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MTB Helmets: In Depth w/ Kali Protectives Founder Brad Waldron ... Ep. 100 [Podcast]

MTBpodcast · MTB Helmets: In Depth w/ Kali Protectives Founder Brad Waldron ... Ep. 100

Ever wondered what it takes to create a helmet that not only saves lives but prevents life altering injuries? Tune into our latest episode of the MTB Podcast where we interview Kali Protectives Co Founder Brad Waldron and discuss all things MTB helmets.

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If you would like to read the transcript of the podcast above, continue below!

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to episode 100! can you believe we made it this far? certainly cannot it's pretty incredible 100 but we didn't really do the first 50

or something it doesn't totally count episode 100 of

the mountain bike podcast and this is going to be a unique one we have a special guest hailing all the way from

Morgan Hill California we have Brad Waldron who is the founder and CEO of Kali protectives so we're going

to talk about mostly helmets go figure go figure uh I'm pretty excited to talk about that

everyone who rides a mountain bike wears a helmet it's a very important piece of gear for all of us and yeah we're gonna

we're gonna basically just drill Brad with uh every possible question we can regarding helmets helmet technology

helmet maintenance and care I don't know what else uh how often you should get a

new one all sorts of things did you say that what color is the fastest what colors

you know what yeah yeah I'm just gonna stop there uh before we jump into helmets let's

quickly mention that uh some other exciting things happened which hasn't happened in a while new products in the

bike industry new bikes Yeti released how many bikes three three all-new bikes

all 29ers one SB 120 140 and 160. pretty awesome and you guys went there we went

to Colorado we did a top secret admission to Yeti headquarters in Golden Colorado road some uh we got bikes check

them out yep yeah I feel like I was in a I was in like a top secret military facility

eyeing a certain yeah Yeti likes to yeah as if they're selling ballistic missiles

to the government NASA full ndas signed my life away yeah not really but the bikes look really

good I'm impressed I mean they're definitely a really nice refinement to what they've had prior and uh people

seem to be loving them in the comments other than other than uh not so happy about the price yeah

well those guys have allowed us so yeah yeah right weight is just weight is so

seemingly irrelevant and no one even talks about weight anymore no one even discloses frame weight which no yeah

that's the only thing that's really on Yeti's end is the frame weight yep and I think frame weight's the least

like it matters probably the least I mean rear unspring weight maybe but yeah

it's the most stationary part of your bike so yeah but bikes look good we've got three separate YouTube videos where

Jared himself goes into extensive detail to tell you about those three bikes yeah that's right Brad have you ever had a

Yeti I have not but I've seen the ones out here I'd like to talk about those

wait you're currently on a pivot switchblade right I am yeah Jared and I just got to

ride with Brad we we showed him some of the local Trails uh three little short downhill trails that are local in the in

the Newbury Park here uh did you like them what'd you think I definitely liked them yeah it's a good place to ride yeah

it's fun it's a fun it's fun because it's social and it's they're cool and unique and I don't know I I enjoy riding

there but I told Jared I was like let's just go to water towers [Music] I've never been more Adventure for you

you know I was like how often is he in town you know like showing the goods yeah we don't have a ton of time so come

back on a Saturday and we'll do a big old Loop and the Santa Monica Mountains yeah she's got a little teaser you just

got to ride these little trails and look at the Santa Monica Mountains it was a beautiful night so it was no complaints

here yeah Sunset it was just about perfect yeah yeah it was it was amazing that was really nice I love riding bikes

it's quite fun yeah and we got we got to test out the new Kali Cascade helmet yeah we do good yeah it was great which

which I've been eyeing so a little back story uh how how Brad ended up here uh

let's see about three months ago I was I was in a search for a new helmet and I could I just had trouble finding things

that fit my head and something that I liked and uh I walked into a showroom in the California store and I saw one of

Kali's Maya 3.0 and I was like whoa this looks sweet this has come a long way since the last time I saw Kali helmet

tried it on it fit and I was like I'm gonna try this one and it must have been the third or fourth helmet that I'd tried I was just trying a bunch of

different ones to see what I liked and what fit and uh I was I was like wow this is really nice and I happen to know

John sacks over at Kali what does John do he is our national sales manager national sales manager so John Sachs has

known me since I must have been 14 years old so my very first job at a bike shop locally here uh when I was a teenager

John was a j b rep JB's sort of a behind the scenes distributor of bike parts and

uh John would come in every week to help the owners there figure out what they needed to buy and he would just

hang out and and chat and he was just the most personable cool dude ever and

I've known him ever since and then he went to KHS after that yeah I think I didn't met him at KHS probably 14 myself

at a bike shop yeah everybody knows John sucks man he's such he's such a cool

dude and then did he go right to you after KHS yeah we uh we stole him yeah

we took him no he needed to move uh family issues moved and so we you know

he'd been an outside rep for us for five six seven years and I mean I

traveled with him a few times and it was awesome because you'd walk into a store and they'd go oh it must be Tuesday at

10. because John had his route and he made sure that he was on time and you know sometimes you travel with with reps

and it's like oh well let's go here today or let's go there but John had it dialed yes yeah John's so cool so so I I

ran into John must have been 2018 at uh it was called saddle drive bike

industry event and that's where I briefly met you Brad in person and one of your other guys that that uh works for Kali and remember just hanging out

with John and and just talking helmets because it was you know kind of you know he just wanted to tell me everything

about Kali and all this stuff and we just had a great time and it was really cool it was cool to just catch up with him and then talk to you briefly and

talk more about helmets and I don't know I I learned a lot a lot of stuff that night as we kind of sat and had cocktails and talked about mountain bike

helmets and and uh it was kind of always on my hand I was like wow these these guys really are into this I was like you

know they really seriously into this and it is a curse yeah blessing and a curse

but it just you know hanging out it kind of and talking to John and it was just I don't know it exposed to me to kind of

some more of the behind the scenes stuff that happens and it it made me start to think more about these helmet testing

standards and how helmets are marketed and how they're not able to be marketed and there's caution around all that so

it was just cool but um you know so anyways that was 2018 and then recently I put on that Kali my

helmet and I was like I like this thing and so I emailed John I was like hey man what's going on with you I was like what

do you think of this Virginia Tech standard I saw that Kali wasn't super high on there and he's like blah blah

blah blah but I gotta tell you over the phone or something and I was I was like hey you should come down and get on the podcast she's like I'll do you want I'll

do you want better I'll send down the seat you ought to be on your podcast oh great where's John Now where's John when

