Wheel Chat - Your Go-To Mobility Podcast
The Wheel Chat Podcast hosted by Anthony Mitchell and Justin Boulos is your go-to podcast for all things mobility. Whether you’re a Clinician, wheelchair rep, end user or just curious, you’ll get the inside scoop on what really works gained from their twenty years of combined experience. Each week, Anthony and Justin share real life stories, practical advice, and their honest, unbiased opinions so that you feel empowered both professionally and within your daily life. Both actively working within the sector, they’re on a mission to positively impact the lives of others worldwide!
Wheel Chat - Your Go-To Mobility Podcast
Wheel Chat: Episode 9 – Reinventing the Wheelchair with Andrew Slorance of Phoenix Instinct
In this powerful episode of Wheel Chat, hosts Justin and Anthony sit down with Andrew Slorance, CEO of Phoenix Instinct and creator of the Phoenix i, a groundbreaking hybrid wheelchair designed to revolutionise mobility for users with spinal cord injuries and other physical disabilities.
Andrew shares his personal story of becoming a wheelchair user at 14, the limitations he faced with conventional wheelchairs, and how those challenges sparked a lifelong mission to create something better. From developing one of the world’s lightest carbon fibre wheelchair frames to winning Toyota’s $1 million Mobility Unlimited Challenge, Andrew discusses what it takes to truly innovate in an industry that hasn’t changed in decades.
What’s in this episode?
- How the Phoenix i’s front-powered castors redefine power assist and terrain accessibility
- Why wheelchair design has stagnated and what’s needed to push it forward
- The importance of user-led design in assistive technology
- The real-world impact of hybrid manual-electric wheelchairs on user independence
Whether you're a therapist, occupational therapist, wheelchair user, or simply passionate about innovation, this episode offers deep insights into the future of personal mobility.
Connect with Andrew Slorance:
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sloranceandrew/
👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewslorance/
Learn more about Phoenix Instinct:
🌐 Website: https://www.phoenixinstinct.com
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_phoenixi/
🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_phoenixinstinct
Email us :
We’d love to hear from you. If you have any questions about this podcast, please email us at wheelchatpod@gmail.com
Follow us : TikTok : https://www.tiktok.com/@wheelchat_podcast
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/wheelchat_podcast/
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of Anthony and Justin.
Anthony: Hello everyone and welcome to Wheel Chat with myself Anton Mitchell and
Justin: Justin Boulos. That's right. Checking in all the way over here from Australia. And today we have a special guest.
Anthony: Yes, we do. No, I was absolutely delighted. It's, I'm really excited actually. It's one of our first guests on the podcast. Absolutely delighted to have Andrew with us. Andrew is currently and is the CEO of Phoenix Instinct and we're gonna find out all about Andrew and he's amazing, amazing wheelchair that he's producing. I don't want to tell too much because Andrew is very, is much more interesting my than myself to listen to. Andrew, good morning.
Andrew: Good morning. Pleasure to be with you both.
Anthony: Oh, it's a pleasure to have you. We were just actually having a little laugh before we came online. It is, 6 am here in the UK and Justin is sunning it up currently in Australia. Justin, tell us about what the weather's like?
Justin: Ah, sun going down at the moment, so now we can actually breathe. It's, it was 35 degrees today which is which is good when you're in aircon, but not so good when you're coming in and out of appointments or when you are standing there trying to find some shade. No, no complaints over here. We're loving it over here and, but yeah. Andrew, thank you so much for - what time is it where you are?
Andrew: It's 6 am in the morning here and it's about 3 degrees outside. We're about 30 degrees off where you are!
Justin: So you're with, Anton over there in the UK and um yeah, is that where Phoenix Instinct is, is as well?
Andrew: Well, Anton's in England. Phoenix is in north of Scotland. So yeah, there is an England and Scotland, we're all part of the UK but we're probably about sort of 4 or 5, 5 hours driving apart, something like that.
Anthony: Yeah, we're not too far. Yeah, we're not far at all. But you know, it makes me very proud and very happy to be speaking to a fellow Scotsman today. Andrew, talk to us, Andrew tell me a little bit about yourself and your story, if you don't mind, and the listeners most importantly that would be really, really great.
Andrew: Well, my name's Andrew Slorance. I am the founder and CEO of Phoenix Instinct. I'm talking to you from my wheelchair today which I've now been pushing for 41 years.
I had a spinal cord injury when I was 14 and there are a few key things you remember when something like that happens. People obviously say, 'oh God, you're not gonna forget that?!' I forget a lot of the emotions that you go through when something like that happens because it's all got put in a box and locked away not to be experienced again, but some things you don't forget.
I remember lying on my bed in Aberdeen Neuro Infirmary and occupational therapist coming to my bed and she said, "Andrew, I've come to order your new wheelchair." Bear in mind, you know, I haven't even considered I'm gonna be spending my life in a wheelchair yet. I'm only about 3 weeks after my injury, I'm still in bed.
And she said, "Do you want pneumatic tyres?"
And I said, "I dunno what you mean?"
She said, "Well, do you want air in your tyres or do you want solid tyres?"
And I was like, "Air?"
She said, "Do you want full arms or desk arms?"
And I said,"I don't know".
She said, "Well, you're going back to school, aren't you? So you're gonna want to get under the desk?"
I said, "Yeah."
"Right, I think you should have desk arms."
"Okay."
And then she left. And a couple of weeks later she came back again and she said, "Andrew, I've got your new wheelchair for you. And I have to say it's rather nice example. And very much nicer than many I give out."
And she parked it next to my bed and she walked off. And I looked at this thing and it was huge. It was a gigantic chrome steel hospital wheelchair; the kind of thing you see outside a supermarket as a courtesy wheelchair. And my best thing that I had at home was my rally race bike. I mean, I loved this thing. I could cycle no hands. I wasn't very good at anything, but I could cycle no hands. I could go around right hand, right angle turns and not fall off. And I looked at this wheelchair and I thought, "You, you've got to be kidding, right? You go to be kidding."
This was it. I don't remember the, the emotional part of "Hell, you're not gonna be walking again. You're gonna be using that."
I just looked at this chair. I embraced life using it. But man, this thing weighed 20, 20 odd kilos. My dad could hardly lift it into the car. Going through rehab and the hospital and everything, that, that's obviously brutally hard but the hard stuff happens when you go home. And you're sitting in your kitchen on your own and outside is terrifying. Outside is just this awful place where it tries to trip you up every step, even going along a pavement. I never realised as I walked along a pavement that they were sloped for the water to run off. Try pushing a wheelchair in a straight line on that when it weighs 20 kilos and you're 14 years old. But, you know I went back to school. I went back to the same school that I'd left a year earlier, and I left but that was awful. School was completely inaccessible. We're talking about the eighties. They used to get all the students to carry me up the stairs to get to the maths department. Half the subjects I was told I couldn't do. I was studying biology and they said,
"Andrew, we don't think it's safe for you to do science anymore. You might hurt yourself. You can watch, but you can't do any practicals and you can do the theory."
Oh, okay. I'll do a different subject. And I went to the technical department and said,
"I'll do woodworking." And they said,
"No, that's not safe for you, Andrew."
