The first order under a new deal for physical therapy company Myovolt is larger than the past nine years of orders combined.
Myovolt has signed a deal giving United Sports Brands a licence to use its technology, meaning products with its branding will be available in US stores such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Academy, and Big 5.
The device, worn as pads around the shoulder, leg, arm or lower back uses vibration technology for pre- and post-sporting activity.
Co-founder Steve Leftly described it as a “wearable physiotherapy device”.
“It’s used several different ways for sports, but it’s mostly used for sore and stiff muscles and joints caused by over-exercise or heavy sports activity.
“The device itself has focal vibration motors that are built into what’s essentially a soft foam package, and you wear like a sport strap and it provides a physical therapy treatment to the part of the body where you’re wearing it.”
Leftly said the partnership had created a massive surge in production.
“When the range comes out in the first quarter of next year, it’ll be going into some of their main retail partners, which will have around 2000 doors in the US. But they have access to around 50,000 doors with some very large retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Walgreens, some very large brands.
“The initial scale of our actual product that’s getting made for the first run will exceed the total of all the product we’ve made previously.
“We’ve got a good supply chain that we’ve onboarded, a medical devices manufacturer in Asia, and I’ve spent a fair bit of time out there getting it ready for what will hopefully be some really large production orders coming in the next couple of years.”
The products are US Food and Drug Administration registered as they are deemed a medical device.
“It’s at the very lowest regulatory level of medical devices in the US, which is called class one and just to give you an idea an electric toothbrush is also a class one medical device. So it’s a very non-scary, non-threatening medical device.
“We’ve got a lot of clinical research behind our product. We’ve worked with a lot of physical therapy clinical research teams over the years … and a lot of our work has been in r&d on the clinical side.”
The technology will be used with brands sold globally such as Shock Doctor and McDavid, meaning they would also become available in New Zealand.
“Our product will probably come back to New Zealand with McDavid’s brand on it into places like Rebel Sport, which is inaccessible to brands like Myovolt where our brand is not strong enough to be able to negotiate shelf space in a large sports retailer like that.
“So we’re kind of locked out of that retail environment, but with McDavid we’ll probably be on shelf here quite soon.”
Myovolt has tried to secure shelf space with Rebel Sport before.
“We were fighting with Under Armour and Nike and Adidas for their shelf space. It’s not their fault … they just don’t have room to make space.”
But the massive retail deal isn’t the end game for Myovolt.
Leftly said the company would now turn its attention to more clinical uses for its technology.
“The big market is in reducing those chronic conditions and also even just mild and moderate musculoskeletal pain that people deal with.
“ACC spends $700 million a year here on just low back pain treatment alone so there’s a lot of room to create value there, and we reckon we’ve got some good technology to do it.”
He said the retail deal was a “starting gun” for research and development into what more the technology could offer as a clinical device.