I need him right now he's probably watching a sports game right now I think he's waxing his snowboard yeah

for sure so so anyways that's how Brad ended up down here so thanks for coming by thanks

for having me appreciate it um I definitely think this is an interesting topic for mountain bikers to learn more

about and and something that's yeah it's it's interesting there's a lot to it we're gonna try and stay high level and

and bring some value in regards to helmets and hopefully not get too deep in the weeds although that's Brad's

specialty what did you you told me earlier you said most helmet companies should have a

CEO that's a marketer and not an engineer and I said but you're an engineer yeah I always say that you

should have a sales guy or a marketing guy as your CEO because um I get too much in the weeds sometimes

and and you know not as much about profits as the CEO really needs to think

about um but as long as I'm in this seat that's not going to change it's going to be safety first

yeah that's cool I mean that's that's probably a very I would imagine that's a very different scene when you go over to

other companies that sell bike helmets or helmet technology that are publicly traded and beholden to quarterly

earnings reports and that whole level of shenanigans um I like that so I appreciate those

comments well since we're on that topic let's talk about the disclaimers okay so

what what are you as as a you know CEO and founder of a helmet company what are

you allowed to say not allowed to say or maybe maybe afraid to say because of

legal reasons and and once I was heard about this I was like oh that actually makes a ton of sense and I started realizing that all of this marketing is

very vague and I mean even you you look at you know huge companies in the in

that industry that make helmets and there really is not there's a lot of huhan beating around

the bush and and no I don't know so tell us about that sure I mean first of all it comes down to

people being concerned about lawsuits you start making claims and saying I'm safer and lawyers get hold of that and

they start you know they're gonna they're gonna just Crush you in a lawsuit right so that that fear comes

into play then the the reality is is our testing is all over the place

um each test lab gives you different results so you know

what are you going to stand behind so first and foremost it is the the fear of lawsuits right we've been super lucky

we've only had one and it had nothing to do with that helmet it had something to do with a knee guard and it you know was

really nothing but um you know it is real for companies I mean we are in what I like to call

litigation nation and we you know we worry about those things just like bike companies do yeah yeah

that's true I mean I I definitely say one of the downsides to the US is it's the most litigious country in the world

and there's a lot of shenanigans that happens here just because of that um yeah which is not cool so anyways in

case you do accidentally say something is safer or better legal disclaimer legal disclaimer yeah

or or we do and also we can't say that either or maybe we can because we're not the manufacturer who knows

disclaimer anything you hear on this podcast may or may not be the truth but you know it's still a podcast so

and you can listen to it on Spotify because I don't care and now a word from our sponsors sorry

for the interruption just a quick note to let you know Trail one components is having a sale for the trails all

November where two dollars per product sold will go to Trail networks and the whole catalog is discounted 20 plus

Trail one is a mountain bike component brand myself and the WC crew co-founded so we could make mountain bike parts

that we have always wanted well simultaneously supporting the sport that we all love with a give back model to

Trail networks it would mean the world to us if you Scope to the trail one website at Trail one dot bike that's

t-r-a-i-l-o-n-e dot bike thanks and now back to the show

well let's let's do a couple quick and important ones on helmets Jared rapid fire all right when does a helmet need

to be replaced time crash both let's talk time first

um there's been numerous tests done on 10 year old helmets 15 year old helmets

even uh bicycle helmet safety Institute ran a

bunch of those um what it really comes down to is how the helmet has been handled so if I take

one that got stuck in my warehouse somewhere it's going to test out pretty

much the same not pretty much the same as it did the day that it got into my warehouse what really affects your

helmet are is use so UV light if you stick it in the back of your in the back

of your car and it takes heat takes UV light that just eats up primarily EPS so that's going to hurt it

so EPS just real quick expanded polystyrene that's the foam that is primarily used

um many people using other things now including us um but uh it really comes down to use

how it's been handled uh you know how you've handled it if you're out riding a lot like you know I hope we all are uh

some companies will say five years I think you know they kind of got put you know in a corner and said how long does

this last and some people would probably like them to say three so that you replace it more often but it really comes down to how much you're riding it

and how you're handling it for sure then we can get into the crash stuff I mean

um you know we I look at a lot of Crash helmets um we have a crash replacement policy so

I can actually study them I do look at them I cut them open to look at The Crush look at the breakage but before

you get into that if you're at home and you're looking at your home and you've got any kind of crack in it it's not going to withstand the same kind of uh

impact that it was designed to do um there's many companies that are

looking at materials that are multi-impact um I do have a helmet on the motorcycle side that I can hit the same helmet 80

times or have hit it 80 times um and you know but that's a special

material that's new to the market but your general bike helmets that we can

buy from you know your nice bike shops like you guys down to your Walmart helmet is normally expanded polystyrene

one hit wonder once one and done does a great job nothing dissipates energy quite

as efficient at the weight that expanded polystyrene does all right so one time

one and done hit your head replace it that's it no well I was actually going to ask a

question just like based on that is that basically like uh you know compensating for the fact

that you potentially could crash in the same place or for the whole the entirety of it it really does come down to the

risk of hitting in the same place yeah and you know getting all those crash challenge back you see places that are

very typical your your temple you know because you know we're all you know in

our heads when we crash we're trying not to put our hands out you know we're trying to roll with our arms in and what

you do is you turn your head right there and that's that's a very typical spot um I mean I've had though I've seen I've

