SpeedHero July update (June Recap)
I can’t fathom how long and wild this month felt for SpeedHero. Let’s just dive in. The first event of the month was a special guest. Manabu Orido came by Platform Garage to say hello! He was in Victoria and decided to come by and visit us down at the shop. It was truly an honor. We exchanged a few gifts, photos, and car talk. Sadly I didn’t get a lot of photos, as I didn’t want to bother him too much, but there are a couple of pics from the event. 
I was back to some paid instruction this month. I had my first ever private track day client. I was hired to work with them at my previous track VIMC. We had a really good day with the slow drivers group running timed laps up at the circuit. You can hire me as well! I’m down to come help you get better for a day of driving! A side note, it was interesting to see that there are still people protesting the race track to this day. 
We’re in the early stages of SpeedHero racing gloves. This month I had an investor approach offering a decent sum to get racing gloves sorted out for a future product. Like always I’m struggling to communicate well with manufacturers who are attentive to our small production goals. We’ve completed a few design streams and had some concepts, but on top of these, I’m finding I’m not satisfied with any of the designs we’ve conjured at this point. The hunt continues. I can tell you, we will be focusing on external stitching. Which doesn’t look quite as nice, but FEELS much much nicer on your hand. We’re chasing some manufacturers who already make FIA approved gloves in this style and flexing their designs to meet our usage and aesthetic goals. 
Twice this month I ran a trade show booth. The first was at the Platform Garage anniversary BBQ and car show. We setup our booth, made some sticker and T-shirt sales, while taking the sun, good friends, cool cars and yummy hot dogs. It was a nice long day, that was interrupted by a very important SpeedHero business meeting. I’ll share more on this later in this letter. 
Our second trade show booth was run at the All Japanese Car show. This is a big car show for Victoria and we’d never run a booth. Usually I end up missing the show due to other events, but this weekend worked out great! Sadly Saanich city by law restricted us from making direct sales to people, but it didn’t stop people from checking out our booth, and making purchases off our webstore.
It too was a long, hot and fun event of meeting connections in the local Japanese car community. 
Another thing I’m excited to announce is the beginning of a new Streaming Series for SpeedHero. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. We’re live streaming as many professional drifting series as we can. Our twitch channel will be broadcasting as many events as possible, with the intention of making a single point where you can find different drift events happening. This last weekend of the month was two rounds of D1GP in Tsukuba. It was wild to watch as there was some really crazy tandems, and even crazier results from the DOSS computer drift measurement system affecting the outcomes.
We’re hoping to stream many other British, Irish, American, Russian and other drifting series as well. 
Somewhere in here was a Capital Drift event that Jaclyn did well at. Additionally we saw the return of Grippy Feet, where I did some teaching and driving at their return event. 
Another major update for this month is the final end of our partnership with our Australian manufacturer. Refunds were finally given to the SpeedHero customers, and it seems all money was eventually returned. I wish that manufacturer well, but our relationship is permanently damaged from here on forward. This was an extremely important moment for me personally. It finally allows me relief of the knowledge of debt. I couldn’t allow myself to make progress on projects until these refunds came through. Now that they have I’m extremely excited, and intensely relieved that we are emotionally allowed to make progress again.
Now for the big SpeedHero news. Like I mentioned earlier I had an important business meeting this month, and that was with a local machining company. Foreman CNC out of Sidney BC has come forward with a very serious interest in manufacturing SpeedHero wheels. Over the past month we’ve been working closely with them on developing local prototypes.
Our plan is laid out so far in a 2.5 stage process. Stage 1 is to fulfill our previous orders. We had 3 wheel orders and we’re discussing with these customers if they want to continue chasing this product.
Stage 2 is the big stage. We will be simplifying our production to only the GSX1 wheel to start with. We’ll also be focusing on only 14 and 15inch rims in a 7,8 and 9 inch width to begin with. Other sizes will be 100% available, but by custom order beyond these basic sizes.
I’m excited for July, as of writing this, I’m just realizing how much momentum we have at this moment and I’m a bit intimidated!
If you'd like to check out the Patreon: www.patreon.com/SpeedHero
Here's two of the most recent stickers you missed in our sticker club!
