How ONYX Motors is Redefining Electric Mobility | Entrepreneur Tim Seward Interview

Tim Seward, Founder and Creative Visionary of ONYX Motors—an industrial designer turned mobility entrepreneur who has a passion for redefining electric transportation.

While working with large corporations such as Nike, Google, and Intel, he saw opportunities to pursue mobility ideas that those organizations were not interested in developing.

He had a particular interest in changing the performance and rider experience of electric bikes which led him launch ONYX Motors through a successful Indiegogo campaign.

Seward's bikes such as the RCR 80V are supported by a global community of riders who view ONYX electric motor bikes as both a long-term investment and a lifestyle.

In this conversation, Seward discusses designing for commercialization, when creative vision must adapt to market realities, and the mistakes product designers must avoid to build ideas that endure.

If you are developing a new product to market, don't miss a range of takeaways that give you greater insight in your innovation journey.

Key Takeaways from This Episode

• Leverage your natural problem-solving instincts. Early life challenges helped shape Seward’s ability to identify gaps and design solutions that translated into an entrepreneurial advantage.
• See innovation through an industrial designer’s lens. The discussion highlights how industrial designers balance form, function, usability, and emotional connection when building new products.
• Use crowdfunding as a launchpad, not just funding. Seward explains how a successful Indiegogo campaign provided market validation and accelerated his learning around production and scale.

Transcript

Jeanne Gray: I am Jean Gray, publisher of American Entrepreneurship Today and host of the podcast series Experience Voices, where I talk with highly accomplished people who share the critical elements that led to their success.

Today on experienced voices we're joined by Tim Seward, founder and creative visionary of Onyx Motors, an industrial designer turned mobility entrepreneur who has a passion for redefining electric transportation while working with large corporations such as Nike, Google, and Intel, he saw opportunities to pursue mobility ideas that those organizations were not interested in developing.

He had a particular interest in changing the performance and rider experience of electric bikes, which led him to launch Onyx Motors through a successful Indiegogo campaign. In our conversation, Seward discusses designing for commercialization when creative vision must adapt to market realities and the mistakes product designers must avoid to build ideas that endure.

Tim, welcome to Experienced Voices.

Tim Seward: I'm happy to be here. Thank you. this is exciting. 

Jeanne Gray: I. Reviewed your design background. So I think this will be a very interesting conversation for listeners who are trying to introduce products to the market and having access to someone like yourself who has been in so much design.

So let's start by just giving a, concise description of where your industrial design career began. 

Tim Seward: Okay, so I started industrial design before I actually went to school for it unknowingly. I was a graphic designer. I was very into painting and drawing and, art as I was growing up.

And so I was going to school, college for. design, but I was also interested in biology. One of the main reasons why I was interested in taking biology classes and art classes was. I wanted to develop like prosthetic legs or I wanted to be a clinician for prosthetic legs because I since 11 years old have been dealing with a prosthetic leg.

'cause I had cancer when I was a kid. And I found as I was growing up with my leg that a lot of these businesses building legs and, companies building the parts for it and also just the clinics had a hard time building me a leg that wouldn't fall apart. Pretty quickly I was a very active kid and so I would always come in after six months with a broken leg.

And so, it got to the point where these clinics were building me like, 10 legs at a time because I would go through them so fast. I was skateboarding, snowboarding, and they were really trying to figure out, granted, this is in the Late eighties, early nineties. Right. And so, they were trying to figure out from a clinic standpoint and also from, the product company, we were trying to figure out how to make their products stronger. They ended up figuring out that for someone of my high activity level, I actually needed a leg, or at least components that were built for someone that was like 400 pounds.

Yeah so. Knowing that as a kid, I was very interested in learning how to make these lights right. And what I stumbled upon was industrial design. I had no idea that industrial design was a major, I didn't go directly out of high school, right into college. I actually traveled across the country, skateboarding and, trying to find myself right.

And I was developing skateboards at the time and. I didn't really know that what I was doing was product development, like hard goods. I knew that I was building something, but I didn't really know that proper training and tools. And, my mentor at the time who developed the Icon Aircraft and is a really renowned kind of engineer and product developer.

His name Steve Strand. He was the one who started this skateboard company and he he said, you really should look into industrial design. And was taking back, oh, I was just looking at that. It seems up my alley, right? Because it was a blend of, at San Jose State is where I ultimately went.

