I came into this from research, not retail. That background is hard to switch off. When I look at a piece of training equipment I do not see a product. I see a question somebody answered once, a long time ago, that nobody has re-opened since.
That is the fire. I want to build things that have not been built.
The people who shaped how I see strength
Anyone who cares about this sport has a list. Mine includes Jón Páll Sigmarsson, whose presence made strongman worth watching in the first place. Magnús Ver Magnússon, who made dominance look methodical. Brian Shaw, who turned consistency into an art. Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, who moved the ceiling. Eddie Hall, who went at the half tonne like it had personally offended him. Jean-François Caron, who has carried Canadian strongman for years.
Watching them taught me something that has nothing to do with programming or equipment: the feats people remember are the strange ones. Not another deadlift bar. The odd implement, the awkward object, the lift nobody has a technique for yet.
The golden era had it right
The early years of the World's Strongest Man were full of events that would never survive a modern rulebook. Odd objects, farm equipment, lifts built around whatever was heavy and nearby. The sport has become more standardized since, and there are good reasons for that, but something was lost on the way.
Those events were memorable precisely because they were unrepeatable. They tested adaptability rather than specialization.
Labrador is full of lifts nobody has named
I grew up in Labrador, and the strongest people I knew never set foot in a competition. They moved things because things needed moving. Boats, stoves, engines, wood, ice or my favorite: a 'cask of gas'. There is a whole tradition of practical strength there that has never been formalized into a lift, and I have a notebook full of implements based on it.
Some of those ideas will never leave the notebook. A few of them will. What I can tell you is that the list keeps growing, because every time I go home I see another one.
Where this goes
I want to design implements that create new feats of strength. Not variations on existing ones. New ones, with their own technique, their own records, and their own arguments about how they ought to be judged.
That is a slow and slightly unreasonable goal for a small company. It is also the only reason I find this interesting.