Spy Guy here, and I just interrogated Guido Rietdijk, one of the owners of EVS Sports, and he sang like a canary. Actually, he has a very unpleasant speaking voice when he’s in pain. But I got the scoop on what it takes to design, test and manufacture an all new, well, I don’t want to say “ground-breaking,” so I’ll just say an all new, innovative helmet. Here’s what he had to say abut the EVS TakT helmet. If you read closely you can tell when I hit him with the electrical charge to get him to reveal all…”Our decision to include a helmet in the EVS product line was a long overdue decision, really, since it’s the number one piece of protective gear bought by each and every rider. This was an especially interesting project because helmet protection and technology have not really moved forward much, and most brands basically limit their ‘INNOVATION’ to a different color scheme each year, with no regard or apparent interest in raising the level of protection for the wearer. With the interest EVS has always had in raising the bar on protective features, we set out to increase protection without changing the wearing experience, and still make the helmet look like the hippest lid on the globe.”"We set out to find a quality partner and reviewed several potential factories with proven track records. Only one potential manufacturing partner actually seemed to understand our desire to improve the quality and features on a new helmet. They were truly excited to push the limit with us. We used a premium complex composite material using Aramid-Kevlar-Carbon-Fiber, giving us the opportunity to attain the absolute best level of protection.”"There are many crutial steps to the development process, including sketch-to-handmade-prototyping, 3D rendering, first shell development, testing, final shell development, fit testing, liner development, graphics development, DOT/SNELL testing, packing development, international testing requirements, and the many rounds of sampling the details, of which there were many.”"We went through all those steps with our in-house team of designers, supported by the development team of the factory, which had a wealth of knowledge in terms of technology. Kevin Hinyub (A co-owner of EVS Sports) and I were involved in every step and every decision.”"We visited the factory and inspected the production and R&D facilities, and came away positively impressed and confident we could pull this off with good results.”
“Along the way many re-designs were necessary to either allow the strength of the structure not to be compromised, or to get the correct visual effect we were looking for. As you can see the overall visual effect of the helmet incorporates a strong ‘square-back’ look, which exudes strength and speed. All the small external components – like the mouthpiece and side/top vents – went through many, many renditions to come up with a ‘feel’ that made you want to wear the helmet.”"The main FUNCTIONAL improvements we wanted to incorporate were: neck/collarbone protection above and beyond what’s available now, airflow superior to current offerings, and weight that would be competitive with current helmets. The resulting neck and collarbone protection feature that’s built in is especially unique, and functionally unparalleled in any other helmet. The airflow system, with its internal channels and elaborate group of external vents, isn’t totally new, of course, but our execution is certainly innovative and very functional. Then we came up with the idea of rubber-tipping the visor, which always seems to get beaten up in gear bags and in between motos or rides. Not all of these are Einstein-level inventions, but they are a whole lot more than just a new paint job on the same boring lid.”"The main VISUAL improvements include allowing a wearer to fully INDIVIDUALIZE their helmet, not just by choosing their own size and color scheme, but by having several styles of VISORS and LINERS available to switch out and make that helmet a one-off personal statement.”"Then we got to the name game. We had quite a bit of fun coming up with a name for the new beast, and we actually had a couple of really wacky brainstorming sessions. About half of the suggestions weren’t appropriate for the general public, but did keep our busy team with smiles on their faces. After we picked the name TakT, which was basically derived from the words ‘tactical’ and ‘attack,’ we wanted to identify the different paint schemes further. The resulting identifiers ’981′ and ’985′ have a very distinct meaning, which we hope to use in a promotion later in the launch. You can test your moto knowledge now and see if you can decipher what they mean.”"For testing, a lot of riders rode with the helmet, and we really worked hard on getting the inner lining to be comfortable, breathe well, and generally stay nice-looking even after several rides. Cheek pad fittings were pretty interesting too, since we discovered that making it very customizable would be a great benefit. The end result is that we’ve got exchangeable liners and cheek pads so that even a blockhead can ride around in comfort in an EVS TakT lid.”
“In order to have a nice first ad, we had our first handmade helmet hand painted with our color schemes. This meant we had to HAVE color schemes. I remember spending hours and hours with our design team tweaking every line on every design. Then it was off to a helmet painter to quickly put the designs on our first prototypes. Pretty rough stuff, and if you were to see those first helmets close up you’d be surprised to know they were actually the helmets used in the first ads! Photoshop is an amazing program!”"We organized an international launch at the show in Cologne, Germany and introduced the concept and the first pre-production samples to our international re-sellers. Luckily the helmet was well received. We had to give away all our samples to the guys that wanted to show them around to their dealers. How could we say no?”"We had the chance to send some other samples to the domestic customer base that we felt was important to have a first impression. Most of our distribution partners understood our quest to improve on protection and offer features never seen before in a helmet. Luckily, most re-sellers understand the EVS brand, know our desire to break the status quo, and realize that we’re simply not happy to come out with a product that’s only selling features would be graphics and price.”At this point I felt I had all the details, and I let Guido go. The truth serum must have still been affecting him, because he added this on his way out the door -”That’s the path of the birth of our EVS TakT helmet. Everyone that’s seen it is drawn by its looks, and when the functional protective features are explained it simply becomes a very compelling product. Hopefully it’ll have its place in history. But we’re not sitting on the sideline waiting for that to happen. As if we didn’t have enough of this tough development experience, we’ve started with a clean sheet of paper and embarked on the development of another new EVS helmet in a slightly lower price segment. We intend to shake things up in the Polycarbonate helmet market as well by making superior helmet features available to an even larger group of customers. So stay tuned, we’re targeting to become a major innovator and force in the world wide market for head protection.”What a weird exit line, huh? He was a little shaken up from the experience. But there you have it – every step it takes to get a helmet design from inside your head to wrapped around your head. Now you’re ready to design, test, and manufacture your own helmet! Or you could save all the trouble and just pick up the EVS TakT helmet. It will be available January 1, 2007. Hmmm, January 1… I wonder if the new helmet’s innovative enough to protect from a hangover…