It was a blend of design and art. So you were in the art building, but you got a bachelor's of science. And so to my dad, he thought that was awesome. Even though I had to pay my own way. My dad was very like critical of what major I was gonna do. And so I was trying to like, sell 'em on it. I was like, look, it's awesome.

It's art. I love art, but it's also science and business and all these other things that you want me to be focused on. So that's how I got into industrial design. So I ended up, after a couple years of traveling and, having fun as a, a young 20-year-old, I ended up going back to school.

Is how I look at it for industrial design. And got trained by some of, in my opinion, some of the best the best teachers that don't work at San State anymore. But there was a pretty big alumni of teachers and professors that were at San Jose State for from the sixties, and I got the tail end of those instructors before they all just, retired.

So I got pretty lucky. To be instructed by 'em. And I learned a lot of really cool things about design and ultimately got into my first job was developing the Sonos speakers for Sonos. I did the sub work, , the Sonos sub and the play three, and I started working on the soundbar until once I move on to other consumer electronics.

For bigger companies like, HP and Intel, and ultimately ended up at Samsung and LG for developing a lot of their mobile products and houseware products. Yeah. 

Jeanne Gray: You have a moped company now, so share a little bit about how you made the transition from working for other people and taking on a startup and going your own way.

Tim Seward: Well it goes back to the beginning of, my first real job was at a startup, right? So I was very interested in, that kind of business for me. , There's a lot of freedom in a startup business where you can really, pave your own way. So while I did really like working for some of the, bigger companies you had to really , push it really hard to be noticed, somewhere like LG or Samsung.

And so for me, , like my last, corporate job was really at LG Electronics, and there was definitely things that I was seeing happening in the world that. LG was so big that they just couldn't see it, no matter how hard I explained it to them.

So I took a trip to for work. I took a trip to Portland for LG Electronics. There was something around the mobile phones and TVs, at hotels. And so I was developing all the TVs that go in all the hotels, which I still think is pretty cool. Today I still see a TV that I designed in a hotel room at Hyatt.

So I was, so there and out front of the hotel was all these Nike bikes that you could rent. They weren't electric. And this is before the big, rideshare movement of electric vehicles. It was before bird, it was before everything. And I saw this and I said, wow, this would be so awesome if we made these electric and then so powered by LG Chem.

And they were like, oh, people are gonna buy our batteries anyway. . We don't need to do this. And it was just like shot down and I had all these really cool ideas around it. And, so I started just, making my own electric moped. 

Jeanne Gray: What year was that?

Tim Seward: Just that was in around 2014. So I started developing all these different electric bikes more or less. And by 2017 I had what we would call the RCR and. it went through a ton of iterations, right? The very early ones was experimenting with all sorts of different drive trains and everything, and it just was way too expensive to develop as like a consumer product.

And I wasn't really thinking so much as a consumer product. I was thinking of a vehicle that I could commute to work with. And could get me there reliably. Get me at a steady pace. Because really if you want to travel at 35, 40 miles an hour with traffic, you actually need a vehicle that can exceed that by maybe 20 miles an hour faster.

Because if it's the top speed is only 40, you're really pushing the limits of that vehicle to go that fast and you'll drain the battery really fast. You'll overheat it. So if you want to have an average speed with the average drivers on the road, you actually need a vehicle that can kind of exceed the average speed.

Right. And so that's what I was trying to develop. It took me a long time to figure it out. Also, costs of parts, the batteries and motors and everything was very expensive in 2014. To make it. Yeah. 

Jeanne Gray: Were you working and doing this at night or on the weekends, or did you make the decision.

Or when did you make the decision? I'm going all in and I'm gonna, take this innovative idea I have and go for it. 

Tim Seward: So in general, I was always tinkering around with gas and electric vehicles. I have been since I was a kid so,. My transition into electric started actually really early in 2010 with a designer who was developing an electric bike.

And then he was the one who actually helped develop the boosted board, which is an electric skateboard. He was also developing you know, solar panel systems and all sorts of stuff. He, unfortunately had passed away and . He was really pivotal I think in the sustainable movement in the early 2000 tens.

And he didn't really get very far. It was only like two years before he had passed away. And so , it actually made me start to rethink how I was. Developing products, right? Because I was developing all these products that essentially people buy a new phone or a new smartwatch that I would design it, take me a couple years to design it, and then it would be out of style within a year.

