Raising a red flag for concussions
This company’s simple helmet sensors marketed thanks to Kickstarter campaign
Jessie Garcia’s fortitude is a subject of occasional, exasperated observation by her Grandma Hortensia.
“Tu eres muy tozuda!” the elder Garcia tells her granddaughter in Spanish. “You are very hard-headed.”
So far, that condition has served Jessie Garcia well, if not wisely in some cases. As a student at Lehigh University in 2009, Garcia continued playing in a rugby game after she was knocked to the ground with a concussion that left her with blurry vision, nausea and sensitivity to light and noise for months.
Years later, however, that same stubbornness gave her the fortitude not only to endure, but also to recover from another blow, discovering that someone had already come up with her idea for a startup: mouth guards designed to electronically detect a concussion-caliber impact. For three years after that letdown, the 28-year-old Bensalem, Pa., resident worked on lower-cost mechanical alternatives. That time involved more setbacks, six different redesigns, a personal investment of $80,000, and a fair amount of frustration. The work has finally culminated in a product that Gar- cia’s company, Tozuda LLC (a nod to her grandmother), brought to market May 29 through a Kickstarter campaign aiming to raise at least $30,000 for new tooling and packaging and a production run.
For the third straight year, the Inquirer is hosting Stellar StartUps, a contest sponsored by MassMutual Greater Philadelphia to spotlight that still-thriving startup ambition that is the backbone of an important sector of the region’s economy. To be eligible, companies must be in business no less than one year and no more than five, and specialize in one of nine categories, including 2017 Stellar StartUps finalists.
Tozuda was a Stellar StartUps finalist last year, which led to connecting with an engineering firm in construction that is using its impact sensors — which attach with an adhesive strip and are intended for any protective headgear — and sparking interest from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, which provided $10,000 in matching funds for prototyping and design work, Garcia said.
The company of six employees includes her fiancé, Christopher Basilico, a research engineer who is Tozuda’s chief technology officer. Sales so far have reached about $25,000 from person-to-person transactions, mostly to coaches, Garcia said.
“We need to sell at least 1,000 sensors on Kickstarter to be successful there and at least 4,000 units for break-even,” Garcia said. With Kickstarter proceeds expected to enable full-scale production, “we’ll break $100,000 easily this fall,” Garcia said. She expects to begin shipping by the end of July in time for the start of football season, with sensors individually retailing for $29.99 (U.S.); $749.81 for a pack of 25; and $1,399.65 for a 50-pack.
“For what you could spend on one helmet, you could outfit your whole football team,” Garcia said, emphasizing that Tozuda sensors do not diagnose concussions; they indicate only when someone should be tested for them. By some estimates, there are 3.8 million sports concussions a year in the U.S., with about half going undetected.
Tozuda set out to produce a low-tech device in part because coaches told her they didn’t want to have to consult apps to determine whether someone should be checked out for a serious head injury, she said. Competitors, including Riddell InSite, Prevent Biometrics, and Athlete Intelligence, are electronic-based sensors ranging from $25 to $300 per unit.
“We had to think innovatively, but in a simpler way,” said Garcia “Our advan- tage is the simplicity of not having to worry about battery life and Wi-Fi, the visibility of any player being able to see the change in colour, and our price point.” Many coaches have tight budgets and “just want to know when to take (players) off the field,” Garcia said. “And parents want to feel confident the coach is monitoring their children properly.”
The simplicity in Tozuda sensors is emphasized in the company tag line: “If it’s red, check your head.”
The sensors are 1.4-inch plastic capsules containing a spring, two tiny steel balls, a clear liquid blend and a red powder dye. The liquid will turn red when a potentially concussive hit is detected — from any direction and within milliseconds of impact. That will happen when linear or rotational accelerations exceed a gravitational force of 85, a trigger point Tozuda says on its website was determined using data from a study by the Department of Orthopedics at Brown University.
Whether Tozuda’s progress since last year gets her a Stellar StartUps award this year will be up to an independent panel of judges that will analyze applications based on a number of criteria, including the problem they are trying to solve, the challenges they are facing and their plan for overcoming them, strategies for scaling up, and their uniqueness in terms of product, approach, marketing, and community involvement.