And I went to the cooking department. I said,
"Right, I'll do cooking."
And they said
"No, you'll burn yourself."
And so I left school when I was, what? 17? I just, because I had to repeat the year. I think I might even have been 16. I went to study photography at college in, but I always, I was looking at a wheelchair thinking this thing is terrible. But just about this time lightweight wheelchairs came on the scene and I thought 'okay, this is better'. And the first lightweight wheelchair came along that I got, it was called a Suite 24F. It was a solid frame, rigid frame. Much, much smaller than the horrible steel chrome chair I'd been using. And I thought 'things are getting better, wheelchairs are getting better'. I mean, this thing had quick release wheels. It had scissor brakes. It had clothes guards, it had side guards. It had adjustable centre gravity. It had a folding back rest. It was quite small. It was perfect as far as wheelchairs could be, and I thought, 'right, things are getting better. Wheelchairs are going to advance from here'. Years later, by now I'd, I'd finished photography. I was now into video and I'm gonna jump forward about sort of 15 years. I'm working in television production and I, the life's pretty good, but the back of my mind I'm thinking this wheelchair's not done much in the last 15, 16 years. When's the next thing coming? What's the next thing they're gonna do?' And the years go by and nothing happens. I think people would be shocked today to realise that the chairs they're using are using exactly the same technology that they were 50 years ago. You, you wouldn't just struggle to find a new feature on a wheelchair today. There isn't one. There isn't a new feature on a, on any lightweight chair. They will sell you all this latest tech they've got. But actually the latest tech of wheelchairs is that the frame's a bit different to what it was last year.
It's got some new anodised bits on it. Maybe it's made of carbon. But, the actual advancement in the tech itself was very poor or non-existent. So the years went on, I was now working for ITN in London. I worked on Channel Four news. I had a great job. But I still thought this wheelchair suck, I want to change it.
They're not gonna do anything. They are not gonna do anything. I was working with one of my best friends, an Australian Chap from Sydney and we wanted to make a documentary; wanted to make a documentary on, on, on traveling around the world. And we were actually gonna make a documentary on gurus that claimed they had miraculous powers.
And we thought this would be a great, a great thing for me to be the guinea pig for.
Anthony: Is that how you met Justin Andrew?
Andrew: Not by this stage.
Anthony: Okay.
Andrew: He's, he's very like my pal Will though! And we pitched this to Channel Four and it got commissioned and this is when I left my job on TV to go independent.
And we did actually travel around the world meeting gurus that claimed they had miraculous powers, and it did go on the telly, and it was an absolute riot to do. But when I came back to London again I was now a freelancer and I thought, this is my chance. I'm going to reinvent the wheelchair. And Will was saying to me,
"Mate, you're, you're crazy, but go for it!"
He was a total gung-ho set of guy. This is gonna be amazing. So with no knowledge of product development, no knowledge of running a business or what it would take, I started meeting up with companies that made stuff out of carbon fibre, Formula one companies and all these sort of guys. And I found myself very quickly in deep with this design for my new chair I was gonna make. I started at the kitchen table. I got a big block of architects modeling foam, some sandpaper and a craft knife. And I spent 3 weeks carving what this new chair was gonna be like. I didn't have ideas beyond it being light and looking very nice. I always found that wheelchairs looked really ugly. Why did they have to look so bad?
Why did they have to look right angled and straight lined when our body is so organic shaped. Why did they have to look so clinical? And so I wanted a really carved, sexy looking chair. And so I carved this thing, I took it to a carbon fibre company and I said,
"I want to make this."
I'm gonna have to jump forward a few years because it was very hard. It took 6 years to actually get it from the kitchen table to being a market reality. I did have to get investors on board. They, at the beginning appeared to be really good for me. They backed the idea. I mean, I was bringing them something that I had self-funded and I'd got a grant from the government to help make a one-off prototype.
So it wasn't like it, I was starting from stone cold with them. We got it to market and then it changed quite a lot for me with them. It became all about exit strategy. About goals, about you know sales figures. How many are gonna get? You're gonna sell this month? How many demos you're doing?
And so it was very tough going. It changed from the passion that I had to evolve wheelchairs to making them money. And my equity just evaporated in the business and in the end I left that company, you know, with a bit of help from them giving me a good old push. I was out and-
Anthony: Wow. How did you feel at that point Andrew? Did you feel isolated or demoralised?
Andrew: It was devastating because I felt these investors are carrying on without me to try and make their profit out of my journey. This was my experience this, I put everything in from my age of 14 and my experience of spinal cord injury and living with it for so many years. I was now unemployed.
I had remortgaged my house. I had massive amount of debt I'd racked up making this thing happen, and now I didn't even have a job. And I thought you either have to get real, go back to TV work, get a job again, or you have to go again. And I thought, 'I can't let this be for nothing. I'm gonna go again.'
Anthony: Wow.
Andrew: I'm gonna try it again. And so Mary, my wife, was just like 'if you, that's what you want.' I thought, 'I think it is. I think I have to go again.' I've been out of TV for years while I've been doing this. I can't just drop back in. I mean, it's, it is quite a closed network.
Anthony: So you're riding on passion, Andrew, you're riding on emotion, on history, on all everything that you've carried since you were 14. Everything is pushing you towards this, this journey, this, this ultimate goal.
Andrew: I was sure that mobility could be so much better. And, you know, I was a big fan of, of other entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs say. Steve Jobs was a product driven man.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: He believed you make the product first, then the profit comes.
If you want to make profit, go and open a McDonald's franchise. You know, there are easier ways to do it. And if you're driven by profit, you're not going to do... you're gonna do what every other wheelchair company does. You're just gonna make something with some different anodising on it, a bit of funky upholstery and say
"Job done. There you go. That's big profit margin on that."
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: And when you look at how wheelchairs are designed, they are tubes that are bent and cut and welded together. It's not very complicated. But I had a thought I, I'm not gonna embark on another wheelchair. Not right now. I had an idea for a luggage product.
I also struggled when I traveled with my job with ITN as a video editor. I mean, we went all over the world doing news stories. And I was the only wheelchair user in the industry that traveled with a news crew. You know, it was challenging to move all my editing kit but I improvised a way of doing it.
I improvised a trolley attached to my wheelchair.
And I'd move around these heavy flight cases that I had to take about.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: And I thought 'I'm gonna turn this idea into a wheelchair luggage-
Anthony: that's cool.
Andrew: concept.' And so I, I bought a 3D printer. I learned how to do CAD on YouTube, and I put together a kind of prototype. I, I went to a local discount store. I bought a soft bag. I cut the wheels off it. I stuck some omni wheels on it. I used the 3D printed bracket I'd made in my kitchen, stuck that on it. And I thought that this will work. I then contacted a company in China and asked them if they could make me a real kind of prototype. And so it went on.
I managed to get a grant from Scottish Enterprise here in, in Scotland. And the wheelchair luggage was born!
Anthony: Hang on. So you've, just to recap for everyone, because I just want to make sure I- by the way Andrew I know we've not known each other a long time, but I'm not the quickest in the world at things. We've left the company that you were working with, the investors making a wheelchair.