So people you would see it go up on eBay or just get thrown away, but whereas you would see electric vehicles or just vehicles in general that can be repaired would, you know, usually those are classic vehicles. Those can stay with you for a long time. So. I just started thinking about it and started building some prototypes and when I decided to move into turning it into a real product, it was in 20 16, 20 17 when I was riding around my prototype.

And people just would stop me at every stop sign that I was at in their car or walking in front of me. And there was this one guy who literally crossed my path on a crosswalk and he looked like maybe like an investor or businessman. And he literally was like where can I buy this?

I said, you can't buy it, it's mine. He is like, are you serious? What are you talking about? can't buy this. And I said, no, you can't buy it. And he was confused and was trying to figure it out. And so I eventually told him that I built it and it was just for myself and I just used it to get to work.

He was like how can I invest in this? I'm an investor. , I'd like to help you start this as a business. So we got to talking and I just ended up realizing like I didn't need it. Like I was like this is great, but I am so familiar with you know, the Indiegogo and the Kickstarter because I was doing a lot of those for other companies.

Mm-hmm. That I could just do it myself. So I launched an Indiegogo, basically I took that experience and decided to just. I'm not gonna get tied up with someone I don't really know. I'm just gonna go and start an Indiegogo campaign, a crowdfunding campaign, and see how it goes. 'cause it's really, I've done a co, I had done a couple for myself and they really weren't that difficult.

During the process, after fulfillment. All of my campaigns have been successful. I've never had a campaign that hasn't been successful so, I wasn't that scared to do it. And I tried it 'cause I knew that if it didn't work out I probably would've lost, maybe like three to $6,000 in credit card fees for, trying to advertise it on meta or something because I really didn't have a huge credit card.

So I wasn't gonna rack it up too crazy. But I was definitely gonna go into debt and figure out how to get out of it if it didn't work. 

Jeanne Gray: And so you did launch a campaign. 

Tim Seward: Yeah. Yeah. So I launched, Onyx Motors motorbikes on Indiegogo. So I launched the RCR on Indiegogo, and you can still find it today.

It raised quite a substantial amount of money, so it had a lot of backers sold almost 500 bikes within a short, period of time. But then I had to really figure it out because. That was quite a lot. It was a lot more bikes than I expected. It was definitely hundreds more bikes than I anticipated.

Jeanne Gray: So from the point where the campaign is successful and you are seeing the hundreds of investors behind your bike. How long did it take you to actually deliver to those investors? 

Tim Seward: So the campaign ended in June of 2018 and the first, delivery , happened in mid-December of 2018, but it wasn't a large number of, it was about maybe 12 bikes.

So that, that pales in comparison to how many that I sold. So there were still quite a few customers that were very anxious because, originally I said it would only take three months to get you the bike, which was widely incorrect and inaccurate. but that was, a learning experience.

There was a couple things that happened. That made it a little bit more difficult, like literally at the time that I started to receive product. 'Cause a lot of the electronics are from overseas. The first initial like 25% tariffs from Trump hit me. So I ended up not able to hire someone 'cause I was putting the bikes together and building them in a warehouse with a bunch of employees.

And so that reduced. The amount of employees that I could hire to help me build a bike. So I ended up actually having to get in the mix and every day build several bikes, a total of about 10 bikes a week myself, to be able to keep up with the demand. And yeah, so was very difficult for me to do. But the campaign really just took off and wasn't quite prepared for it, but we figured it out in about six months. we started delivering all of the bikes. 

Jeanne Gray: And that was in early 2019. 

Tim Seward: So early 2019 is when Yeah, when the 50 bikes, every two weeks would go out.

So we got caught up. By spring, middle spring, early summer, we got caught up with all of the customers. The thing is, there were some outliers that did, bleed into 2019 of the summer getting deliveries. But most of everyone was satisfied. you know, In probably like Q2 of, 2019, and then the rest were all new orders.

Jeanne Gray: What did you learn in the process of having to build so many bikes? 'Cause you go from, okay I'll, send out my first 12 and then realizing if you just do the basic math, if I do 50 week or 50 a month, I'll catch up with all my orders. Just get a sense 'cause other entrepreneurs who are in the same situation where they're.

Moving into some sort of quasi manufacturing situation from being a designer to, a different skillset and even maybe a mindset. 

Tim Seward: So I think experience helps. So I had a lot of manufacturing experience with the skateboard company that I was talking about earlier that really gave me a solid understanding of how to build, in the United States, even though you would, even with the skateboard parts, you would still get those from overseas. And but being able to do the assembly and the assembly line and knowing how to do that and the shipping and all of the fulfillment and everything, I was very familiar with that for a decade at least.

