Craig Misrach
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Craig H. Misrach is the President of UpLyft™ and joined the organization in 2018 to help spearhead the company’s product launch and commercialization efforts. Prior to UpLyft™, from 2006-2014 Mr. Misrach was the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Freedom Meditech, a diabetes medical device company he led from concept through FDA 510(k) clearance and global marketing and sales. Freedom Meditech completed a sale of the business to Sinocare, LTD in China in November 2016. From 2016-2018, Mr. Misrach served as a Series 7, 31, and 66 licensed Investment Advisor for AB Bernstein in La Jolla, CA where he crafted wealth management plans for corporate executives and closely held business owners in preparation for selling their respective businesses. Mr. Misrach began his career at Deloitte where as a Senior Accountant he audited various lower middle-market businesses and assisted in the preparation of S-1, 10K, and 10Q filings for various public companies. In addition to his responsibilities at UpLyft, Mr. Misrach is the Founder & Managing Director of Poppy Capital (a private equity acquisition fund) and serves on the Board of Directors of Aculief (consumer medical products company) and the Jewish Community Foundation San Diego ($500M+ philanthropic endowment). Mr. Misrach maintains an active Certified Public Accountant (CPA) license in the State of California, has a B.S in Accounting and Finance from Indiana University, and an MBA in General Management from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia
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Hi, everybody. I'm Gustavo Sarafini, the host of the Enabled Disabled podcast. We are really excited to have Craig Mizrak here today. Craig is the President of Uplift. Uplift is a new startup company company, very strong team, and they are really trying to change the game here for people with mobility needs. They have the world's first seated self transfer system between bed and wheelchair. Craig is also an extremely successful entrepreneur with a lot of experience in the medical device space. And we're going to dive into some of his entrepreneurial experience and really talk about Uplift and why we are so excited to have them on the show and what they're trying to bring to the market. So, Craig, thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure, and I really appreciate the time.
Kusaba, thank you very much. I appreciate you affording us the time today. And for all the listeners out there, I hope everyone has had a good start to the holiday season. A lot of stuff going on this year. So we're all about everyone being as healthy as possible and as happy as possible. So happy holidays to everyone.
Absolutely. So, Craig, can you get us started with a little bit of a history? I know you came into Uplift in 2018 of what the company is about and why they started this and just take us through a little bit of the evolution of the company and what the mission is.
Yeah, I can say. Honestly, it's a blessing to be affiliated with Uplift. So I was brought on and hired as the CEO about three years ago. Uplift is the first self transfer system from bed to wheelchair and vice versa for people with limited mobility. And so today we are getting pre orders, mostly online, for folks who want to use Uplift in their home to restore a greater sense of independence. Many folks need a caregiver or loved one to just simply get out of bed. So our moniker is we are doing for the bedroom what Stairlift has done for the stairs. And we've also come to learn that in the home care environment, people want Uplift as a zero physical lifting assisted transfer tool. So there are hoists and lifts out there. But when you look also in institutional health care facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living, bariatric clinics, rehab centers, the physical toll it takes on a healthcare worker or nurse. As an example, it's now the leading cause of workers compensation claims in the United States in the healthcare system back and neck injuries due to patient lifting. So I was fortunate to be connected to our founder, who is 84 years old.
We have an octogenarian founder, and I looked at this through the lens of an investor. I've been in the investment world myself on the buy side, and I've previously founded a medical device company. So I had to learn about the mobility space, even though I commercialized medical devices. And when I saw the competitive landscape as to what is out there today, it took me a couple of months, but I soon believed that we and our inventor had really invented something and was on to something that is not just a huge market, but really has a customer pool in a need. And so I love the fact that we have a social impact focus, and we can talk more about that throughout the podcast. Absolutely.
And I know that the founder came up was inspired by the idea because he had a friend whose son was injured in an accident, and he needed that. And he studied the market, too, and said, wait a minute, all the solutions here are pretty compromised. I'm going to come up with something better. Yeah.
And so Anton is our founder, as I said, 84 years old. His dear friend, his son got in a car accident, was paralyzed from waist down, weighed £275. His wife came to Anton and explained to him that she could not lift him out of bed once he became paralyzed. Anton is a triple degree engineer from MIT. He's been a 35 year aerospace engineer. So to him, he goes into his garage. He built the first uplift, and his friend's son was able to use it for two years to independently get out of bed on his own before he unfortunately passed away. Anson had invented other products before he had formed other businesses. So he did the right thing after that. As far as establishing patent positions, we have 21 patents, 15 of them are issued already. And he incorporated the business so that all the intellectual property could reside under one domicile. And so it's a touching story. And to this day, he is involved. We've now built ten prototypes and have now taken the 10th one, conducted various usability studies on it, on seniors, on wheelchair users. And we are hopefully here a supply chain. Challenges aside, which are not trivial at this day and age.