Andrew: Yes.
Anthony: We found ourselves in a position of, 'oh my gosh', we're going again now. We've made that decision. We've chatted to your wife and you've said, 'right no, this is what I want'. And we've gone straight into the luggage?
Andrew: Yes, we've gone straight into the luggage.
Anthony: Okay, great.
Andrew: We've started a Kickstarter campaign with the prototype I've had from China.
Anthony: Yep.
Andrew: And I thought, 'this is how we find out if there's actually a market for this thing'.
Anthony: Wow.
Andrew: So basically what it is, is a hold all with omnidirectional wheels; that's wheels that can move in any direction. And a bracket that allows it to clip onto the bar that's on the back of most lightweight chairs.
Justin: If anyone, I'll just clarify as well Andrew, if anyone who can't picture it just yet, just picture like a smart drive that sits on the back of the rigidizer bar of the wheelchair. Except it's not a machine. It's a bag.
Anthony: Yeah.
Justin: So the, the wheel itself is like that omni wheel where it can turn left and right without, with whilst the wheel, the main wheel can remain straight. So it's a, it's a I'd say it's a consistent design. Is that where you actually got the design from? Did you see the SmartDrive?
Andrew: Before the Smart Drive Justin!
Anthony: How very dare you Justin!
Justin: It's okay if you did it anyway. I wouldn't have any judgment. I still think it's a, it's a good way to sort of put 2 products together. But it seems like you got the-
Andrew: The wheels actually come from Australia you know.
Justin: Oh, there you go, Australians!
Andrew: But I, I did this Kickstarter, it got backed. Kickstarter's an amazing thing for any entrepreneur that's got a product they want to develop. You it's, one of those things that you can, it's quite difficult to make the, make the, all the videos and the information you have to do for it, but it's, it's free money. You know, you can, you can put your product up there and get people to back it.
Anthony: Hot topic, free money! Alarms are going! Bells are ringing!
Andrew: Well, when you, when you're a founder thats just lost everything and you know there's a chance to raise, you know £20,000 whatever it is by people that back your idea, obviously you have to give them the product.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: You can't just say,
"I've got this great idea, gimme cash."
Anthony: Yeah, of course.
Andrew: You know, you're the, the Kickstarter will bank that money until you're ready to actually use it and they'll, they'll then feed it to you and there is a lot of trust that you will develop a product and not just say
"Thanks very much, I'm off now."
But we did. We developed the product and we got our first customers and I set up Phoenix Instinct as the company.
Anthony: So when was this Andrew? In timelines? How long ago was that?
Andrew: That was in 2015.
Anthony: 2015, okay.
Andrew: Yeah.
Anthony: So you-
Andrew: So I brought, I got the investors in with my previous company, which was called Carbon Black in, in 2012. And by 2015 I was out, I set up a new company, I developed a new product and I called it Phoenix Instinct because I felt... the Phoenix is the, is the legend bird of legend of fire you know, that can never be destroyed. You can burn it down and you can knock it down but it will always come back. And I thought that's what every person that lives an active life in a wheelchair has got. They are Phoenix every morning.
Anthony: And that's not coincidence that it's anything to do with occupational therapy because the occupational therapists have the Phoenix as their character.
Andrew: Never realised.
Anthony: Did you not know that? There you go.
Andrew: I never tweaked on that one.
Anthony: There you go. Yeah.
Andrew: No, it was, it was, I felt that it, it was a bit of a poke in the eye to investors that probably thought I was done and dusted and finished. But really it was about this is what you need every day as a wheelchair user to live an active life.
You have to get up and not let the previous day take you down. And whatever you face, you just have to keep going. And so as an entrepreneur, that's what you have to do. And as a wheelchair user with spinal injury, that's what you have to do. So Phoenix Instinct was the name.
Anthony: That's great.
Andrew: And the wheelchair bags took off pretty well.
We've now sold what, over 8,000 wheelchair users have one of our bags now.
Anthony: Wow.
Andrew: Which is pretty great because you know, it started off as a Kickstarter project in my kitchen. And then in 2018 the Toyota Mobility Unlimited Challenge was launched. So Toyota, because of the evolution of electric cars, they're diversifying into other areas.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Because the combustion engine is done. And as a Toyota executive told me once, if we don't do something, we're gonna be finished in 20 years. And what they're doing is they want to own mobility. They want to be have a foot in the door on every piece of mobility, whether it's a skateboard, a bus, a wheelchair, whatever it is.
If it makes you get around, they want to be part of it. So they launched the Toyota Mobility Unlimited Challenge, which was specifically aimed in the disability mobility sector. They were looking for a company with an idea that promised to revolutionise mobility for people with lower limb paralysis, with a grand prize of $1 million to develop their idea.
I saw this on LinkedIn and I thought, 'you're crazy. A million dollars?! What's the catch? How much equity are they taking? What's, how much IP are they going to own?' And there wasn't any. There was no equity take, there was no IP take. This was a competition with the winner getting a $1 million
Justin: Free money just finds you doesn't it Andrew?
Andrew: Well ... if you run a business, you have to go to go and find that money. The idea that we would actually win that was ridiculous. And I was sure that the Big Medical Corps would pitch in some sort of idea. So I thought, 'what would I do with $1 millon to develop a new wheelchair? What would I do?' And I'd always thought, well, my chair would be great if it had 4 wheel drive. How do you make the front wheels move? And I'd always thought about mechanical devices, some sort of linkage, but it was all too cumbersome and too heavy it was never gonna really work. And then I just thought, 'why don't you make the front wheels electric? Electric front wheels on a wheelchair!'
So you're pushing the back wheels and you've got electric front wheels, you've got 4 wheel drive. That'd be amazing. And I thought ', this is definitely part of the idea'. The other part of the idea was I thought I needed a bit more beef than that, to actually get half a chance of getting through to the next round. So by now I'd committed to the idea I was gonna enter this thing. I thought centre of gravity is the key component of setting up any wheelchair. Where you put their axle forward or back depends on how tippy the chair is or how agile it is. What if this was intelligent and it could move itself with the body weight transfer of the user?
So if the person leans backwards rather than falling over backwards, the axle moves backwards to keep them stable. And when they lean forward, it moves forward with them, so the chair is light and agile. I factor this into the idea as well. The paper proposal with a video got through to the first round of selections.
I went to London. I met with all the judges. There were about, I think there were 14 judges all from occupational therapy, from engineering, from physiotherapy, from the wheelchair sector, Toyota engineers, electronics engineers, you name it. They were all there. And I pitched this kind of Shark Tank style to them.
And one, one of the judges who was in the wheelchair industry said,
"You want to make the front wheels electric?"
I said, "Yeah."
He said, "That's not gonna work. It's not gonna have any grip. You know, there's just not enough grip to make that work."
And I said, "I think there is. I think if a little stone chip can stop your wheelchair dead on its track, there's enough weight on the front of it that if you reverse that and make those chip, those wheels powered, it'll pull you along."
But this is why I'd put you in the centre gravity part of it as well, because I thought they were doing, they would just murder me on the one idea; it need to be a double barrel thing.
And they backed it and said, "Okay, let's prove it."
