Springfree Trampoline: Keith Alexander & Steve Holmes (2019)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the late 1980s, a New Zealand engineer named Keith Alexander wanted to buy a trampoline for his kids. After his wife said they were too dangerous, Keith set out to design his own—a safer trampoline, without metal springs. He tinkered with and perfected the design over the course of a decade. But he was daunted by the challenge of bringing his invention to market; and he almost gave up. At that point Steve Holmes, a Canadian businessman, bought the patent to Keith's trampoline, and took a big risk to commercialize it. Since the start of the pandemic, sales of Springfree Trampolines doubled, and since their launch, the company has sold nearly 500,000 trampolines worldwide. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	When you leave home, can you ever really go back?
0:12.0	Made a version!
0:13.0	Soccer legend Leo Messi and I both left Argentina as kids.
0:17.0	You know you're that piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit anywhere.
0:20.0	To so many immigrants, football is a way to reconnect.
0:23.0	Listen to the last cop in the embedded podcast feed
0:26.0	to hear the latest collaboration from MPR and Fududo Studios.
0:30.0	Hey everyone, just want to let you know that next week
0:32.0	our team will be back from our August break.
0:35.0	And really, we can't wait to bring you a brand new episode of how I built this and many more after that.
0:40.0	Our new lineup of shows starts next Monday.
0:43.0	But today we're going to round out this summer with a really fun episode from the archives.
0:48.0	This is a story of an engineer from New Zealand and a businessman from the other side of the world
0:53.0	who shared the same vision for the perfect trampoline.
1:02.0	I decided to invest in some fundamental research and I wanted to ask myself one question.
1:07.0	Did any retailer in America believe that trampolines were dangerous?
1:12.0	And so dangerous that they wouldn't sell them.
1:15.0	The answer was yes and that was Costco.
1:17.0	The CEO of Costco was a man named Jim Senegal and Jim said
1:21.0	I will not sell trampolines.
	...

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