seen helmets with the big smack on the top and I called the guy what the hell happened to you it turned out a tree

branch had fallen on him while riding helmet was one of the most destroyed helmets I've ever got back and it's like

okay that's pretty damn rare but um jeez but yeah it is the risk of hitting in

the same spot cool what's the likelihood um okay

crash in your helmet just replace it yeah yeah right on

oh next one how to care and clean and care for your helmet a lot of people ask

that one okay so first of all I'll go back to what I said don't leave it in the back seat of your car yeah don't leave it in the sun leave it you know

somewhere where you know it's gonna not take any more additional abuse than what you're going to do when you're

riding um mild soap I mean there are some things helmet cleaners on the market

um I I just say take your take your pad out wash it with hand soap let it dry

and you're gonna be fine right on nice um what are your thoughts on convertible

Enduro helmets uh you know with a removable chin bar safe or not and are they appropriate for downhill okay

um we do not make one so we have uh our

our highly ventilated uh models called The Invader I actually call it a full

face Trail helmet I mean guys look at your Yeti out here our equipment is getting so much better I mean and and

we're riding in ways that we couldn't ride you know for me 15 years ago you

know because our equipment's better um so people should well I'd like to

think you should want to wear a full face if you're hitting some pretty Hard Enduro stuff um I'm not a fan of the re of the

convertible stuff because you've got all this mechanics close to your face so on our Invader it's it's fully around the

the the injection molded piece is a 360 all the way around your head that's my

preference um I I've you know played around with some other brands and seen it and I have

not been convinced yet that what they're doing is where I want to go um if I get smarter and can figure out a

way that I that I'm satisfied with it then you know then you might see one from us but right now we do a full 360

all the way around I always ask the question and there's probably you probably get a lot of

responses to this and say how many times you see a guy with his convertible chin

bar on his back of his backpack climbing up the hill usually you put it on or you don't yeah you have it or you don't but

that's you know that's kind of a personal preference thing for me the just that if if you're gonna put a chin

bar on somebody I want it to be as strong as as it needs to be we test

as it should be we The Invader we actually tested the motorcycle standard which is a little higher than the bike

standard and we can withstand that but um it's just I like it if I'm going to put something in front of your face I

want it to not be in question yeah or removable right I don't want to come off yeah and

having that removable chin bar and sort of all that I don't know what you'd call that Hardware that connects the chin bar

to the helmet and allows it to detach on and off yeah that is kind of risky right I mean I don't know come to think of

that is that is a lot of hard metal yeah just one of those things right by your face you know so we prefer the 360 all

the way around your head um you know I'm sure those guys did their homework and you know they've

tested it but uh we like to go a little bit beyond those tests standards are one thing and I know that's a subject we're

going to talk about um but testing beyond the standards is also a choice and uh I recommend it nice

yeah I dig that I recommend it testing beyond the standards I recommend it I

like that nice well speaking of standards yeah speaking of Standards so Liam do

you pay attention to much of these standards um I've looked at them before um as far as I like do I study them no

yeah yeah but I know even so Trevor one of our main mechanics in the California store he'd brought up the Virginia Tech

rating yeah not too long ago um he also probably is more of a specialized Fanboy than anyone else in

the company so he did race for them for like five years so yeah and and uh so he

likes their helmets and he mentioned he's like hey they have the best rating on the Virginia Tech standard and I was

like all right I'm looking I'll look a little bit more into that um but yeah I mean I think standards

standards are one of those things that you know going back to what I talked about earlier when I was talking to John

uh in uh that was in Pennsylvania that bike mystery event and and and I was you

know he was telling me about how they create those standards and how you know kind of how old they are how rarely

they've been revised and and just the different things involved in those standards and man it's it's almost so

much to unpack that it just gets mind-numbing because you think about well how tight did they put the helmets on the head is that a crash test dummy

or is it an actual human head with skin there's like all these variables and it's like oh man

do you want to go watch sports or something like it's it's a lot it's you

you start to unpack that and you think man there's all these different standards in in the way they're actually testing them and how they're you know

man it's it's a lot so I don't know Brad give us your take on what do you think do you think any one of them is great do

you think they all have Merit somewhere but pros and cons elsewhere I mean there's a ton right so Virginia Tech and

then that's just like would you call that's not a standard it's just like a testing rating right yeah they they've

created their own uh ratings rating system uh they started originally with football uh helmets and that makes sense

being Virginia yeah right and and a lot of their their data that they built to

compare things to were came from football so um I really look at this stuff as

comparative data uh I test in a lot of labs around the world um been doing a lot of testing recently

at the University of Strasbourg um I like their methodology they

actually have a star system too numeric system that rates helmets but

their tests are different you get different results there we do some testing in we've done some testing at

the Imperial College of London at their Labs as well as Dynamic research in Southern California and what's

interesting if you do tests all over is you find different results in each of these Labs so that's why I focus on you

know just comparative data and what can I learn from it and how can I make a different helmet you know you mentioned

you know all these things that come out I mean our standards that we have to pass is CPS cpsc consumer product safety

commission yeah and that's only relevant in the United States it's only relevant in the U.S um those standards were

basically written in the early 70s where they dropped cadavers on their heads you

know took them dropped them down this Elevator Shaft and um and they were measuring skull fracture and really it's

surprising how little we still we we still know about the brain it's we're still learning we're still trying

to figure out you know there's even some discussions the other day that are we really measuring the right thing

um so they're still arguing that the phds and professors and I'm going to let them continue to argue what we do need

to do what we do know is we need to dissipate energy we need to put I like to put softer things next to people's

heads um I think our helmets are too hard because of that standard they found out or dropping those cadavers it took 300

G's worth of force to crack the skull that became the standard huge amount of

G's crazy 300gs is pretty much death yeah right but how how often would that

occur in a natural bike situation not bad often yeah I've heard numbers

bicycle right I mean yeah cycle sure but yeah bicycle 300. I've heard I mean

that's right numbers like one to two percent of all accidents maybe um I do know a study from the Imperial