So Phoenix Instinct was selected as one of 5 finalists to go forward, and we were given a bit of seed funding to go and make our prototype.
Anthony: Wow. I mean, at this point I'm excited. Like, I, like this is exciting. I dunno if anyone else has gripped by this, but I mean where's this gonna go? This story?
Andrew: Well, I'll tell you where it's gone. I'll move that bit on quite quickly. And so ultimately, after nearly 2 years of development of this proof of concept we were at that, at this, we were supposed to have a grand final in Japan as part of the Tokyo Paralympics.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: It was all gonna be very, very flash. And I think this was really why they had done it. It was part of a big, a big kind of marketing spin they were doing at the Paralympics. COVID had come along and there wasn't to be no Paralympics or no foreigners traveling to Japan and that was all canned. So it was a video presentation to the judges. And the prototype we had actually worked really well. You could see the concept. It was very rough.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: You could see open circuit boards all over the thing, but it actually worked. It was made of carbon fibre, it was very sleek. We developed our own method of manufacturing for it, so there was not gonna be any expensive form in one companies. We were gonna do this all, all in, in house. And we won. We won the $1 million!
Anthony: Woo. That's unbelievable.
Andrew: Unbelievable. Yes. When the broadcast came and we were sitting there, all the, all this was all done online. All the finalists are sitting there in the little boxes on the screen, who's gonna get it? And they announced Phoenix Instinct from Forres, Scotland. Oh, wow. We actually did it. They're gonna give us a million dollars to take this prototype and turn it into a real thing.
Anthony: Oh my gosh.
Andrew: And you know that they did, they gave us the money.
Justin: Can I ask Andrew, just in those, just in terms of how that structure works. So in order for you to get to that stage, are you just working off $0? Like, it sounds like you, there's you and a team. Are you paying yourself and you're paying a team members? I know you get the million dollars now, but before that what does the business look like before you get this grant?
Andrew: Well, we still had money coming in from selling our bags so that, that was an income stream. But they also gave each finalist, they gave seed funding to develop their prototype of half a million dollars. So each finalist got, each of the 5 finalists, got half a million dollars to develop their proof of concept thing. And then the winning team got a further $1 million. So we actually, we got one and a half million dollars.
Anthony: And if I know Andrew being a Scotsman, he probably only spent 20,000 on developing so...
Andrew: Actually quite, they're quite crafty when you're developing it. It doesn't go far. You know, people think, oh you know million dollars that, that's- first you've got to convert that into pounds, which unfortunately for us came just as Brexit was happening.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And the pound was very strong and that murdered us on the exchange rate. Just for the record, the worst idea ever, and I was no part of it.
Anthony: Oh dear.
Andrew: That's, it's actually hit us quite hard as a, as a business. We sell quite a lot of our stuff to Europe and it's, it's really clobbered us.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: So we, we then thought right, we've got this money, what you gonna focus on? It's not enough money. We're gonna do the centre gravity thing and the electric front wheels. And I decided the electric front wheels was the stronger idea. It was the... everyone knows what a power assist is. Everyone knows what a wheelchair is.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: But they don't all know what centre gravity is.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: They don't quite get it. How are we gonna get the reimbursement bodies and even the customers to think, 'yeah, I want to add this weight to my chair of an 'Intelligent Centre Gravity' because it's gonna make the chair so much better.'
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: But it did, it made it feel very engaging. And I would use this chair with 'Intelligent Centre Gravity.' It was like ' this thing's talking to me. When I'm using it's, working with me. I'm not fighting it.'
But the electric front wheels was gonna be much more... not a lot easier to do, but it was gonna be easier to do. And it was gonna be more saleable I felt. So we focused in on that. That's what we were doing. And now it's a thing! Now it's a real thing. We launched it earlier this year, back in May and it's called the Phoenix i. And the Phoenix i is, it's changed my life. I've not moved so easily since I had spinal injury.
I've used a lot of wheelchairs in the last 41 years. I now move... because the front wheels are on casters any direction I point the chair, it'll go. It's not like some of the other power add-ons that can't go backwards. This can go any, I don't even need to change direction with any control just by moving the chair.
It's like a super lightweight manual chair that moves itself.
Justin: Yes. So let's just, again for any listeners who haven't actually seen the product yet. As a preface, I love this product. I think it's a very exciting evolution in wheelchairs. Yeah, I think it, it truly is amazing but just go through how it works.
So we know that it's powered casters. So casters are the wheels that go on the front of the chair, those tiny casters. And then in terms of using the chair is there a, do you just push them? The push rims? Or is there an alternate box? How do you actually use the device? How does it go forward?
Andrew: So the wheels, the tech, so if you imagine you're sitting stationary and you give the chair a push using the hand rims, the front wheels detect that they're moving and they kick in the power automatically. And then there's a little dial on the side of the frame that I can use to add or reduce power.
And I can also put in breaking through this dial. You know, when you think about the stone chip that stops the chair dead in its tracks; the same thing works with braking. We slow down the front wheel, speed them up. You get that, you get very controllable braking. The difference with the front wheels that I hadn't quite realised is that front wheels on wheelchairs get stuck on things because they're only turning, because they're running on the ground on a conventional chair. They propel their own propulsion. When you give those front wheels propulsion, they don't get stuck on things. They just drive over them. So something like a stone chip that normally you would be going along pavement looking for and void, I just drive over it now and the, the chair is so smooth when you're, when it is pulling at the same time as you're pushing, it overcomes just about anything.
Thick carpet through hotels, gravel: gravel wheelchair nightmare! I can cross gravel without a lot of difficulty with this chair because the front wheels don't get bedded down into the soft surface. They're pulling you out of it at the same time as you're pushing.
Anthony: I mean, that's pretty unheard of Andrew, to be honest with you. I mean, if you speak to any/most wheelchair users I mean gravel is, it's not even conceivable for somebody to be able to really realistically get through. And if they do, they're reliant on somebody helping them most of the time, right? It's, it's-
Andrew: And that's because the judge on the panel said that it's not gonna work. And so no one's done it. There's this preconceived idea it's not gonna work. Actually it does work. And not only does it work, it's the reason wheelchairs are so difficult to use. It's the front wheels. It's like pushing a supermarket trolley everywhere you go.
Anthony: Yeah. Because we naturally just think that the main wheel is the push wheel, right? Is the main-
Andrew: And it is, but it's not the navigating wheel. It's not the first, it's not the first point of contact as you're going along the road. And even, even the ride on this is so smooth. We had a guy recently and he said on his conventional chair, he always has lots of muscle spasms due to the vibration. When he gets in the Phoenix i, he said there isn't any vibration. I said, no. Those front wheels, not only do they drive over the stone chips, the undulations of the road, the texture of the road, it's not going along vibrating on every little bump that it hits. It's driving over every little bump that it hits and that smoothing effect's extraordinary.
So for me, you know when, when I'm... I can use as much power as I want. I can turn up the power to be quite, this is 300 watts of power we've got in the front 2 wheels. So it's enough to be able to go along at a fair old speed. It's enough to be going down a steep hill and to put it in braking mode and just coast down the hill without having pulled onto the hand rims. Can you imagine going to the bike shop to get that new bike and the sales guy saying,
"Check it out. It's all carbon fibre. It's got this, it's got that. And when you're going down a hill, just grab hold of that tire with your hands."
