If there's one thing we like almost as much as making, building and braking, it's sharing what we're doing with others. For the most part, people like to hear about something different from their day to day trade, and listen in. But as anyone in this community knows, it's always more fun to share a project with someone who is -REALLY- into what you're doing. Not for the focus and interest (though that's always awesome) but more for the insight they can provide. And lately, we've heard the same message from a few of these folks. First, what we're doing is very awesome -- it seems a lot of people in the industry of heavy power tools are highly aware of the dangers, and know a friend who was injured when safety measures weren't observed, or when they weren't enough. The second message these folks shared was that our target market is off base. According to these folks, the biggest need for tool safety is not in the at-home market, but instead in the bigger, more powerful tools which require 3-phase power.

When we started out, we made assumptions about our customer and target market. Now we're seeing real data which contradicts our assumption, and we have a decision to make: Do we trust our starting impression of the market, or do we jump in on some customer research? Given our timetable and our goals (and the spirit of the product development competition we're in) we think customer research is going lead to the best outcome. So what's next? We're going to sit down with some more people and try to answer the question "Who would see the most value in a tool braking solution?". Updates to come...