Join the Fast Lane with the FrigiStick
The grind doesn’t stop.
In the world of an athlete, it takes giving MORE than your best to BE the best. From tempo runs to soccer drills, 6:00am swim meets to late night weight room, whatever it may be, your physical dedication means everything. But the dedication doesn’t stop there. What if you need to finish that p-set due tomorrow before the the track meet? Or maybe your boss asked for you to work overtime. Will you be able to get up early enough for practice?
In short, life is hard and time consuming. As an athlete, it’s already difficult juggling time commitments both on and off of the field — but imagine dealing with an injury as well. The amount of time needed to treat or prevent injury is substantial, something that most athletes cannot afford. Sometimes injuries can be so debilitating, it’s almost unfair.
The FrigiStick is monumental simply because it can circumvent the time and hassle required by using traditional treatment methods (See intro post! The horrors of ice!). We are providing an efficient form of effectiveness, a sports medicine device that can keep up with the fast paced society we live in today by being ergonomic and portable. Imagine pulling a cold metal ball out of the freezer in the morning and having half of your day’s worth of cold relief ready at your disposal. Imagine being able to massage your injuries and ice them using the same device, without the mess and hassle of melting ice. Imagine easing the tension in your muscles on-site at the gym, during practice, or right before your big race. With the FrigiStick, the possibilities are now in your hands.
Our Progress
Thanks to the help of the HCS Builders Incubation Program, we were able to make several vital next steps for the development of the FrigiStick.
User Testing and Branding —
Most recently, we have been able to get closer to our end user than ever before. We first started by really trying to narrow our focus and build the image of our user profile. By conducting primary market research, our interviews and user tests really helped us piece together the values of importance from our end user. Some of these include what kind of injuries people dealt with, how often they iced it, how often they practiced, etc. In the end, with the available information, we decided that we would focus on a particular end user: a dedicated athlete, typically in the high school to college age range. This group understands the importance of injury treatment and injury prevention; experienced athletes who cannot afford the time off from being injured. Most importantly, these student athletes really value their time. They are probably juggling multiple tasks throughout their day; it could be school, family, friends, as well as their own sport. They need the advantages of a sports medicine device that can be convenient and efficient.
After this, we made sure to feature the FrigiStick on Instagram, where we could introduce the product to many potential end users. At the same time, we reached out to various “influencers” — Instagram profiles that fit our very ideal target market and had decent followings — to help us continue with the next steps in pilot testing. Think of somewhat high profile high school and college athletes that have a follower count of at least 1000. As more of our latest iterations emerge from our current manufacturing efforts, we see ourselves delving further into testing with our defined end user, and take great steps for the FrigiStick to become a real product on the shelves.
Product Development —
After a couple months of iterating the product, we have really figured out an ideal process specific to our prototype. Based on our gathered user input, we were able to finalize the approximate size that the metal ball should be. With this, we were able to prototype the various plastic components around this fixed size. We could now essentially crank out different handle designs as physical prototypes and see how our user tests would react to them. This process streamlines our future user tests and prototyping efforts, making it quick and efficient to make new iterations.
Our progress in manufacturing has also been significant. Even amidst great challenges faced during the pandemic, we were able to lock in a manufacturer that could deliver a product of quality at a reasonable price. With this hurdle out of the way, we pave the way to exciting next steps: potentially hosting giveaways for our end users to test and give us feedback about the product, so we can make it even better. We are so close to getting the FrigiStick into your hands, it is absolutely astonishing!
Engagement —
The FrigiStick has officially been announced to be a project a part of the Roo Crew Fellows of the Aussie Business Plan Competition. This means that we will receive additional funding, mentorship, and have even more resources to further our development. We could not have done it without the help of the BIP :)
Last but not least, we will be starting off with our local high school, Novi High, and various local Sports Centers to conduct more user tests and potentially make sales for our product.
This Isn’t Goodbye
We wanted to give a huge thanks to the HCS BIP for the contribution they have made to all of these wonderful builders. We personally have learned so much invaluable information from the program that will apply in our lives from the FrigiStick and beyond, and at the same time, we were able to utilize their amazing resources to the fullest extent.
While the program has come to an end, it has helped us continue a journey that is merely just starting. We hope that one day, you will be able to experience the ultimate cold relief of the FrigiStick.
Will you join the fast lane?
Thanks for reading :)
