Small Business Stories - RightPSI

Alex Fees: I'm Alex Fees on Small Business Television, we're coming to you from SEMA 2008, that's Specialty Equipment Market Association here at the Las Vegas convention center, and joining me here now is John Milanovich. John, good to meet you sir. John Milanovich: Nice to meet you. Alex Fees: Appreciate you being here. John Milanovich: I appreciate it. Alex Fees: John's company out at Bozeman Montana is called RightPSI, that's RightPSI, all one word, PSI in caps, stands of course for pounds per square inch. This is a tool that measures the air you put in your tires. John Milanovich: Yeah, it's essentially what we have is a tire pressure indicator, it's visual indication, we have a cap that you screw on to your valve stand, you take your cap off, it turns orange when your tire is low, black when it's fine, and yellow if you over fill it, and you actually fill through it. So you can use it as a gauge, so when it turns yellow, you know that you've exceeded the recommended tire pressure, you can bring it down to black and you have the right PSI, hence our company name. Alex Fees: Okay, do you dial in that tire pressure? John Milanovich: No, you would buy a 35 or 33 PSI, all I say, so when we go to retail, we're going to have a set of essentially 5 different skews for the different PSIs. It is actually. now what, this is our second round of prototyping, we're going in the 3rd round currently. It's, as you can see, it's right now as there is no pressure in it, so it's orange. Alex Fees: Okay John Milanovich: It's all black when the pressure is correct from the PSI from below and then again like I said if you overfill it, turns yellow. Alex Fees: How did this come to be? John Milanovich: Well, it was crazy; I was working in the banking industry, my dad got the pattern on this basically on the fill through patterns of this mechanism of the product. Then when I realized, we received that, I then hired a design team from Palo Alto, and we designed through with the pattern, and then we ended up working with a group in Switzerland as well, to kind of help create it, and it's been fantastic, it's been a great learning experience. My background is in finance, so I have been in banking my whole life, so this was kind of a new thing, we've been out at it for about two years, two-and-a-half years, and their response, which is great. Last year Microsoft networks did a report on the show and it listed us as one of the 12 products that was in the cool new technology product, in the show. Alex Fees: Wow, really? So what kind of ahead did you get of that? John Milanovich: That was great, we got a lot of interest, you know, right now we're going into -- and so that gets carried forward, but we were just now going into manufacturing. We are doing our 3rd round of prototyping. We have a gentleman who is testing them, and then we're going into manufacturing. So these are for retail sale into the first quarter of 2009 really, really the 2nd quarter of 2009. Alex Fees: Do you know yet where they will be for retail sale? John Milanovich: Oh, that's why we're here for. We are here to meet distributor, we've had a lot of interest, but I cant, I wish I could tell you, big box stories right now; we are going to be carrying, but there are others we are working on it. Alex Fees: So this measures tire pressure of any kind, right? John Milanovich: Yeah, the only standard thing on a car is the valve stand, which is straight above. And so this works on any car, you just buy the PSI and we can dial it in for whatever PSI someone is looking for. But for the mass market we're specifically saying like 5 different PSIs to take, because you can't have a whole shelf space of 150 different PSIs. Alex Fees: Well john, what is the ancestor of this item? I mean, this is taken the valve, and trying to get on the tire gauge, and it kind of pokes out the end that is --may be it's 32, may be it's 38. John Milanovich: Well right, right, right, well you know, it's interesting, because you had this summer, this big discussion of tire pressure right, and how that affects the gas savings in the environment, and those things, the safety issue, the environment in the money gas savings is what's driving to really like our product. From that if you Goggle tire pressure plus the environmental or gas savings; you got 500,000 hits in the middle of August, from the political discussion, so there is a lot of interest. Also TPMS is something that's driving people to interact with their tires more and more. So now that there is a light that comes on, that says, hey, you have a low tire, they get out of the car; they might not know which tire is low. This is a product, that they can go, oh, it's the front right that's low as the left rear, and then as they interact, as they are driving their interaction with filling up their tire, that user experience can be unproved by having something like this, where it's just a visual -- you don't have to get down there, get dirty, put the - is it 32, like you're saying or is it 36? Just fill it, and when it hits -- and you'll see as you take it off, it changes color. When it hits yellow, you know you've overfilled it, so you bring it to black, and you'll be at the right PSI. Alex Fees: Okay. Alright, John have you been here to SEMA before? John Milanovich: This is my 3rd year. Alex Fees: 3rd year; how is it going, as far as making inverts with your products? John Milanovich: It's like I said, last year was a nice hit with the article. You know, we've developed context with about 450 people from the show here, who are distributors, and our challenge has been manufacturing than getting the product that we got. So that's exciting to kind of be finalizing that and getting to the next stage where the whole others, all the other challenges with the selling and -- the actual logistics behind it; it's going to be a whole another issue. But it's been exciting, and it's an interesting learning process, the expertise, that's in this room and these areas is huge,so it's been great. Alex Fees: I like your deal. Again, he is John Milanovich. John, I appreciate you being here. John Milanovich: Hey, listen, I appreciate, thank you. Alex Fees: President of RightPSI, what about your website, where can our sbtv.com viewers go? John Milanovich: Yes, it's www.rightpsi.com. Alex Fees: www.rightpsi.com, the deal is on; thank you, I'm Alex Fees you're watching Small Business Television, coming to you from SEMA 2008 in Las Vegas.