Justin: Go zigzagging. Go as slow as you can.
Andrew: I mean I used to go down hills in my chair terrified you know, and I'd deliberately have to crash into a lamppost just to stop the momentum. That was quite normal going downhill just to find somewhere to stop, plow it into the wall, or stop against the lamppost, put the foot plate against the lamppost so you can rest your hands for a minute.
We wouldn't let our children go out on bicycles without brakes, but our disabled children are supposed to go out in wheelchairs that don't have brakes and go and build an independent life.
Anthony: Yeah, yeah, it's bonkers.
Andrew: Talk about limitations?! And so, so I'm very unforgiving about this industry.
And I think it's unacceptable that these big corps have done absolutely nothing over the last 50 years. They've just been turfing out the same thing with a different dress over and over again. Even to the point that simple mechanical downhill brakes don't exist on wheelchairs. I mean, most people would say that's ridiculous; of course they do. No, actually they don't.
Justin: Until recently I will say that there is, there is a new company that has developed downhill brakes, but it's like it's hub brakes.
Andrew: Yes, I've seen that. Yeah.
Justin: Yeah. It's got it's hub brakes, which is a nice design. But yeah, they, that's still gonna, I guess wear over time. So those brakes still need to be replaced.
Andrew: It's wheelie if you go up a curb on it. I've tried them.
Justin: Yeah. It makes it difficult for that. It obviously, it adds a bit of weight, adds a bit of cost to it. You have to get a very specific wheel.
Andrew: The point is the regulatory standard on wheelchairs doesn't require brakes.
It requires a parking brake. It requires that the wheelchair has to be able to sit on a 10 degree slope pointing down with its allocated load; so for us, a 100 kilograms and not move an inch. Then you have to turn it around and it has to be able to do it with the wheels, the chair pointing up the slope and not tip over backwards and not move an inch.
What happens when you take the brakes off on that slope? No one cares! How the person got to that point of the hill? No one cares, as long as you can park it on a hill. And so the regulatory standard says 'no brakes required', none of the manufacturers are gonna do it.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: Why would they bother investing in creating downhill brakes when the regulator say you don't need to do it?!
Anthony: Yeah. I mean there's so many things going on here, isn't there? There's so many things that are going, I mean, we've not, I mean, it's intuitive what you've made. It's not just-
Andrew: Well I think it, I think hybrid, which I call this tier hybrid- part electric, part manual- is gonna transform wheelchairs. It has to, and okay I'm inventor of it but it's, it's so good. It's so life changing that ultimately it has to be on all wheelchairs.
Anthony: Mm-hmm. Agree. I agree.
Justin: I agree. I agree. So just to catch, just to catch everyone up on where we're at so far. So, Anton you mentioned, yeah I guess the great things that we love about it so far is the fact that it's, it is intuitive. It's easy to use. It gives you your assistance uphill, but now also downhill, which is something that is, is quite unique. And I guess the outdoor performance... it doesn't look like it would perform outdoors. If anyone's seen this chair before. It's got tiny, I dare say 3 inch casters, which is the... I think I've only done one wheelchair with a 3 inch caster because they're so small. They're really good to reduce roll and resistance and they make the chair a little bit lighter and it's easy to maneuver. But you do not want 3 inch casters on a typical wheelchair. But the fact that the wheels are powered, like what you're saying, it's kinda like a front wheel drive on a power chair.
On a power chair the first wheel to come into contact with an obstacle is a powered wheel. So rather than fighting I guess, rather than friction fighting with this this, rock that you referred to, it's pulling itself over it. So even though it's a tiny wheel, you still get good performance outdoors, especially if you use-
Andrew: Actually, you got better performance with it than you did if you used a bigger wheel. We used a lot of wheels in the, in the development and the bigger wheels, obviously they weigh more, but with the power you could get so much torque in the front that it became difficult to control. So we have to carve back the amount of power that we're using.
But when you think about the guys on in sports chairs doing basketball and tennis, they all have very small front wheels.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And that's because they can turn really quickly. They've got great agility. So we've taken that not quite as small as they use on the court. They are 3 inch wheels and put them in an outdoor setting, which as you say, normally that would be in the front wheel.
A manual front wheel would get stuck when every little stone chip going. But because these are electric they just drive over those stone chips in a way that you would need to achieve with a 6 inch wheel normally. And you get the agility. So we've got the agility that those guys on the court have got because the wheel is small with it self propelling power.
So, so it's a completely different thinking of what a caster wheel should be like on a wheelchair. But you're right, you would first look at it and go,
"Why have they done that? Oh, what a shame. They've got it wrong."
And then people that say that to us, then they watch the videos of me driving over gravel and they go,
"Oh, okay. Right."
Anthony: Yeah. But I mean, not coming away from, from the power wheels, don't get me wrong, I'm excited. I'm so excited for people to see this product, for them to use it. I think that there's just, it's not even potential. It's, it's there. It's for people. It's, it's available now. But you've, I know you've not dismissed it. I know we're gonna... but the wheelchair that you've created, the actual wheelchair itself is phenomenal. It's 6.5 kg. It's carbon right? It's molded to the body. Tell us about the actual wheelchair itself because you said at the beginning your passion was to have something that looked more organic, like the body, right?
Andrew: Yes.
Anthony: Tell us about the design of the actual chair.
Andrew: Well, like you said, I wanted it to be a very organic shape, and I know from doing the previous business that to make a carbon structure light and make it strong, you need big sweeping curves. And that's how carbon fibre works. And that's why a Formula one car is all curved and sloping in every direction.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Whereas some carbon, other carbon chairs in the market are made like tubular framed metal chairs but they're made of carbon fibre. And the problem is you get points of stress focusing in on sharp transitions. So where you've got an L shape say, and 2 bits joined together the stress will focus in on those points and you can cause a failure.
So if you have a big sweeping curve the stress is channeled round the frame, not focusing on you on any, on any right angle. So part of it was to make a carbon structure nice and light and strong, you need to make it in big curvy shapes. And ideally you need to make it in one single piece; not have lots of bits that are glued together.
Because again, when you glue with carbon fibre, the point of carbon is you have a weave that runs through the carbon.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: And this conducts stress. So you can put this, you can make the stress travel where you want by the direction of the weave. So with us, we've made the frame in one single piece of carbon fibre, which is really challenging to develop a process to do this.
But we did that as part of the development. So when the stresses come into this chair, they literally just travel around it until they dissipate. There's no points of focus for it to cause a failure. And we've been able to do that because we've done a single piece of construction. There's no break in the weave. There's no glued points. There's no right angles. And as a result of that, you get this very smooth organic shape that fits perfectly to the body. Very natural. You, we look at nature; there's no right angles and straight lines.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: It's all curves. And that's what we've done with this chair. And you know, that's the reason other wheelchair companies don't do that, is not because they wouldn't like to have nice rounded shapes. It's because it's very challenging to make a curved shape in lots of different sizes and configurations that wheelchairs have to be done. I want my wheelchair centre gravity here, I want the seat depth this way, I want that seat width this way. And we've had to do a lot of work to make it, make it happen.