College of London said that uh 80 of all bicycle accidents are below 106 G's yet

all's I got to do in the U.S is send six helmets to a outside test lab and as

long as it does not exceed 300 G's I'm good to go hmm so the question you want

to ask of your helmet manufacturers what more are you doing than just sending

this to some outside lab and getting your results and and there are there's there's I'm not here to tell you that

Kali the only one that does more there are other people that care you know it's

just I go back to that CEO engineer in charge versus the the money guy and you know I can just speak for us

as we're going to go beyond you know worrying about what the standards say because we know that

um we're hurting people at you know 50 60 G's you're having some level of brain

trauma so we want to focus on that and expand the dynamic range of a helmet and

not just be focused on making sure that I pass a test um I'm not here to tell those people

they're right or wrong I just know what we believe and what we want to do is we want to you we want to protect you from

we want you riding back as soon as possible Right hopefully immediately

yeah yeah that's that's cool that's really interesting I mean I think one of the things for me so I before I actually

rode mountain bikes I rode Motocross that's what I did pretty much all as a child kid and then as a teen early

teenager I got into riding mountain bikes and and then it's downhill specifically and it was kind of just like oh just wore this my Moto helmet

for downhill and then then you know a couple years into that people were like oh actually you shouldn't wear a DOT

helmet dot right Department of Transportation like you shouldn't wear that helmet on a mountain bike because those are made for you know motorcycles

driving on the freeway not from mountain bikers riding downhill races and I was like ah that kind of makes sense but I

don't know and then it's just like one of those things you look into a little bit and you're just your eyes glaze over but it's it's tough so what where is

where does that come into play right because a lot of full face helmets that are Motocross specific are D.O.T and

Snell and all of the mountain bike full space specific helmets are neither of those

for me it comes down to mass you know it's simple physics you know

you know reduce the amount of mass and you're going to reduce the force so

um the dot does some interesting things in helmets to make sure that the shell doesn't get penetrated because you're

out there on the road and you're you might hit you know sure an object that'll penetrate

um that actually is extremely rare on top of that uh but we can talk about that another time so it makes you it

forces you to make the shell a lot harder in a DOT helmet right because we're trying to stop these these spikes

that theoretically you might hit whereas a not that you can't hit a rock that's

pretty spiky but it's not it's not like the spike test that they drive us bike through so I like the the idea of

lighter things next to your head you know just reduce the mass and that's what the bicycle downhill helmets do is

you have less mass on your head so less mass is good yeah interesting yeah you

you had mentioned earlier while we were out riding that in Europe they have a

you know significantly different standards than we have in the U.S um and you'd said so the your guys is

kind of Flagship mountain bike helmet the Cascade is lighter the European version is lighter yeah generally you'll

find that across not just our helmets everybody's helmets that actually spends time designing both for Europe and the

US um they they they had they allowed the phone to be a

little bit lighter because they don't drop onto certain anvils that tend to pinch the helmets they you know they

drop onto it it's called a curbstone Anvil like we do um and then on a flat Anvil like we do

what we also use this this hemispherical ball that's it's like the front of a 57

Chevy that comes in and will actually be more loaded in a very specific area and

you know people can argue well that's possible it's possible um highly unlikely I work with some

accident request Recreation experts you can get a PhD in accident Recreation wow

and then make a lot of money in court but another story and they'll tell me that

you know both that Spike test and that that 57 Chevy is not a likely scenario

um but you know the the standards people today kind of say well you know we're

going going above and beyond the problem for me in that statement is well you're

also creating a harder helmet by having those tests and I'm a big believer that

our helmets are too hard you'll hear me say that over and over helmets are too hard you're saying just like in the U.S

in general bicycle helmets are too hard yes yeah whatever brand you want to talk about it's based on passing the test to

make sure that you don't go over 300 G's yeah so and I'm not

fine let the standards be what they are and as a as a member of the responsible

helmet making Club right now yeah I just did I've got to

try and remember that for some other time uh I'm gonna say that you know we we just know that if we can lower the

density of what we're putting next to people's heads we're going to do better across the whole dynamic range instead

of just one area yeah that's that's super interesting um I also just Googled 57 Chevy Grill

okay

I'm not much of a car guy I'm more like you I'm more of a motorcycle guy yeah yeah

um you don't know what the front end of 50 ships my classic car knowledge comes from the

Disney Pixar movie Cars well 50 7 Chevy might be what uh

whatever off topic but the coffee drives it looks pretty close to that

a surf in town oh yeah yeah yeah yeah no

this this Grill definitely looks very similar to a lot of the grills in those you know Pixar movie cards

you would know it would Pixar movie I've been on that ride at Disneyland many times awesome I highly recommend it

should we talk about Disneyland ride suggestions or is that off topic yeah that's gonna be another episode I guess

I don't know so that's cool that's I appreciate the unpack on on the standards and and the

testing and I guess so when you say comparative data you're like so when you look at the Virginia Tech rating you

know you can kind of glean your own takeaways from the particular way they test each helmet but I guess the the key

thing for you is that they are testing all of these different helmets in the exact same way each time now whether

that testing methodology is actually relevant to the most common mountain

bike crashes right that's kind of where this comes into play right yeah because I mean even if you go on the Virginia