So I pretty much just transitioned that whole model over , to the electric vehicle. Although the hardest thing really was figuring out how to deliver something that's five times bigger than a skateboard, five times heavier. And understanding there's a massive cost difference in shipping. I found some.

Solutions for that. Which, there was actual like motorcycle delivery services that weren't too expensive. And I was able to negotiate, you know, if I built 50 bikes every two weeks, then my cost will be cut in half in shipping 'cause I would load up a full truck for them. So I basically just, you know, negotiating.

Prices and thinking of it as, not as an individual item, which, you would think of a skateboard or a t-shirt or something as more of an individual item going out and shipping to that person. You have to think of it as a much larger scale and how these vehicles will go to a hub, and then that hub's close to the delivery location and then they'll disseminate from there.

So they were basically putting all the vehicles in separate. Hubs all around the country. And it did take a little bit longer than expected for the vehicle to show up to the Penn buyer. But that ended up working out. The other thing that I learned was I really, after doing it for a couple years, I really realized I needed a business partner, someone that, that was really focused on just the business side because, I couldn't do it all. Like I was trying to do everything and it was a lot. And I ended up just burning out initially because I was trying too much. And so my learning experience there is to , find someone to partner with that you trust early on.

 Would be very helpful. And if you're more of on a designer side, then you need someone who compliments you that's more business focused and is really about the numbers and the sales. And, if you don't really have strong marketing skills too, which you should, if you're a designer, I think you should really learn up, learn how to do a lot of the marketing yourself.

But you, it would be helpful to find someone who is. really good at, business sales and understands marketing as well, because those are all gonna work together. I think those were of the bigger things that I learned. most of the other stuff I was pretty familiar with which was just trying to find.

People creating a network is important, I think. And I learned that early on in other businesses. And so having that network was helpful because I don't think Onyx would be a company today had I not known some of the people that I met through my network. For example, Steen, who I originally talked about with the skateboard company I left, I went to go work for, Samsung, lg, all these other brands.

But when I told him that I needed to start this company, Onyx, and he had a warehouse, the old skateboard company and cause skateboarding, analog skateboarding, non-electric skateboarding was kind of dying and he was looking to shut the company down. And we worked out a deal where I would get the warehouse.

If I helped him sell all of his product while I was starting my company. So very crazy. Like, So I was actually working for two companies at the same time to basically start Onyx and it was absolutely insane. But yeah. Yeah, it, 

Jeanne Gray: I was gonna say, it shows the resourcefulness that you. Got through so much of the early stages from getting it from your head all the way to delivering those 500 orders.

So let's fast forward to, maybe, within the last year or so because I know you are launching a new moped, RCR. 80V. So tell us a little bit about that moped and where it stands in the history of what you've been building. 

Tim Seward: Yeah, so originally the RCR 72 volt, as it's called now it was just the RCR.

 we named it the 72 volt because we knew we were coming out with an 80 volt, or we eventually knew we were gonna come out with a successor. So the 72 volt means the system was on the 72 volt system, and that bike was. Very moped focused. It used a lot of parts from actual mopeds. And a lot of people think of mopeds as like a Vespa scooter, which is a seated scooter.

That's not what , the real definition of a moped is. A moped is actually kind of a blend between a bike and a motorcycle, and it has pedals. And in the, sixties, seventies and eighties, they were very, very popular. They were two stroke motors but they died out because of the two stroke, right. the environmental aspect of them basically killed them. And so bringing them back as an electric vehicle was very popular because the bikes were popular. It just died out because of the system that they were on. So I made the 72 volt got very popular, but eventually it got so big that people didn't, again, understand why it was using moped parts from the seventies.

I think it's cool, it's nostalgic, you know, as you grew, people were kind of like, I don't understand. Why are you using modern parts? And so the 80 volts after, years of the feedback on the semi two volt, we took all of that feedback and. It made the 80 volts, so literally everything that people complained about, everything that people thought was kind of strange.

We fixed we modernized it. It still looks very close to the original, which the way I look at it is much like Porsche, right? Porsche makes a vehicle that looks very similar to the very first Porsche. But they just keep advancing that platform and that's how we're focusing on the RCR is it gets advanced more and more in advanced and some of the big advancements because originally this vehicle was a commuter vehicle and how I love to commute on it.