Anthony: See, I think-
Andrew: But we've done it.
Anthony: I think you're being very complimentary to the other parts of the industry. I think that actually to give you your due, Andrew, you're the one that's actually thought of this. I think a lot of people haven't thought that far. And I, and I actually think with even going as far as saying, there's not a lot of people who are wheelchair users like yourself who are actually doing the design. And that's something that parents-
Andrew: That's a big part of it.
Anthony: And parents say to me all the time, end users say to me all the time, say Anthony, clearly no one who's actually used or has a contact with either myself who's got a dis, you know, a physical challenge disability, or I've got a child or a partner who's got it... no one's actually had that contact to be able to think because it's just somebody in a room who's coming up with a great design. But in the practical side of things, experience is really shining through for me on your design. It's coming from somewhere deep within.
Andrew: It's, it's a lifetime of... and that, that's one thing I, that I, I like about it. It's probably... if you believe that... if you believe in purpose I believe this is what I need to do. If I have a purpose, this is it. And someone once asked me that when I was doing my previous business that had the investors said,
"Is this your calling?"
And I was, I lost my breath for a minute, thought 'no, it's not'. I didn't know then that the best thing that could happen to me was to get kicked to the curb by the investors and start again and use my experience in a different way, rather than being saddled with them wanting to take it one direction. And now it was the best thing that ever could happen. And this is my calling. This is absolutely it. And when I see a new customer using it, they just light up. I had a guy recently, really buff basketball guy, and he came in and he said my brother wants me to try out this chair. Personally, I like pushing. It keeps me fit.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: I went 'okay.' He got in the chair and literally within 10 seconds he was like,
"Wow! Oh my goodness. I have to have this!"
It's just because it's so much easier. You forget when you're using a chair how hard it is. That seems ridiculous when you think about it for a minute. You just get used to it. You get used to how hard it is. You get used to the fact that to move off from a static position, you go to push.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: And if you're on a carpet, that's quite hard. You get used to the fact that when you've pushed within about 3 seconds, your momentum's gone, you're gonna have to push again. And when you don't have that anymore and you push off and it just keeps going, it's just a joy. It's just a joy that... it's a bit like getting a piece of your life back. And that seems very dramatic thing to say, but I do feel that. I walk the dog now holding onto the dog lead and the chair's just taking itself. Whereas before I had the dog tied with a piece of hose pipe and dog lead to the side of my chair and, using you know gorilla tape to hold the dog lead on. And that was my, my routine each morning so that I could have my hands free to push. Now I don't need my hands free to push and it's that sort of little thing, that I can grab my tea in the kitchen and come through to the lounge, still holding my tea and have a drink along the way. That when I come to a hotel carpet that's totally thick and difficult to move on, I just rack up the power. It's no problem at all. It's taken away a lot of the little things that made wheelchair life harder. And as you say, I can transfer it into my chair, into my car with a 6 and a half kilo transfer weight, which is pretty much the same as a lot of lightweight chairs on the market. And it's got its built-in power and no one knows it's there.
Anthony: It's absolutely incredible.
Andrew: That's the thing about electric, where I thought, 'ah, nah, that's a slippery slope. Once you, start using electric, next thing I'll be using a hoist to get into my bed. And before I know it'll be on bed rest', you know because you're gonna give up that strength.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: And it, it just isn't true.
Anthony: Yeah, because I think that is actually a really, I think there'll be lots of users listening and actually going, 'actually yeah I don't want power. I don't need power because it's going. If you don't use it, you lose it.' That old phrase. Right?
Andrew: Yes.
Anthony: So essentially something that I... I realise about the chair is that you don't have to use it with power either. I mean, it can just be a phenomenal manual wheelchair.
Andrew: It can just be a manual chair.
Anthony: Right.
Andrew: But the guy I told you about, who the really buff guy, he bought one that day. He uses it as a manual chair inside, going around his house and he puts the power on when he goes out.
Anthony: Okay.
Andrew: Whereas I just use mine with power all the time.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: I've had 40 years of pushing this thing. I can't be bothered anymore. But it's a, it's... it just seems a very natural progression for chairs to make and we've shown it can be done. I really hope that the rest of the industry kind of thinks actually we can do hybrid chairs and they come to us and maybe we can, we can work together to, to make this thing available.
Then lots of different brands because for me it's a calling to improve mobility. People have, especially they also who have had spinal injuries because that's what I relate to. It's very hard when you first have to go out there and push a wheelchair and that being seen to struggle is a massive barrier. It was a big barrier for me to go along the road knowing how hard it is and that it looks like it's really hard work and you come to a hill and you're sweating it to push up that hill and you just feel very vulnerable. Especially when someone comes up and says,
"Can I give you a hand there?"
Because that just makes you feel like, 'oh God, I look like I'm struggling so much.'
And now I don't. Now I coast around and I know people look at me and think, 'how's this guy moving so easily?' There's no power because they can't see it. It's discreet, it's built into the front wheels. So those people that are thinking, 'ah that power assist, I don't, I don't want to do that. I don't need that.' No, you don't need it. Of course you don't need it, but you might really like it.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: And it might just make life a lot easier and you might have a lot more energy at the end of the day than you do right now.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: And you might not wreck your shoulders. And I notice that young people today all use power add-ons.
I'm old generation where I'm like, 'ah no I'm roughty tufty.' But nowadays that they're all using smart drives or smooths or these kind of things, and they go to the gym to get fit-
Anthony: Mm.
Andrew: Like everyone else does. Pushing a wheelchair does not make you fit. Pushing wheelchairs just wreck your joints and the older you get-
Justin: I always tell, tell my clients that. I was like, 'you never see a wheelchair machine at the gym.' There's a reason. It causes, and I do get a lot of young, young clients who say like,
"I don't need to, I don't need a power assist. I don't want to use it. If I don't, if I don't use it I'll lose it."
But again, I think there's a few key things in there. One is that your shoulders are not designed for such heavy loads over a long period of time. And yeah, you can always progressively overload any exercise you can do. I actually don't believe there's a bad exercise that exists in the world. I think there's bad progressions to, to, to any certain movements. But we can all do any movement that's possible. We just have to build our way up. But the problem with the pushing a wheelchair is... progressive overload is one day you're doing 5 kilos, then you're doing 5 and half kilos, then 6 kilos, and you're doing it over a few weeks period of time with a wheelchair. You know, there's no kilos. But one time you might just be pushing flat for the day, but then you might have a lot of hills.
Anthony: Mm.
Justin: And you're going up and down, there's no consistency in that. So you're just, you're asking for an injury. If you imagine, if I just said, hey I just Anton I just stopped you in the middle of the day. I said,
"Hey mate, quick, gimme 50 pushups right now."
You're like, okay, no warmup, boom. And then tomorrow I was like,
"All right, 5 pushups and then 75, and then we're gonna do this."
