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?’