Tech website and some of this other stuff when you Google and you look at mips's website all of these testing things you look at this stuff and

it doesn't look that's it's just not that realistic you have like a a head with a helmet on it and it comes

vertically down and it hits something it's like you've got accelerometers inside measuring there's no neck to

deflect it there's no I mean the shape of rocks the shape I mean there's just so many variables here it's it's crazy

but when I've watched some of these these little animations and videos on how these testing things are done it's

like well that's cool but it also you know I don't know if it's not that exact

crash in that exact scenario with a perfectly stiff uh test dummy neck and then it's like

well every every crash is is different yeah and every scenario is different you know how hard in a lab it is to hit the

same spot on a helmet it's not just oh I hit it there I dropped it but how you put that helmet onto the head form you

can just change it just a little bit we had a failure and if you hit it just at the right angle and just right and you

know of course we we went in and we fixed it um we actually reported it to cpsc and you know worked it out

fortunately they did not require recall because it was so Random yeah and so you know on

really difficult to find but we stopped and we redesigned that section and we've

moved on but yeah it's really hard to go in and exactly duplicate you know that you're hitting the exact spot yeah each

time so there's there's variances it is interesting when I when I do go to different labs and I'll go hey I want to

test this like this and they always come back and go well we think you should test it like this and the reason they

say that is because that's how they get the results that they prefer imagine how

hard do you tie to tie a helmet onto that head form I mean I have seen tape

around the whole helmet I mean how realistic is that when you crash you have how how you asked me earlier how

tight do you have your helmet yeah yeah the couch I like to put one finger between there I mean it's got to be

comfortable right and it's good to have your your fit system a little bit tighter so that it's not going to fall

off in a crash but it must be reasonable we want to be comfortable when we ride right and and I think that that's really

fun that's fine just you know a little bit of space there not drooping down with you can three four inches in but

just you know a little finger in there you're fine no duct tape no duct tape not like in the lab I've heard of

certain systems out there that actually really cranks down the helmet onto the head form so that they can you know get

the results that they want to get yeah yeah so yeah yeah that's interesting that your your comment about uh back

when you were at Specialized made me realize that I totally and accidentally skipped the first part of the podcast I

had written down here which was to just quickly go over your your personal history so you've got a story fast of a

car manufacturing yeah storied storage fast

in my head when I said that is interesting right because you you worked at Specialized

um with in a lot of their helmet stuff and then you also had a carbon manufacturing facility in Asia and give

me give me your your I know it's long so it's all three I'll do the quick and you

can stop me and ask me questions so I won't bore you with too much with it um I was super lucky I uh started out as an

aerospace engineer focusing on carbon fiber got to work on some really awesome military aircraft

um B2 bomber F-18 uh Joint Strike Fighter that kind of stuff uh being an r d unlimited timelines unlimited budget

why would you ever leave that um I'm a cyclist and I had a chance to

go to specialize they uh they hired me to be pumps and locks

and I was like I'm gonna take my 25 pay cut and I'm gonna go make posts in an aerospace engineer hired for pumps and

laws yes they're dead serious about those pumps and losses well ironically

you make some of the best pumps on the market I know I know you're a specialized pump fan they are good

you're right ironically my first day I showed up and um they said hey you know

our helmet engineer quit before you had a chance to get here would you like that job instead I'm like helmets pumps locks

yeah I'll do that yeah a little more meaningfulness yeah helmet side oh by the way the technician quit too

like uh what's wrong with this place we can talk about that for hours

my experience with specialized was nothing left the Fantastic um my departure was amazing

um I had moved on for family reasons and they treated me super well so we'll get that disclaimer out

sorry um but so I uh interestingly enough that I had uh like 10 000 helmets sitting

ready to get shipped out and they're like you have to go into that lab and test

these before we can release these and I walk into this lab and something I'd never seen no no there's no test lab

like this in Aerospace right so I go in there and I'm looking around and um was fortunate enough to have Dr Terry

Smith from Dynamic research uh come up teach me on Saturday on a Saturday how

to run this equipment and the best thing that I did was I stayed in that lab for a year I'm a really mediocre engineer

I'm a really good technician I like being in lab somehow I was able to pass my exams and became an engineer but

mostly I'm a Hands-On guy and I just like doing that but the reason I say the best thing I did was I learned so much about testing I didn't

just send it into a lab and look at reports and things I actually learned about how helmets are tested so that was

awesome uh I I mostly left specialized because um I didn't want to travel

they wanted me to uh oh I had progressed to be the director of engineering and

they wanted me to travel to Asia and I was not interested in that job so I gave my resignation took me nine more months

to leave and but it was on good terms and then uh and somebody came to me and

said we need a carbon Factory in China would you help us do that and my first question was how many times a year will

I have to come they said four I said before okay I can do four

seven next seven years outside of specialization somebody out no somebody unrelated to specialized um so uh

next seven years 150 days a year in China I'll openly tell you I wouldn't do it again no regrets that's a different

story but it was it was very difficult the factory did things like skid plates and pipe guards KTM was one of our

biggest customers and then we started making helmet shells motorcycle helmet chills

and uh we sent them over to helmet Factory and once again I got dragged

back into helmets and um but you know while we were making these helmet shells

I started looking at them and test results and I'm like why aren't you in molding these like a bike helmet and

they all looked at me like no it's a processing problem it's impossible but coming from r d I'm like let's try that

and so that's how Kali was born was through once we figured out how to in

mold full shell helmets and we do it on our motorcycle helmets we do it on our DH helmets is where we take the shell

you put it in the mold just like a bicycle helmet does but now with a full shell motorcycle helmet full shell

helmet and we inject the foam in place it allows us to thin the shell down and

make the Foam softer so back to that softer foam thing having a thinner shell is important because now it starts to

crush faster more immediate if you have a super hard shell that thing ain't crushing immediately right so now you're

depending on your head to get in there and start crushing instead of crushing both from the inside and the outside anyway so we started a motorcycle

helmets first and you know we're still involved but I just took over and maybe

that's because of my bike background but we're still in that industry as well yeah yeah and so that was you guys

founded Kali in 2008 yes right okay cool

nice I like it well thank you for that and uh my bad for forgetting that whole

history portion it's really irrelevant um but it does got to segue into uh the

next part which is yeah to talk about mips and spin and wave cell and 16

choroid and then you guys call it LDL low density so uh I mean mips man they

have made they have made a serious name for themselves in the helmet world uh mountain bikes especially and I don't

