Overview
Cycling is a crucial mode of transport in the common European challenge of making transport sustainable: cycling is energy efficient, environmentally friendly and very suitable for short distances.
The use of helmet is not widely accepted by urban cyclists due to practical reasons, they are uncomfortable, cumbersome to carry around, look hideous, make sweat and ruin personal style.
Hövding represents a head protection for cyclists unlike any other product on the market – an airbag for cyclists. Compared with traditional helmets, Hövding is more than three times better shock absorbance, can withstand multiple impacts in one accident, reduce head rotation, provides much larger protection area and stabilizes head and neck in the accident. Hövding is easy to fold and bring in bag, discrete, works with a hat.
Hövding has been sold during around 3 years. Now we focus on expanding from initial test sales in Sweden to successive rollout across Europe. However, some limitations such as our quite manual manufacturing process impede us to scale up our product and meet our growth ambitions.
The overall objective of our business innovation project is to automatize the manufacturing process of our airbag for cyclists called Hövding with the aim of scale-up and reduce production costs. To this end, airbag will be designed and manufactured in one piece with woven seams eliminating the need of conventional sewing. We also want increase the add-value of our airbag add Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity and developing an outer shell based on nanotechnology textiles to obtain superior lightweight, good water and stain repellent properties.
Hövding addresses a market of an estimated 150 million adult cyclists in Europe alone and clearly contributes to EC policies intended to improve road safety offering a more safety solution to traditional helmets. With this business innovation project, we want to establish Hövding as a novel product category – The No.1 head protection for cyclist