I put CarPlay and Android Auto on it, so it has navigation. if you have a, helmet with a headset, which, they sell these speakers and microphones and you can talk to your friends while you're riding. But you can also make phone calls. You can listen to music and you can get navigation instructions right on your screen so you can take your phone.

Put it in your pocket or your backpack and not worry about it falling off your bike or someone taking it while you're riding. Or sometimes people forget that their phone is on their bike and leave it outside. So the whole idea is to remove that issue of commuting and just make it all on the bike itself.

It is one of the things that I just don't see on, products today. That makes it really cool. The bike is a lot more powerful. It's a little bit bigger. It has bigger tires. And one of the other big notable things is because people commute on it, you get flat tires, right?

And the older one used tubes. So inflatable tubes, and if you got a nail, you would have to take the whole tire off, replace the tube, and that on the side of the road. That is literally impossible. It's not as light as a regular bicycle. And you gotta have the right tools to do it. So we, developed just like motorcycle wheels for this bike that are tubeless.

So if you do get a nail in your tire you can use. A patch kit on the side of the road would take less than five minutes to fix it. And it's very easy. You can put a plug in your tire, pump it back up with a small, little, portable air pump and you can be on your way. And that's actually a huge improvement over a lot of vehicles right now because a lot of vehicles in this class still use tubes and so you can buy more robust tires for it.

, And you can basically not worry that you're going to get stranded. And that's one of the big things that we try to advance on this vehicle is to make sure that people can really reliably get to where they're trying to go. And it's probably because it's electric too, it's probably one of the more reliable vehicles that you can use to commute on.

So yeah 

Jeanne Gray: that's a really interesting transformation that you. Went through from the 72 to the 80. . So let me ask you I'm assuming there's a fan base. 'cause you, mentioned that you were getting a lot of feedback on the moped, which spurred you to make a lot of changes.

So as you were making these changes, which seemed to be quite considerable 

Tim Seward: mm-hmm. 

Jeanne Gray: did you tap into your fan base or. Is there a, what we call a community support that follows , your bikes? 

Tim Seward: Yeah, so have about 140,000 followers on Instagram. So it's a pretty sizable following.

And then our, groups, you know, combined. If you even look at some of the outlier groups, we have somewhere around 60,000 people that are interested in our bikes. And then you can narrow that down to about 10,000 people who are like super fans, right? And those people are very vocal and they've been vocal since the beginning of this company.

And. I didn't need to write it down. I mean, They say it so often, right? They would say it so often that, it's just in the back of my head. And I just took all that feedback and literally just changed everything I could on the bike. So it's, a brand new bike. Everything's been redesigned.

Literally the only thing that's the same is the seat. And a lot of people don't understand why, but the people who have had a 72 volt. Understand. And the reason why is because I knew that the 72 volt owners that were gonna buy our new bike had all these custom seats that they made and they spent a lot of money on, but they were gonna transfer that over to their new bike.

And had I not done that, then they would've been kind of upset. Like, I spent three or $400 on this seat for my old bike, and I have to buy a whole new seat. So it was a kind of a strategic move to keep some of the parts , that people actually customized to be able to put over and make it modular so they can go on the new bike.

And so once people learned that, they thought, wow, that's actually pretty smart because. Now I can just use my old seat, get rid of my old bike, put the seat from the 80 volt on the old bike and sell it and move on. it was interesting to see, I didn't test it.

I just kind of had an idea that might work and it did work out. So, Yeah. 

Jeanne Gray: That's a really interesting point because In entrepreneurship, the founders who are working on innovative products, having a connection to the end user, market and not introducing something that they have in their head, but they actually know there's a pain point for sort of a common, theme.

So for what you are doing, it sounds like. you have that connection with your users, that they feel vocal about what they like and what they don't like. mm-hmm. And then, so I guess the question is, when you put the 80V together. How did you share it with some of your users, your fans?

Did you just put it out there or did you bring some into the shop and ride it around with people who would really appreciate the differences that you really put your heart and soul into? 

Tim Seward: So , because we have a supplier of parts and a manufacturing partner originally, almost two years prior I gave him sort of a list of things that the customers complained about and he built a prototype for us and, we tested it out and it just really wasn't hitting the mark.

It was pretty much just fixing the problems but not advancing other things that would make it. more exciting, right? So it just fixed issues, but it didn't really like make the product more exciting. That kind of got tabled. But a customer of ours ended up like purchasing that prototype 'cause it wasn't being used and he thought, oh, this is really cool.

