LucidLights is progressing well, and great strides are being made!
We're making adjustments on the fly, and continuing to reevaluate our growth strategies and plans.
Connections
Wendy's Corporation bought two LucidLights prototypes for experimental promotional advertising at a new restaurant in Silverthorne, Colorado. They've provided very valuable feedback on their experiences using them in "sign flipper" mode, and we are continuing to work towards introducing them to upper management for use in all the Wendy's and Arby's shops. They came back to us and bought two more!!! The pre-production prototypes are available for sale, but they are
substantially more expensive than the units will be when they are manufacturered. Call if you need more information.
One very important company in Omaha is communicating with ESPN as a possible corporate sponsor, and they are discussing LucidLights with the branch of their company that handles almost all of the 911 calls throughout the country, with the safety unit in mind. As we grow over the next few weeks and months these efforts will likely speed up.
A person in Boulder who's an expert with government contracts and grants is checking with several Federal departments to get LucidLights in the loops with their programs. There are over 900,000 "first responders" in the United States, so she's particularly excited about getting the safety model of LucidLights into their hands. When community emergencies happen, the lights often go out and directing traffic safely is a big concern. LucidLights can help!
One of our strongest supporters also displayed LucidLights at a Colorado Rockies baseball game recently. A lot of people asked a lot of questions, and more than one expressed interest in quantity sales. A connection to Nike Shoes was initiated and follow up on that will happen soon.
Another LucidLights team member has fantastic manufacturing and business connections in Europe. He's eager to proceed with that territory, and we're looking forward to the day we can safely expand LucidLights business overseas. That day will be coming soon!
Technical Progress
The first generation of manufactured circuit boards was a great success, and a much smaller LucidLights unit has been shown for some time now. It is "half as big as before, but still twice as big as it's going to be!" Second generation boards are being built right now, and the third generation (all surface mount chips version) is on the drawing board and will follow soon. These will be the high-quantity manufactured boards.
We rebuilt the complete circuitry from the ground up, replacing the microcontroller, LED driver, and most every other part with more cost-effective, industry standard parts. The new PIC microcontroller, for example, can be carefully selected for exact features to maximize the cost benefit ratio, it is now programmed in C language instead of assembly, and there are features ideally suited to what we want to do. The surface mount price of the chip we've selected for production is way under $2, or about 1/4 the price of the original chip. These small reductions in cost really do make a big difference in quantities.
Current Steps
We currently have a Mechanical Engineer who is an expert with modeling plastic parts, working on an industrial design for a "real", manufacturable handle. Everything is in place for us to have several plastic LucidLights devices ready to go the week of July 10th. Stay tuned…
The last two weeks in July we'll be sporting T-shirts, hats, banners, new business cards, and manufactured LucidLights units, along with greatly improved LucidLabs software, as we network with up to about a thousand major business CEOs flying in for the "CEO Space" event in Los Angeles. This week-long tradeshow and networking event will be a major growth opportunity for LucidLights, so please send good vibes our way as we make significant steps towards profitability for all of us!
Some of you may know that Jeanie, my wife for 34 years and friend of EJ's for 25, died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2005 of a burst brain aneurysm. What most of you don't know is that in the weeks just before her passing, Jeanie had jumped passionately into a volunteer position with Habitat for Humanity. We are currently communicating with this organization to determine the best way for LucidLights to become a corporate sponsor. This is a great cause that EJ and I believe in, we feel it's a great way to honor Jeanie's zest for life and helping others, and it's a positive thing for LucidLights to do. There will be other opportunities to support worthy causes in the future, please keep us informed of the ones nearest to your hearts.
Pre Sales
We are now collecting pre-sale commitments from anyone who wants to buy a LucidLight. We'll have a web page up very soon that will start taking names and email addresses of those interested in getting some of the first production run of LucidLights™
