Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Harris

Hi Mark, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?

I had an amazing career. I woke up every day looking forward to what would happen next. I traveled the world and went to places I never imagined I would find myself in. It started in the aviation world, learning how planes were engineered and manufactured. A few years later, an opportunity came along that would have me designing, manufacturing, and selling medical products to the U.S. military. I could not be more excited to support these men and women who did so much for us.

When September 11, 2001, happened, I, like a lot of others, was stunned, but my phone started ringing off the hook. I was asked to support, in a very small way, the search and recovery efforts in New York City and the Pentagon. From the side of a road in the middle of Illinois, I was calling contacts and trying to get supplies and necessary equipment to the East Coast as soon as possible.

For the next eleven years, I traveled almost three hundred days a year doing something I loved. And then it ended. In 2012, that chapter of my life came to a close. I consulted for a few years, moved to the beach, played golf, and watched the waves crash on the Florida Coast until I could not stand it anymore.

In 2015, my wife and I had an opportunity to support a business that made fitness products. We threw ourselves at the opportunity to do something different and found ourselves at the 2016 CrossFit® Games in Carson, California. Expecting to be enamored by athletes, instead, we ran across a group of Veterans with a variety of impairments. Some were missing a leg, others an arm, and a few lost more than one, but they all had one thing in common: nothing slowed them down.

I was drawn to this group like a moth to a lightbulb. I wanted to know their story, what their lives were like after their injuries, and why they were at a CrossFit event. It turned out that most of them had done CrossFit before their injuries, and they wanted to stay connected and do what they could. Some were there for non-profits, and others were representing fitness brands.

The one non-veteran I met, who was in a wheelchair, casually said in parting that there were no products on the market to help him adapt his fitness. I stated that maybe we could help him with that sometime, and we parted ways. We ended up going back and forth for a year and making several prototypes. We debuted the first product, the LapMat™, at the 2016 CrossFit Games in Madison, Wisconsin for an exhibition with adaptive athletes between heats.

Today Equip Products manufactures over eighty different products and have a large R&D backlog. We serve the Fitness, Occupational/Physical Therapy, and Chiropractic marketplace and send our products to thirty countries. Our design criteria are based on finding ways to include all people in Fitness & Therapy, and to make it as inclusive as we can.

I still wake up every day looking forward to what’s going to happen. Equip Products gives me a sense of purpose I had lost when my formal career ended. Thinking of new ways to make fitness and therapy adaptable makes for a wild ride.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint at heart. Everything that goes wrong is your fault, and everything that goes right is your customers. If something breaks, you fix it. There’s no maintenance department to call. Early on, you balance paying for inventory versus paying your mortgage. Our first website cost us $10,000.00 and it did not tell us what they ordered or collect the customer’s name or address. Issues like these, and so many more, crop up all the time. There are always new challenges around every corner.

I used to have milestones in mind that went something like this: “when we have five hundred hits on our website we will be set” or “when we break six figures” but what nobody tells you is that at every stage there are going to be setbacks. The real key is believing in what you’re doing, keep doing it, and if it’s not working pivot fast and find a better way to do what you’re trying to do.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?

Equip Products was born out of a need for adaptive fitness and later for therapy products that challenged the traditional approach. Typically, a person in a wheelchair would not think they could enter a functional fitness gym and be able to participate. A person with one arm would never think he/she was capable of climbing a rope, but we see this all the time.

We take traditional fitness and therapy approaches and design products that ultimately achieve the same stimulus while not always being the same movement. For example, most able-bodied individuals can pick up a jump rope and, with a little practice, start jumping rope. How do you do a similar movement for someone who cannot jump? Or how does a single-armed person use a traditional jump rope?

Equip Products Multi Ropes™ allow for the same jump rope stimulus without the jump. Should you only have the use of one hand, we make a Mono Rope that has a traditional jump rope cable on an aluminum pole that allows for the same movement with one contact point.

Equip Products is known for taking ordinary movements and finding ways to let anyone who wants to join. Whether it be a gym setting, a practician’s office, or a chiropractor, we find ways to include everyone alongside everyone else.

We are most proud of our original product, the LapMat™. Even we did not get why this product was important until we held a forty-five-pound barbell above our legs and dropped it from a very short distance. The impact hurt, the bruising lasted weeks, and the idea that someone who might have less muscle mass, or worse, no feeling at all, dropping something on their lap could have been devastating. Today, we have paralyzed athletes and patients, amputees, grandmothers and grandfathers, neurological conditions, and overweight (Obese) patients, all using the patented LapMat™ from Equip Products.

The population is ageing and more and more people need adaptions to traditional fitness methods. Equip Products bridges the gap between traditional fitness and therapy, and today’s needs. We can make a difference to someone reading this or someone in their family, and we can prove it.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?

If you are doing something you love, keep at it. Don’t quit your day job too soon. Whatever amount of money you think you need for your startup, triple it, and then there’s still a good chance it won’t be enough. When you grow, you will need a lot more money than you will make. There’s going to be a lot of people who say they can help you. Many of them are sincere and mean what they say. Don’t believe any of them. Vet everybody, and better yet, find a mentor who has been there and can help you navigate your business.

It is easier to find a customer base that wants your product than it is to find a really good idea and then find a customer base.

Pricing:

• Multi Ropes™ $98.95
• Mono Ropes $105.99
• Monster Rope $65.00
• LapMat™ $85.00
• Aldridge Arm Harness $145.00

Contact Info:

• Website: https://equipproducts.com/
• Instagram: @equipproducts
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/equipproducts
• Twitter: @equipproducts
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkZo84L0LOHvpRnbHrW0m0w

Image Credits
Bruce Williams B.A.W. Media