What’s Next for Lumos?

Eu-wen Ding
Sep 5, 2018 · 5 min read

Hey everyone, this is Eu-wen here from Lumos. It’s been awhile!

A few weeks ago I got this blast from the past on Facebook:

That was a good day.

It was our Kickstarter campaign, 3 years ago from the day. Not all of you may know this, but that was where Lumos got its first real start back in 2015.

Launching on Kickstarter was our “Jump-out-of-the-plane-and-build-a-parachute-on-the-way-down” moment.

It was scary, terrifying, and exhilarating all at the same time.

Us working on the campaign and me on launch day, T-5 minutes to launch. Nervous AF.

Putting ourselves on Kickstarter was scary because we didn’t really know how people would respond. Would people show up? Lots of people had told us that they loved the idea, but did that mean that they would actually pull out their credit cards and back the campaign? Would they take a risk on us?

It turned out that the answer was yes, and for that I will always be grateful. Honestly the size of the crowd that showed up was beyond our imagining. And we felt really good about that because it validated to us that thousands of people out there were experiencing the same problems that we were, and that a better solution was needed.

It turned out that the answer was yes :)

Nonetheless, we didn’t yet have the product. Just an idea and a lot of promises to keep.

We made mistakes along the way. This was the first real Lumos Helmet:

Our first “beta” design was completely functional but… Well, you can see for yourself. I’m still a little embarrassed about it tbh. It was a lesson for us on the importance of industrial design.

Fast forward to today

I know from personal observation that Lumos Helmets are a fairly common sight in San Francisco and Boston. (If they’re a common sight in your town/city I’d love to know where!)

This was an awesome moment for me:

It was my first time running into a Lumos Helmet rider out in the wild. I was with a colleague and we chased him down so that I could snap this picture with him. We had to work hard to catch him though because he started biking away faster when we started yelling after him. We managed to catch up in the end :)

And this was another awesome one:

This was our biggest Lumos Helmet group ride to-date. Over 100 Lumos Helmet riders through SF!

You guys have been kind of quiet this past year! What’s up with that?

I’m glad you asked! Those of you who have been following us since our Kickstarter days might remember that we used to write updates on the product every month or so.

Some of the updates we posted after our Kickstarter campaign on the journey to production

Truthfully these updates were extraordinarily difficult to write. It was hard to take time from doing the work to write about doing the work, and it was also really tough putting myself out there, being vulnerable, and sometimes having to write about not-so-good news that was happening.

HOWEVER, the bigger truth was that forcing ourselves to write and give you guys an update every month was a great accountability device for us. It gave us an important deadline every month. It made us more disciplined. I think it made us a better company. Also, I loved being able to speak directly with our community. Multiple pieces of feedback that we received from backers on those updates had major influences on the final product, all for the better. I also like to think that at least some of you enjoyed reading our updates :)

After we started shipping the product I stopped writing those updates. I think that was a mistake, and I’d like to correct that by starting to write updates again.

What are you going to write about?

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking within the team, asking ourselves questions like:

  • What new products should we build?
  • How can we improve our current product?
  • What does Lumos mean to people? Do we have an opportunity to build a brand? What should that brand stand for, and how might we live out those values?

We have some ideas as to what some of the answers to these questions can be, but what we’d really love to do is go back to our Kickstarter roots, start talking directly with our customers again, and get you involved so that we can build Lumos together.

I’ll write a little bit about that, a little bit about new products/projects that we’ve been working on, and give you a little bit of an inside look into Lumos, and what our journey is like having jumped out of that plane.

What do you think?

I’m excited to build the future of Lumos, and I’d love for you to be a part of it. What would you like us to write about? I invite you to share your thoughts with us HERE.

Ride well,

Eu-wen & The Lumos Team

Eu-wen Ding

Written by

Co-Founder & CEO of Lumos Helmet. A Next Generation Bicycle Helmet with Integrated Lights, Brake, and Turn Signals.

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