Like, He thought it was really awesome and he ended up doing some modifications to it and. I started hanging out with him and realizing, hey, like you know, I rode it and I wrote some of his modifications and said, wow, this actually is starting to get a little bit more interesting and more fun to ride.

And so then I started to think about how I could further advance some of these things that he had did to it, make it even more exciting. And then that's how you know, the 80V started to really. gain traction and then once we had our first prototypes, we invited a bunch of influencers, people who review these types of bikes, bunch of our customers, and let them go out and ride it and got their feedback.

This is before we officially launched it, and so was great to get a lot of the feedback. but we were pretty spot on, right? So everybody was very excited about it and there was little tweaks that the feedback that we got that we needed to do, but we kind of already knew that.

And that's mainly because we have been using it for a while and we already figured it out, but it was more of confirmation mm-hmm. that this is gonna be a successful product and that we just need to work on these little things to move it forward. 

Jeanne Gray: It segues into some of the basic questions about design and maybe you could share a few points where, when. Especially with your background and having worked with so many other product designers is when they're sitting down for the design process. I guess the obvious one is you're focusing a little bit on the user experience. Are they happy now or is there something I can bring to the market that would make them happier or, give them a different experience, but.

Share a little bit about your process of where you kind of go down a checklist of design to say these are the things I, I work through that is getting me to the right end product. Is that hard for me to get you to describe that innovative process? 

Tim Seward: yeah, the innovative process.

for me it really depends, like if you're starting from the ground up. Or you're advancing an existing product or modifying an existing product. I would say most of the time if you work for a design agency or a design firm you're not really designing from the ground up. There are gonna be the clients that come in and want to have, the brainstorm.

But usually the brainstorming sessions will happen, at a. Corporation or a larger company, and it's internal and that can happen for years before anything comes of it. So usually if you're at a design firm, you'll see that the process kind of starts where. There's already been that year of thinking and , they just want you to, maybe beautify it or advance it a little bit more and make it more marketable and palatable to the customer.

So I've had both ends of the experience. And so for the RCR, when, moving from the 80V, I would say that's more of taking an existing product and making it better. But the initial product, as you've heard me talk about that, I had been thinking about that for almost it seems like almost a decade.

Before it actually came to fruition. That's definitely way too long. But that was something that I was just doing on, the side. Had it been something that I had started from the ground up. I could say a solid year. , Of just development and understanding the market is, in my opinion, required before you can get into actually building.

And if you're very knowledgeable in the space, you could probably advance that much faster. But if you're not knowledgeable in the space and there's a lot to learn, I think that you would be doing yourself a disservice, like just jumping into it because there is a lot of other competitors likely.

That have a lot more knowledge than you and you need to catch up to 'em. So there's a lot of learning. Basically, it's for yourself and for your company and for your idea, and then you can narrow it down. Typically industrial design focuses mostly on looks and functionality.

But developing from the ground up is A whole nother can of worms that I've rarely done right. I've rarely done. So, I think it's, one of those things where you gotta be pretty confident in the market and, just who you're targeting and, know that there is a market for it.

Jeanne Gray: It sounds like. If I was to guess is that if you've got your foot firmly embedded in an industry and in a, company that really exposes you to the marketplace, you have a notch up in your process. But there are a lot of people who start their process in their garage. Right. But they're not in the industry, I actually have an industrial designer in my family so a lot of ideas start in the garage, but they're not in the industry in which they're envisioning what they wanna change. And even if they've got a great idea, if they're not in the industry, they've got a long road.

To, to the marketplace. So that's where you were sharing is that , you had so much of the networking connections. You had the foundation, you were doing it for years. That allowed you get to places that I think a lot of other entrepreneurial industrial designers have to figure out. And it takes a lot of time.

Tim Seward: It does, and really comes down to understanding. I do think it really does come down to understanding the market and there has been products that I know to this day would still be widely successful. And I have never launched them purely because I've watched the market and I've seen.

For products that are similar, what it requires to be successful. And I'll give you one example. I know that dogs and, animals can communicate with you. Like they can let you know that they need to go to the bathroom, right? They can let you know they're hungry. And there is, I have an I, I've had an idea for over a decade 

Let's just put it frankly, like get a dog to text message you. A message, right? And, And sounds wild, but there's a really easy way to do it. Okay. And it would be very cost effective, $20 pot for this device. But to effectively market it, you would need to have like friends that are veterinarians and tons of experience to really prove that this thing makes sense, even though it's only $20.

