"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...
Meetings. | 
More meetings. | 
And even more meetings. |
Then another meeting. | 
Clay model - front | 
Clay model - side |
3-D image | 
Prototype 2 - side | 
Prototype 2 - front |
Prototype 4 - side | 
The finished helmet, in the factory. I really blew the lid off this EVS TakT helmet story. | |