There's no consistency in the movement, which is why injuries occur. So whilst young people who are not as prone to injury will feel like, 'hey, I don't need it...' you might need it, well, you will need it once your shoulders start to wear over time. You start doing micro damages over and over. And then not only is it debilitating now, it's gonna be debilitating when you are 60 years old, 70, 80. Like if you're doing a slide transfer now and thinking, 'yep, I'm fine,' you don't want to stop doing that side transfer. You don't want to stop being able to reach, above head to, to pour a kettle for that tea you mentioned. So I do think power assist is something that everyone should be considering because our shoulders aren't designed for it, as well as the fact that we can't progressively overload this exercise. So you're just, you're asking for injuries so-
Anthony: But I think you're spot on by the way. I think that, you know, when we look at what currently is out there, which obviously Andrew did and this part of his, probably in his intensive research, not just as a user, but as a business person looking at a business, you know there's some great power assist units out there. We can't knock them. They've taken us to a certain point and this is the next stage by the sounds of it, which is really exciting. But there are other benefits which we've not discussed. There's things like, you know, going up a curb going, down a certain terrain when you've got a third wheel on, whether that be a track wheel at the front or a power assist at the back. There are limitations. Are there any limitations to this, Andrew? Are there, are there things that, is there more development in the process of coming out with a, a Phoenix i 2, or where do you see this for the future?
Andrew: There aren't a lot of limitations. I, mean, if you can do it in a manual chair, you can do it more easily in this. But I, I was using the prototype for this last summer. I was making a patio in the back garden and I had to carry 20 kilo slabs on my lap from round the house from where the guys delivered them at the front gate, round to the back. And I just, I got it on my lap and I turned out the power and I could just cruise, round the side of the, of the house across the grass to the, to the mud where I was doing the patio and slug slug it into the, into the sand. And doing that in a manual chair, having to push with each stroke, it would be trying to fall off my lap. So I'm kind of hands free. So I can use it in every scenario I guess. The one place where you have to put a bit more effort than you might do with other power add-ons is going up the hills.
Anthony: Okay.
Andrew: Because it takes, depends on the slope, on a really steep hill. You're taking away about 50% of the effort that needs to go up the hill. You're still gonna have to push. So it makes it easier, but it doesn't just coast you up the hill because it is pulling you and, you know, there is a loss of traction on the steepest slopes. And what we're looking at how, or how to solve that just now but I can't say for me as someone that's, that's been pushing a chair for 40 years and we take on the steep slope regardless and zigzag my way up, it, I can do it in, in this chair a lot more easily.
Justin: So can can you do it in reverse?
Andrew: You can do it in reverse, yes.
Justin: I was just clarify for the listeners, listeners as well. Just like any front power assist device, whenever you go uphill there is gonna be limitations because once you start, say approaching a 45 degree, it's quite extreme, but just for the idea of, of imagery all the weight is gonna go into the back tyres. So this is where rear attachments or attachments that are the, the back wheels they get good traction uphills. And so one thing you can do, like one, one thing I tell people to do on, on front mounted power assists is if it's too steep zigzag if you can, but if not you can do it in reverse. And I wonder if you've ever tested?
Andrew: I I have actually tried that. It it does, it does make it, it feels a little bit strange going uphill backwards, but it does, it does have grit.
Anthony: It's like a moon walk in a wheelchair.
Andrew: So you, you're, you're quite right. Go going backwards does get rid of that traction issue.
Justin: Andrew, can I bring up 2 things that I, when Anton mentioned limitations, there's 2 things I thought, like one idea for a 2.0 version and I want to get your idea on another aspect of the chair. One is I thought, what do you think of a, do you think it's possible to ever put a joystick on this type of device?
Because I picture some of my clients, perhaps with cerebral palsy or maybe even like multiple sclerosis, where they don't have the ability to functionally balance with their core muscles. Do you think, I don't know where the technology looks like, do you think that's a part 2 version?
Andrew: We did actually do it in, the development. The idea was, you know, can you steer this? And the answer was yes, it, it can be done, but you don't get, because you're only putting power into the left or the right wheel and you're breaking one side, giving power to the other. You don't get the sharp turning that you get with a electric chair that's got wheels on that's being driven by the rear.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: So you don't get that kind of, you very difficult to make a right angle turn. So we found that you could do, you could control it so, you could do quite sweeping turns but to just turn around and face the other way was... it was difficult. It would need some control of the fork itself.
Anthony: But I'm glad that Justin, I'm glad that Justin asked that because I've been thinking on a similar line, but I was thinking more an attendant benefit because if somebody's being pushed where they're not able to, because a lot of our clients they get lethargic, you know, they, they they might have gone out on a journey and they've been able to propel for a certain amount of time, and then they, they get tired, especially my younger clients.
And Mom or Dad in that particular instance, as an example, would need to push them for the rest of the day or what have you. Could they still get the benefit if somebody did have, I mean, obviously on the Phoenix they, it doesn't have handles because of its sleek design currently. I know it's something that you can do and it's an option, but-
Andrew: We've got a customer just now that wants handles, so we are gonna create a mold for them to have handles.
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: So that will, will be something that we do. Yes. So it would work in the, because it's... there's a, well if you adjust the speed on the control dial then by pushing the chair, it's going to run at that, that sort of speed. So it's always a, and you can push it faster or slower than the speed on the dial, and it will sort of make up the speed or slow down with you. So someone pushing it would definitely get a benefit. And maybe on, on future one, there could be a dial on, on the handle. Yeah.
Anthony: It's just suggestive, isn't it? Because it's just from experience these are the things that being out there and I, I'm just listening and, and I'm just thinking of family I don't know? I'm sure Justin's probably the same. It's like you're thinking of people that you work with, you know, that you're like 'oh my gosh, they would go for this.' This is... they're gonna benefit so much from all these sort of, or the scenarios, the rebuttals that they've given you in, in assessments, you're like, wow! Wow! This is, this is ticking a lot of boxes for sure. I've just got one more question, because we're gonna need to round up unfortunately. But we can definitely have, if Andrew's happy coming back on because I'm just loving listening to you to be fair Andrew; I'm sure the listeners are too. One of the scenarios is that a lot of people who have maybe a power driven wheel that they're doing. So something like for our listeners, like an E-motion E drive, it can be quite tippy. You know, you can tip back. So you're not allowed to have it without a set of anti tippers, quite rightly for safety.
Talk to us about... do we need anti tippers? Does it affect the-
Andrew: No this doesn't suffer from that. That's that, that'll be, because suddenly they have all this power going into the back wheels bit like if I was sitting in my chair down and I suddenly was leaning right back and pushed on the, on the big wheels.
Anthony: There you go.
Andrew: You may be prone to tipping but that's on... with Phoenix i that's the same as it would be on a lightweight chair. You put the centre of gravity where you want it.
Anthony: Yep.
Andrew: But because the front, the power is in the front, you're not getting that tipping unexpectedly because you've turned up the power.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Justin: And it also probably works as a bit of a counterbalance as well, having motors.
Andrew: Well, it does the front end a little, a little bit heavier. So for the people who are a very active user, we tend to put the CG an inch further forward than they would normally have.
Anthony: Ah, okay.