And I've seen. Similar devices and similar products go out there, and they're all backed by, professionals and people in the industry. And I'm not in the industry. Like I have a couple dogs, and I love animals, but I never taken that leap to try to make that product because I understand that I would have.

A lot of learning to do, or I would have to figure out how to sell it to someone who knows this market very well and can take it and expand on it. And so I could be the industrial designer that makes it for them, but I would need that extra help to be able to really make it a successful product.

Jeanne Gray: That was kind of a discussion that I've had in the past where I viewed it as an opportunity cost that we were really doing well in one particular area. And tried to explain that if we went down this other road, even though it was a really cool idea, is mm-hmm. time commitment and the learning curve would be so high, we would have to give up , what our bread and butter was and, right. 'cause I had put on list of questions with speaking to another industrial designer. The whole aspect of when you have a vision. And I think you a little bit touched on it, is that you have to yield sometimes to another voice that it's not gonna happen that it's a really great idea, and a great vision, but there's a whole litany of challenges if you go astray, so to say.

Tim Seward: Yeah. I can. Early on, I can give you an example of some ideas that I had in the skateboarding industry that never came to fruition. There's customers to this day who say, wow, it'd be so cool if you actually have made that. 'cause they saw the designs it was something that we put out there and, we're intending on making this product.

But it never came to fruition. And it was mainly stopped by the business guy who said, I just don't see a reason for us to do this. And I was so confused. I was young and I was so confused why I was like, so many people want this. Why are we not making this? And it was mainly just cost and demand that he didn't believe It lined up and I so badly wanted to prove him wrong, but my only way of proving him wrong was to say, to make it and see what happens. Right. So yeah. So that's not a good enough. It's not good enough to convince someone, essentially. 

Jeanne Gray: And the pain level could be quite high. Yeah. Once you, 'cause I think once you go down the road and you make that investment and your commitment and your passion.

Then you start to how high the mountain is to get it actually into the marketplace. The pain level, is really quite high. So I'm commiserating or sharing with you some of my, I'm a business person who worked with an industrial designer, right? Yeah. So we have two different perspectives then on, on getting something to market.

But look, Tim, I really enjoyed talking to you. So as like a sign off is, tell me a little bit about RCR 80V, it's launch . Where can people learn about it or buy it online? 

Tim Seward: Yeah.

So we launched the RCR 80V in the summer of 2025. So just like six months ago. It was on pre-order for several months. It's now being delivered to all of those customers and new customers That didn't purchase on pre-order we're caught up to all of our past orders. So at this point now it's very close to shipping now, which is pretty exciting for us because it's been months of, big lead times before the bike would actually deliver to you.

But now it's becoming. Shorter and shorter to weeks, to now days, and eventually someone can come into a store and just pick one up. So it's it's one of the most exciting products that I've ever made as a consumer product designer. Because it's something that's gonna last for a very long time.

That's, For me, that's very special. Like, Someone can buy this, they can ride it around for years, and if they decide they wanna, give it to their kid or you know, their son or daughter or sell it. That person who takes it from them I know, is going to take care of it because it is so much fun to ride.

It's so exciting and it's very easy to maintain. There's almost no maintenance on this, right? And so it's very easy to operate and use and. It's gonna last for decades. It's built to last for 50, 60 years easily. And that's so much different than any other product right now, I believe on the market.

Most products are, people view them as just, throwaway items. and this is definitely not one of them. I would akin this more to furniture. Where you buy a beautiful piece of furniture and it stays with you for a long time. And if you move on from it, it goes to the next person who's gonna love it.

And that's what I really love about the Onyx RCR. And it has just from the beginning, it used to have a piece of laminated wood over the top now because we wanted to advance it and make it last even longer. It's all metal, but we put a nice little. Piece of mahogany wood on the top of the battery cover to represent where it came from.

And to me that's just proof to show you that it's, something that you should cherish and keep with you as opposed to , a lot of these other products that people just view as, temporary. 

Jeanne Gray: That's pretty cool. So, Tim, thank you for being a guest on Experienced Voices. 

Tim Seward: Thank you. 

Jeanne Gray: You have been listening to the podcast series, experienced Voices. To hear more and subscribe, visit american entrepreneurship.com/podcast. Where you will also find a form for listener feedback.