know everyone kind of I mean I think so Jared you get your Instagram Poll for questions for this podcast a lot of

people mentioned a lot of people mentioned Maps yeah and in what fashion they just said asking uh is it worth it

to like get a helmet with it instead of without it you know as like an optional upgrade

um you know what are the benefits like can you compare it to you know certain similar Technologies

from other brands sure um that was kind of most of the you know the gist of the questions that we got about Maps sure so

mips was started you know it's a lot older than people realize Dr Peter ohler from Sweden uh

came up with this concept and really focused on rotational forces or oblique

impacts it's something that we were not talking about as an industry so you've got to give him props for that because

it's important we need to reduce those rotational forces so mips has is basically

a floating slip plane up against the foam inside your helmet so the concept

is you have an oblique impact that takes away those rotational forces

um we've tested mips people ask me why not use it we've tested it we do it actually works I'm not here to dispel

nips as a as a non-working thing we choose not to use it um for a couple

reasons uh I don't like putting a layer between your head and what's supposed to

crash that's why we go for a low density there something that actually will squish whereas that actually slows down

the crush a little bit and my test showed about 10 to 12 percent again reduces those rotational forces

so we actually being a lab nut that I am we went in and we put different systems

into three different helmets our goal was to see what system works best and um

so on you know one helmet one time our low density layer would be better the

next time nips would be better another time uh system called pids might be better but just up and down all over the

map but all in the same range and then we put it into another helmet and it did

the same except for it performed better overall with all the systems and then a third helmet that perform performed way

better than all of them with the same variations in that anti-rotation system what was the difference uh foam density

this is really where my whole foam density Obsession came from was these tests where I started realizing that it

doesn't matter which magic system you put in if you put softer things next to your head it's going to perform better

we still have to take care of the highest hits so I like to talk about dynamic range not just one part so mips

is very one-dimensional it takes care of rotational forces and it does it

does it okay does I'll even say it does it well um but I want to take care of logi I

want to take care high G and I want to take care of rotational forces yeah all right all right wouldn't I

guess in my head I'm kind of thinking what if you what if you just took all these helmet Technologies and stuffed

them all into one so like you took that choroid that Smith uses that's in a bunch of motorcycle helmets and mips and

your low density foam you just make a super helmet great you know can you make a patent

infringing time yeah ironically I had uh I had was speaking to Dr holder and

Holden at a Euro bike a few years ago and and I was dealing my Spiel to him that like

helmets are too hard you know we need to we need to do better because we you know we think

we're hurting people and he actually said to me well those are two different helmets that soft helmet for the low G

versus the high G and um I don't know if you'll admit to this or remember this but I said to him I'm like you invented

mips we're smarter than this we can figure this out and he kind of go away

you bother me but um yeah I mean I will talk helmet safety

to anybody who wants to talk to me I've had maybe they don't want me to tell you this but I've had three Trek engineers

in my office in Morgan Hill asking about what we do um I sat with Troy Lee in his office

talking about what we do I will I will I will invite you in to my world anytime

you want to talk about safety a lot of these things we do now you can argue whether you want to or

not and they but um I will I will have these discussions when we start talking about

environmentally friendly stuff that we're doing I always joke because I'm like we use some ocean Plastics on the

helmet that you guys wore today yeah ocean plastic visor saw that that's cool I'm not out there

collecting Plastics from the ocean you know I work with a company called ocean

works and every company could do it we use recycled EPS

um we get that we get the used EPS actually from a Toyota plant in the midwest because it's actually pretty

controlled we bring it over to Ohio that that's who we get our EPS process from

and we mix it that is available to everybody else you

just got to choose to want to do it you know and and it's expensive I mean this helmet that you guys wore today

is 260 dollars that is a big pill to swallow I'm not lost on that but when we

were developing it you know you you all sitting around and the marketing guys sitting around and the sales guys

sitting around and they're all making their pitches and in the end of the day you know it's like look we have all this

technology and if we don't try it now if we don't put it here how are we gonna

know and and so we found that the the Recycled water bottle straps saved the

most CO2 emissions of everything we do on that helmet and so that was only 35 addition to that helmet

so now I'm like oh yeah let's start putting this in all our helmets and so we're slowly moving over to that can I

put an ocean plastic visor on every helmet no that's that's thus a lot more expensive but if you don't try you don't

know and so the big into the trickle down being in the motorcycle World helps

a lot because our motorcycle helmets are expensive um our new line is only carbon it's you

know going up Market funny that's all people wanted from us so I've got a warehouse full of horrible Graphics that

I'll never sell but our carbon stuff is is what people want but we can

experiment there because there's more room financially frankly to try stuff try it and if it works trickle it down

yeah that's cool yeah it's funny you mentioned that because the it's when I think about motorcycle helmets they're

all way more expensive than bicycle helmets and it it everyone just kind of accepts that

I bought a motorcycle helmet that was a thousand bucks and it was just like well it's a big purchase but it's you know

this is a motorcycle it's like yeah you're in the dirt you're on the street you're amongst cars I don't know it just did well it used to be the motorcycles

were a lot more expensive yeah what's that levo cost at I know I know

right that nope yeah that meaning to complain or anything yeah yeah yeah but

yeah that's a good point yeah yeah yeah yeah motorcycles are uh on par with

bicycle prices these days which is which is pretty hilarious I'm sure you could get a like a motorcycle helmet too

that's as much as a non-bike yeah yeah I mean if you're willing to

take that one I don't know I mean what'd you get what was it uh the climb okay yeah so climb

it's just like an adventure motorcycle helmet but it has a transition visor or uh last year which is super nice right

that's super convenient all the air vents like it has corduroid in it I mean it's just unbelievably comfortable and

and I was I was telling you earlier about one of my things I was annoyed with with that helmet was it was the

best fitting helmet I really enjoyed it like the look like the transition um and the downside was that I'm kind of

a melange and in that helmet I had to wear a large like large was the right size especially because I'm going to

