitely. So just promise, two really quick questions on, we'll wrap this up, but you know, why do you think other companies do have missed the mark with the similar electric and similar, similar electric trike? I'm sorry, you know the offerings, you know, where do you think that that's been missed? I think others have probably seen Liberty Trike and studied it and try to figure, oh wow, this is, you know, kind of, here's a here's a place where we can grab some market share, we can do something. But here's the problem, you know, well, once you let big money get involved, start making decisions of where a product should go, more engineers that are young, who you know you're not listening to the mark. You know I can't say that enough. You have to listen and what that feedback gives you, it tells you exactly what features to put, what to build next, what to add, what you charge for, what you shouldn't charge for. Right? But, but once the money gets involved and you have people deciding on features and people deciding what they think the market wants and what your rider is going to want on a ride without listening, they start to push out products that are chasing returns instead of instead of chasing, awesomeness. You know how much? It's true and so, you know, good luck to everybody doing that. But if it's not like they need advice from me, but if I would give it, I would say something so much money and open your ears. Those are wise, wise words to live by, for sure.
All right, so just to wrap this up, any final thoughts or maybe a message, you know, you really want your viewers to know about all of this. You know, I guess I want to say again, just we're so grateful and that I would call out Worksman for helping us get started with the Liberty Trike seven years ago. I would say I'm really grateful for the biggest E-Bike companies in the country out there spend a lot of money on marketing to bring these kind of things to the mainstream because I don't have to go spend the money to do it and people are going to find us anyway and hopefully make the right decision. So we're just and I actually mean that, I mean everybody involved in this industry, it's a very cool industry to be in and I just we're grateful, we're always grateful. That's our thing here. Have empathy, be fair, be kind, be cool. I would advise that to anybody else in this business or any other business for that matter. So thanks for just so nobody's confused. You know you work for us. I mean this video is for us to clear the air. Give some, background and hopefully you know, get let people see kind of what Liberty Trike is what we're doing and here's some of these
thoughts from somebody who's been in this industry for a couple of minutes that. Right, nope definitely an open honest discussion is kind of what you know our goal was. So, I think we got everything out. You know as always if you have any questions, you know where to find you guys. But thanks Jason this, this was this was great. Your welcome, Yasmeen. Thanks for the opportunity. Big shout out to all the people in the Liberty Trike rider group, you guys are the best! They sure are. Alright. Thanks. Thank you. Bye, bye.
2022-12-15