The Trekinetic timeline
“I’ve always believed that a well-designed, functional product tends to result in something that’s pleasing to the eye”
MIKE SPINDLE – FOUNDER
Trekinetic in numbers
87% of our customers said their Trekinetic chair gave them more independence than before
NPS Score 55 (excellent). This is a geeky way of working out how likely people are to recommend your products.
86% of customers bought their chairs for its off-road capabilities
Our chairs scored an average of 4.3/5 for comfort
A message from the founder
Firstly, thank you for ending up here and being interested in the Trekinetic story.
It’s not a conventional story, because many people who redesign and get involved with wheelchair manufacture, are normally trying to create a better life for somebody they know, who is a wheelchair user. The problem with that is their focus is often centred on the person they are building the chair for and not the wider community.
For me, that wasn’t the case at all. In the beginning, I didn’t know anybody who used a wheelchair. The good part, was it allowed the focus to be much wider and that has allowed a large number of our community, to benefit from Trekinetic.
At the start, the catalyst was a chance encounter, in an airport lounge where I came across a young man in a traditional manual wheelchair. It had two rear propelling wheels, two tiny front castors etc, you know the deal. As somebody involved with F1 component manufacture, I was astonished that this guys wheelchair looked like it had originally been designed in the last century, mainly because it had, 1933 to be precise. It seemed the best anyone could do to make it look modern, was to spray it purple. I imagined saying to the manufacturers: ‘Is that it guys?……is that the best you can do?’
I boarded the plane thinking ‘Surely wheelchair users have not been totally short changed by technology….or did all the real development stop back in 1933?’
What I couldn’t get my head around, was why the big propelling wheels were at the back. When you sit in an armchair, all things being equal, your hands naturally end up at the sides of your thighs, so why weren’t the wheels positioned there? It seemed to me that if you have to push the wheels vertically downwards to propel them, as with a rear wheel propelled (RWP) wheelchair, you are fighting against your body weight. Push too hard and you were able to, you could (theoretically) lift yourself out of the chair. But if the wheels were at the front, you’d have to push the tops of the wheels horizontally and the reaction to that force would be taken by the backrest. Just like a weightlifter, lifting weights with his back against the floor. He can lift much more, so that’s the solution we employed with the Trekinetic K2.
Development of the original K2 was far from straight forward. I was a long painful road that started on the back of a boarding pass in September 2000 and took six years and many long nights. However, in late 2003 we had a presentable prototype that potential users could test, but it soon became clear it wouldn’t naturally run in a straight line. The project stopped for a year until finally, we solved the problem, oddly with the first idea I thought of, but which I was convinced would never work! But it still took another 13 prototypes, Finally in the Spring of 2006, our new K2 was ready for real life users to tell us what they thought.
One thing that nobody appreciated, including me, was that by placing the bigger wheels at the front, they could roll over obstacles without need to mid air balance, as with a conventional RWP chair. Our first group of testers were unanimous in their enthusiasm regarding how well the chair performed off the beaten track. After the gruelling development process, it was truly wonderful moment to find the chair had an attribute that nobody had expected. Hence todays K2 and GTE are true town and country chairs that can be used everyday.
We also originated a revolutionary variable camber and in chair weight transfer mechanism that had never been seen before. Protected by European and US patents, you won’t see these on any other wheelchair, but are so important in improving wheelchair stability that they are standard equipment on both K2 and GTE.
As the fundamental carbon fibre Monocoque chassis based technology had never been tried on a production basis before, we didn’t really know if it was strong enough. So we had it tested for Strength and Fatigue by the Medical & Heathcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in Blackpool and it passed the British Standard ISO 7176 Part 8, first time. They even told us it was the first manual wheelchair to ever complete their gruelling gravel trap test. Nowadays all our chairs are fully compliant and also crash tested.
We launched on an unsuspecting world in June 2006 at The Mobility Roadshow. It caused quite a storm world-wide and our fledgling website had thirteen thousand enquiries in just three days.
Throughout the process, it was always function first, coupled with the philosophy that if you get rid of all the excess, you end up with a lightweight and elegant design. Unfortunately making products light and strong, does not necessarily make them inexpensive to produce, but we have worked hard to continue to get the balance right.
Judging by the reactions of customers, we’ve pretty much got things optimised. Our competitors might disagree, but we firmly believe that our three wheel, Monocoque design will eventually become the template for ALL wheelchairs moving forwards. Customers tell us it’s that comfortable and that good.
So we continued developing, in particular a much requested powered version that is todays GTE. When it was launched, nothing prepared us for the take up of our new hub motor powered model, that maximises and increases the benefits of the manual K2, by making progress virtually effortless. Fifteen years on it is still probably the lightest home, city and all terrain power chair, that you can buy. Plus it folds down so low you can carry it in conventional car, with no need for a ‘disabled’ vehicle.
So what now? Well we don’t sleep easy at a Trekinetic and now we have 60 options. All of them are benefit based, but the idea is only to select the ones you really need. Nearly all of them can be retro fitted, so if you’re not sure, leave it until you are.
In closing the chapter for now, I want to thank all our customers, from the early pioneers to todays new customers who tell us after delivery, how much it has changed their lives. I’m also pleased that the tiny details, that we so agonised over, that are not immediately obvious, are the things people love the most.
I said in the beginning, that when I started, I didn’t actually know anybody who used a wheelchair. Now I know thousands and it has been the privilege of my life to serve this community. I am so proud that so many of you have been bold enough to sidestep conventional thinking and found a way to share our vision.
Mike Spindle – Managing Director