wear it for hours on end you can't have that thing too small and the they're large helmets it's the same shell large

to uh double or triple XL and so I look like a bobble head wearing the thing and

because the size of my body and then I'm basically wearing is you know double XL shell whereas if I could have got the

extra small the medium shell it would look so much better but yeah yeah well the best helmet you can have is the one

you're willing to put on your head yeah whatever brand it is if you're stoked about wearing it

um I'm I'm all for you I'm not going to sit here and say you gotta have a Kali

I'm going to say put the helmet that you're that you're excited to put on your head and it sounds like you're excited to yeah put that climb on your

head so yeah good on you yeah yeah I like that thing so all right well cool what what other

what do you think guys what other questions do we have that we wanna we wanna jump into here let's see

well I guess real quick you kind of did already answer this but just to confirm if you know Kali aside so you didn't own

a helmet company you're buying a helmet um one has mips one doesn't are you gonna

spend the extra cash on the mips quote unquote upgrade unfortunately I have more information

then you can't answer the question can you no okay the answer is how's the consumer to know

right I mean I have a bunch of Technologies in our helmets that nobody can see yep how do you know I buy

material from Italy ship it to Ohio mix it with my EPS and

then ship it to China how smart is that there's no CEO there's no marketing sales CEO that would ever let that

happen not increasing your gross margin no profit yeah yeah so so to answer your

question is you're filled with marketing things that that how are you to know and

and mips has done a great job marketing that is not to say that mips doesn't work I'll go back again and say that

nips does work how much does it work it's really questionable

independent crash to crash and I'll tell you if you put softer foam

in a myths he's saying I'm going to be happy too right because it fits my need that helmets are too hard and and and

then you know then you're adding the mids layer in and that's fine um but when you're asking me would I buy

one um if I wasn't a helmet guy yeah I guess

because it's just so prevalent you see that that yellow dot somewhere and what do you know and I've got I got geometric

shapes inside the the EPS so I do layered phones with EPS these cone

structures this was an idea by an Australian physicist who did a lot of studies on children's

bicycle accidents and he's like why are we still putting beer coolers on our kids heads right and he's like so we

came up with he said why you know let's come up with crumple zones so his ideas he calls it conehead because he thought

it was funny thinking you know but anyway so he's got these geometric shapes yeah inside and as these cones

you hit the top of the cones it comes crush and they help send energy laterally and so it sends energy away

from your head it's inside it's inside the helmet you wore you're never going to see that you got this cool yellow

thing inside say hey that's safety it's a lot easier to see than trying to tell a story about why you know invisible

shapes yeah invisible shapes and so um you know I guess you know

like the message I just want to tell people is we are doing the research we are doing the work we're working with people way smarter than me you know

University Research and professors and things like that and and other companies

can do it too and some do you do and and you know some don't

um all right cool well let's get some rapid fire going

awesome um this seems like it's uh this question is kind of relevant for you really I feel like at some point in your

life you wore a hat under your helmet or a beanie I just I mean I'll be honest I just

didn't wear a helmet when I was young yeah yeah yeah I did that well I never did on a mountain bike but on a BMX bike

BMX bike I've got BMX that is just a room it's like the most dangerous thing

you can do on a bike they have like nobody who's almost serious concussions in one summer is a you know 16 year old

so yeah not smart then um the question is is it dangerous to

wear a hat under your helmet I'm assuming yes but um let's hear from the expert

I would assume yes too yeah you know how thick is the hat is it you know this

kind of thing yeah because some people wear those the Roadies where the you know oh yeah there's this little skin

isn't that your mips layer yeah did I say that out loud I did just wear

one of those little caps but it's because it was 28 degrees out yeah yeah it's freezing but those caps are there's

they're t-shirts thin aren't they yeah they're like yeah I don't I don't have a problem with those those are really thin

I think this question is more like a basically yeah caps you guys are wearing right I think the biggest issue is how

does it affect the fit how is that helmet still sitting around your head yeah right and yeah

yeah you know I like helmets that fit as

close to the center of like in we're talking about rotational forces right the one thing that concerns me about

your motorcycle helmet is if you have too much space space think about rotational

weight in your wheels we all focus on that we don't talk about that in a rotational crash if you have a big

helmet you've got a bigger lever arm if you've got a smaller helmet you have a smaller lever arm and less rotational

forces so you know if you're wearing if you like to wear a hat and you're wearing a bigger helmet because of it

you're actually increasing that size and now so we just like to keep things as

close to the center of rotation as possible that's going to help you reuse those rotation forces as much as many of

these systems yeah that kind of almost answers the next rapid fire question was

a proper way to find the correct helmet fit probably the one that fits closest to your head and doesn't put you in pain

yeah you don't you don't want you don't want a lot of room you want to be able to it's got to be comfortable

um I'll even admit quickly that when Kali first started I was so obsessed

with safety I was not as focused on you know the the comfort as much is it's

got to fit really tight and it's got to be you know perfect for every craft situation but reality is you gotta It's

gotta fit well you know the other thing I didn't focus on was colors and graphics and that didn't help either but

um the idea is you know I do have to take that engineering hat off occasionally and and focus on some

of those other things but back to your point you just wanted to fit close to your head without being uncomfortable you want to put it on if you're if

you're if you're the kid that's hiding your helmet when you leave the house because you don't want to wear it that's

not good yeah I see those kids all the time around our neighborhood you see those kids riding around on the scooters

with the helmet on the helmet on the bars yeah dude I grew up skiing I still have a I mean skiing was my first love I

still have a hard time wearing it out but when I say yeah yeah and I've tried that it's funny because in the

motorcycle world it's it's always disclosed you know like if you go on RevZilla for example shopping for a

motorcycle helmet they always tell you if it's oval round oval uh or round and

they don't really do that for bicycles so you just have you have no choice but to try a bunch of them on

um kind of like what I just recently did I wore that I think that Smith helmet looks cool I wore I couldn't wear that thing it was well one I think that

