Joel Smith used to be in the bike business.
Now he’s taking a more humanitarian approach to transportation, designing wheelchairs and other mobility devices produced in a nonprofit factory in Vietnam.
Along with his wife, Patty Steele-Smith, he owns Forward Mobility, a year-old start-up based in an office park near the Edmonds waterfront.
That’s where the couple showed off their designs last week: A seated scooter to help compensate for foot, ankle, knee, leg or hip injuries. And a 2.5-pound prosthetic that attaches to the thigh and allows a person with an injured leg to walk without crutches.
Then there’s the bread and butter of the business — a 24-pound collapsible wheelchair designed to meet the needs of patients in poverty-stricken countries.
“If you give someone a wheelchair in a (poor) country, they only have one shot,” Smith said. “If that wheelchair falls apart, they’re back to crawling on the ground.”
Forward Mobility is a finalist for $100,000 in grants from Inc., a business magazine. The company is one 13 entrepreneurs featured in a top-five reader election that runs through Friday on the magazine’s Web site.
Hydrovolts, a Seattle-based hydrokinetic in-stream turbine producer, is also a finalist.
Forward Mobility chairs are built by Kids First Enterprise, a manufacturing nonprofit in central Vietnam. Smith, a 12-year veteran of bicycle manufacturing, helped found the organization several years ago.
The Kids First factory in Dong Ha employs about 20 people, several with disabilities.
When the Smiths began thinking about starting a business, they tailored their business plan for compatibility with Kids First.
“We’re not just making money for money’s sake,” Smith said. “There had to be a purpose. I don’t want a bigger house. I don’t need a bigger car.”
The Smiths financed the start-up with their savings, supplemented with loans from family members. Bill Borders, their sales director and lone employee, worked without pay for the first few months to help get the business running.
Just under a year later, the Smiths’ leg prosthetic — called the Freedom Leg — is getting some attention. The company is in talks with doctors at Fort Lewis about how the device could help injured soldiers in Iraq.
The prosthetic features two two curved bars that attach with straps above the knee and end below the foot, allowing an injured leg to hang free. A patent for the device is pending.
“There is nothing else out there on the market like this,” said Steele-Smith, whose own knee injury earlier this year inspired the freedom leg.
“They send me out the door with crutches, and I had to coach my gymnastics team,” said Steele-Smith, who works for the city of Edmonds.
That got her husband thinking — didn’t that surgeon have cutting-edge technology?
“And after the surgery, he hands her a pair of crutches that have probably been around since cavemen and says, ‘here — good luck,’” he said.
He said his invention takes things one step farther: “It replaces the leg — almost.”
To find out more about Forward Mobility or to vote for the company in Inc.com’s poll, visit www.inc.com/newpreneur/vote.html or www.fwdmobility.com.
Read Amy Rolph’s small-business blog at www.heraldnet.com/TheStorefront. Contact her at 425-339-3029 or arolph@heraldnet.com.
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