Andrew: So my chair would normally have had a plus 3 centre gravity, so 3 inches further forward from the back rest.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: But on a Phoenix i, I'll have a plus 4. And that counter out balances the added weight of a valve kilogram that between the 2 wheels. That we have on the front and makes it feel like it's a plus 3. And similarly, if someone wants a very stable chair, we give them a plus 3, which in conventional wheelchair terms would feel like a plus 2.
Anthony: Interesting. Okay.
Andrew: I mean that if you follow that.
Anthony: Yeah. Well, I, I mean I do Justin, do you want to explain that for the listeners or is it, I mean, I think Andrew's done a pretty good job, to be fair.
Justin: Yeah, I think you get that. Basically the, the further forward the wheel is the more tippy it's gonna be, but the easier it is to push and the further back it goes, the more stable it is.
But I think from what you said it's fine. And I think when people sit, like, like I've only sat in it for a short period of time, but when I, when it comes back to Sydney, I can't wait to have another play with it and see how the tippiness goes. But it seems like we have adjustment, options for adjustment when we build the chair anyway, so that's good.
Andrew: Yeah.
Anthony: I mean could we see a new Olympic race with the Phoenix i? I mean, this could be, this could be a new category completely right?
Andrew: Well, power chairs in the, in the, the Olympics? Well, I did, was talking to, to a basketball guy recently and he said
"This would be awesome on the court."
Anthony: Yeah.
Andrew: And we'd able to move so fast and not have to keep pushing. But I know except the regulations would never allow it. But who knows what it'd be like in, in the years to come when hybrid becomes normal.
Anthony: I think it needs-
Andrew: New hybrid cars are normal now, so why not hybrid chairs? And I'm excited for the fact that after 50 years of static innovation from this industry, there is actually now something out there that's a tangible difference. See every time I got a new wheelchair over all these years, I always naively hoped it would transform my mobility. I'm getting the newest one, I'm getting the lightest one. And none of them did. None of them made an iota of a difference. They might be easier to put into your car, but that was it. They might look better, but that was it.
Anthony: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: But this actually does change your mobility, which let's face it, it's what wheelchair is all about.
Justin: You know what it seems like, Andrew, you mentioned the 50 year experience, like how much has it really changed over 50 years? And I think power assist has actually come a long way.
So I'll say that's, there's definitely a lot of development that, but in terms of the rigid frame chair, how much development has actually come and how much has really changed? It's kind of like the differences between, I don't have an iPhone, but you know, the iPhone 13 versus the 14. Is that what we're up to in iPhone? I don't have an iPhone-
Anthony: 16. Justin. I mean, come on!
Justin: Oh, I'm sorry. No, the 16 and the 15, like how much is really different? And we can sort of, we can forgive technology over the space of 12 months to be like, 'all right well look it's not that much different from last year, but they've got a titanium edge rim or whatever and the camera's a little bit better and yeah, that's great.' But if you were thinking, could you imagine how, how far the iPhone has come? Is it what, say in the past 15 years and here we are 50 years later and you could barely tell the difference between a wheelchairs
Andrew: When I first started using a wheelchair, I used to answer my parents corded phone with its rotary dial. And since then the iPhone has come along, the internet's come along, self-driving cars have come along, AI's come along. Yet the wheelchair, without excluding this chair I'm sitting in today, the wheelchair is the same chair I was sitting in when I answered the corded phone.
Anthony: I think that's a great way to end because Andrew, you are a revolutionary. You are going to take us, I have no doubt that in a year's time we're gonna have to pay big money to have you on. So, you know we're gonna-
Justin: Remember we had you on here first!
Anthony: No, honestly Andrew I genuinely believe, and I know Justin feels the same, that this product is just going to get, go from strength to strength. This is revolutionary.
Andrew: That's great to hear because you guys are industry experts and you know, one, one of my... one of my personal nervous moments is when you've got to go and present it to an industry expert. And I presented to the Oceania Seating Symposium in, in Melbourne last year. It was the first time that I'd actually shown it to a whole conference hall full of occupational therapists. And I thought they're either gonna murder me and say,
"What an absolute load rubbish."
Or they're gonna say,
"Wow!"
And it was the latter and they lapped it up. They just loved it.
Justin: Can I say, can I say I, I was also at there at, at the ISS in Melbourne and Andrew was there, and let me just give you the, the context. Andrew is someone who's... he's an expert, but I get what you mean like you're in front of a therapist who prescribes wheelchairs all the time. He gave such an amazing presentation when I was like, 'whoa.' Like it actually inspired me because I present every now and then, and it made me think, 'oh that's how you need to do it.' He did so well. And then me relatively confident, as you say Andrew an expert in my field, Australian, talking to other Australians in my own country. I had to go up in that same crowd and literally give a 60 second spiel about a poster that I had hung up in that thing. And I fumbled like, nothing. I was mumbling, I stuttered my words. Everything was blurry, I was sweating. And that was for 60 seconds. So for Andrew to say,
"Oh, you know, I'm get a bit nervous mate-"
Andrew: When they said to me, you've got 40 minutes. I was like, wow, I've go to talk for 40 minutes.
Justin: Oh, he did. It was amazing. I was like-
Andrew: You drop into the zone, don't you? Say you get tunnel vision and it's like, okay, you're on. Just do it. I, I've lived and breathed this wheelchair and my own journey that I can rattle this stuff off quite, quite easily.
Anthony: No look your passion, your desire for success, it comes through. But most importantly, you want to change the experience. You want to change people's lives. And I, and that for me is what I will take from chatting to you; that you have put everything from that 14-year-old boy who unfortunately had that terrible accident but you've changed, you've taken something... you know when somebody says, you know 'when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade'; you certainly have, Andrew, you really have. And I know it's been an, I mean, I'm not wanting to disrespect the journey that you've had to get to this point. And I'm sure you know, it's been really tough in moments. It sounds like you've had real challenges, real, had to really dig deep and take risk.
But that risk is really gonna become the reward of others. I genuinely believe, Andrew, other people are going to have genuine reward from your risk and that for me is what will take this Phoenix Instinct, this Phoenix i, into next generation wheelchair. So I just want to say a huge thank you to you.
I'm sure our listeners are gonna be smashing online, getting in there. They're gonna be reading all about it. There, we're gonna put a link on here. Don't forget everybody, if you want to click and subscribe to Wheel Chat don't forget to get in, and we will get you that link for the Phoenix Instinct. And people are available to try the, they can get in touch with Andrew. I'm sure we'll put your link on there as well, Andrew if anyone's got any questions but certainly just in closing, thank you Andrew for your time this morning. It's been absolutely amazing listening to your journey. No, it's a pleasure. Justin, have a great evening.
Justin: You too. You guys have a, I'll have a, you guys have a great day and Andrew I, I would love to have you on again another time. Maybe we can, can do like a brainstorm of what else would we do with a million dollars? What other weird ideas we have for the industry?
Anthony: Guys.
Justin: I think that would be fun.
Anthony: Absolutely! Justin, great shout! That's it. You've cracked it. Next episode.
Justin: Done.
Anthony: Guys, don't forget to click and subscribe. You've been listening to Wheel Chat with Justin Boulos and Anton Mitchell and our special guest, Andrew Slorance. Thanks Andrew. Guys. Guys, cheers, guys.