there's not enough pads in there um but it was it was such a Cirque Circle it just gave you just put so much

pressure on the front of my head in the back of my head that I was like I got 30 minutes in this and I have a headache I couldn't wear that helmet as much as I

thought the look was cool head shape's a battle for every company right um yeah that's a never-ending yeah you're you

know we've we've had a lot of success with that Maya that you talked about because it has a fairly generous genuish

generous yeah there I finally got it a generous fit that people seem to to like

and dial in but you know there are companies that do a more rounded fit

um some you know if you talk about Asian fit so if you if you were to wear an ogk helmet for example they're all much

rounder versus the you know the traditional long oval of a European head

um yeah probably got to be much bigger than Kali to have a fit for this type this type

and this type and I think we found a balance that hits the majority uh we get

very few complaints specifically about the Maya we've got other helmets that we missed you know we're always trying our

best but that's everybody's head's a little bit different yeah totally I mean I learned that as a teenager working in

a in a bike shop where there's a ton of foot traffic and people would come in and just try on this helmet this helmet

this helmet this helmet and then finally like oh that one fits nice it's like all right you know and there really wasn't

much science to it other than like okay here's how this helmet thing works everyone's heads a different shape and here's 10 brands in front of you and try

all these on which there you know there's some benefit to walking into a local bike shop that has a boatload of

helmets to pull that off our local bike shop uh is fortunately is right next to

a really good Tap House sit there so I'll go there and I'll just watch people

go in and one day there's the uh I won't mention the brand that they primarily

push but they were pushing this thing with some red s on it anyway and the guy

she just kept trying to get get him to do it I'm just watching it finally she pulls out one of our Maya and the guy

puts it on he goes yeah this is it and I could she see her go damn it but anyway it is it's an

individual thing and you could you try them on you know yeah it just it just takes time yeah well any any other uh questions you

guys want to get here um I think that a question about carbon is kind of a good that is kind of interesting

um where is that one basically yes is carbon safer than other materials or

strictly for weight benefits it's not safer I mean it's it's it's a

good tool to use in certain situations um you know if I want to spread load more

efficiently um strength to weight ratio and carbon is amazing right yeah so it's really

just lighter it's not a safety thing no no that's what I thought because it's it's not marketed as a safety thing it's

marketed as it's lighter yeah it's an amazing material obviously I'm a big fan of it

um but for example um we we had some of our helmets uh have

something called supervent and it's a it's a strengthening piece around event and the idea of that is if I want to

make a large vent um I can spread the load over a greater area and hit more foam so it uses more

foam by being now I'm talking stiffer for the first time instead of saying

something using softer but at least because uh for testing in a helmet engineer

vents are a nightmare they're the ones that create all the failures right and so if we want to have large vents

um you're right on the line of whether your home it's going to stay together when you crash so

um you know having tools like that will help you um in fact Alma you were today has these

super events these are not carbon ones but they are they're a little bit stiffer material and the idea is to help

that load on an impact spread to the foam hmm

carbon is not the be-all end-all that comes from a long time huge fan and an

aerospace so cool man it does look good I mean when you look at our new our new motorcycle line it's drool worthy I'm

sorry but it does shave weight right I mean it does absolutely full face for

sure in the full face and this could go back to your point of a lighter leverage yep right keep so yeah last

lever arm left should be safer in scenarios yep absolutely yeah I mean I mainly see that it's like a full face or

you know are there any half shells with little carbon I don't think so at least not that I've seen we we use it in a few

places uh across some bridges um kind of helps keep everything together and

um but it's it just jacks the price up in a bicycle helmet too like I mean so

we have a helmet called the grit um that's a good kind of a road leaning Helmet or gravel

um and we decided to do a carbon version you know and it's just like we're trying

to get the cost and to work right so the Grits about a 200 helmet so right now

with the carbon piece and it's like 300 bucks and I'm like okay why would you

spend that extra money you know because it's cool you know but yeah it's not it's not the be all end-all yeah yeah

gotta match your back you're in your bike

gotta look cool man cool man uh wow I don't know I think that I think

we've covered a lot of helmet things yeah what color is fastest chartreuse whoa do you use watermelons

as test dummies we do not would Jeff's hair impact the safety of a helmet

don't I have built-in mips with my white man Pro uh there has been that

accusation been made I'm gonna stand on the sideline on that one

lawyer talk what what hair gel do you use

that's natural that's called you didn't even wash it that's the crazy part I

wash it with water it seems perfectly reasonable helmet because it is so impressively effective

grubs

that uh Comedy Central um there was a scene in there where the

main character had this thing and he's like oh it's called a hair met and it had it was a helmet with this massive thing off the top and it was supposed to

wear it as a helmet that didn't mess up your hair I do not remember that you don't

remember that it was yeah just just put in Scrubs hair met maybe it'll pop up who knows it was one at one episode but

I thought it was hilarious because um the guy was all about his hair and I was like oh you know what I bet someone

would buy that if that was a real product maybe it is on AliExpress

especially it is it probably is don't buy that not safe well Brad thank you very much appreciate your time and and

for coming down here thanks for the ride it's been a pleasure yeah I'm glad you enjoyed it yeah and uh I I think a lot

of our listeners if not every single one of them will be stoked to have listened to all this and learned more about helmet and helmet technology

um and by the way if you are listening right now if you want to check out Kali helmets it's k-a-l-i uh just type in

that k-a-l-i helmets into the Google machine and you will find it um and see what they have to offer and

all that sort of stuff any last words Brad oh man thanks for having me it's been a good time yeah cool thanks again

thanks for coming down and uh thank you all for listening to episode 100 we will talk to you guys next time

November 22, 2022

MTB Podcast › Video ›

MTB Helmets: In Depth w/ Kali Protectives Founder Brad Waldron ... Ep. 100 [Podcast]

If you would like to read the transcript of the podcast above, continue below!

November 22, 2022

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