We are in Q one in a position to be shipping our first product to our preorder customers, which is incredibly exciting.
And as an entrepreneur, somebody who has a lot of experience in this area, you mentioned a little bit earlier about how you saw the market opportunity, but that you also believed in the founder when you made the decision to come on. Are there other factors that you considered, or were those two really the reason why you said, you know what? We have something, a solution here that could be huge for a lot of people and help a lot of people.
Yeah. Because, look, I was in a fortunate position where I'd spent a few years in private equity. And so my wife simply asked me, are you ready to get back in the startup space? I said, maybe I am. So I started having conversations and, I don't know, maybe I do use my heart a little much but I wanted to really be gravitated to an opportunity and to a technology that I felt and anything I've done can have global appeal. And so, yeah, it really is initially out of the gate. What is the competitive landscape? Because if it's a me too, or just something that has small incremental change, I didn't know if that was something that was right for me to stake my career on as a CEO. So when I saw that there was no independent transfer system out there on the market for direct to consumer or in institutional facilities, I then obviously went to my network and even others that are operating in those fields. I say operating not surgically, but who are working in those fields. And they're saying, yeah, we need something that's better. So doing my homework and doing my due diligence and then, yeah, looking at the market size, but I have to judge if I'm coming in as a CEO.
Is this financeable? And we may talk a lot about it a little bit. Everyone thinks Silicon Valley is being the Bell cow of what can get financed. And I think it very much has been. But as Capital has proliferated, as you see family offices getting more and more prevalent, angel investors moving up the food chain of investment. And honestly, COVID now with COVID being able to now have the standard be, hey, we connect on a Zoom with an investor, as opposed to me flying up to San Francisco at the hope someone's going to be there. And it may be just being a room full of other presenters. It's called presenters presenting to a Zoom of presenters. I feel like the pendulum has swung back at least as far as early initial seed stage capital for companies to get that ammunition to tackle the next milestone. And I've always found that to be successful in my ventures create small measurable milestones that you have the confidence you can achieve so that when you're talking to someone who doesn't want to invest, that may just mean they don't want to invest right now. And so when you talk to them or Ping them six months later, they have the notes, they have the emails of what you said you were going to do.
And when you say when you talk to them again and say, hey, we've done that, it really builds confidence and can help grease the kids to write that 50 grand check, to write that 100 grand check. And so I do think that when I looked at this from a finance ability standpoint, I felt that the ingredients were there with the people, with the market opportunity, with the patents, with the competitive landscape, and as well, the FDA, any medical device, you have to have a regulatory strategy. And we have one that has been carefully strategized that allows us really much quicker. And it's thanks to some FDA guidance that was issued regarding patient mobility, patient handling, systems that do not require us to go five to seven years of multiple clinical studies. Just in a nutshell, we're not invasive, we're not diagnosing a disease. And so that lower threshold and bar of regulatory risk. Those are a lot of the ingredients that I use to determine if this was something that made sense for me to stake my career on. And then the final thing is paying who's going to pay? And in the medical device and healthcare space, insurance reimbursement can be central.
And so for me, it was do we have a viable strategy in lieu of or prior to having an insurance reimbursed product? Is this something people will pay cash for? And so those are some of the tools and criteria I used to determine the viability and interest in signing on and moving the venture forward.
So today, is it direct to consumer only, or is insurance covering some of that cost already?
So, yeah. So our preorders to date are almost all direct to consumer, and we've generated them from ecommerce and digital marketing. So a great little story is when Covet happened, and we've always seen ourselves as a two market channel opportunity. Okay. And like a lot of folks that sell B to D, business adopter, or business to healthcare facility, there's a trial period. There's a clinical evaluation that needs to be conducted. There are so many considerations and institutions from It departments to workflow considerations to personnel training that it can be a longer sales cycle. And so we recognize that. But we're still doing demonstrations in lieu of having capital and not having inventory. We would do those demos just to have them say, hey, when you have inventory, I'm ready. I want this subject to pricing. And so we were doing that. But when Covet happened, we weren't allowed into a facility for over a year. We couldn't step foot in it. We couldn't get a meeting. And so with the cash that we had on hand, we had always said we believe that there could be a direct to consumer demand. The US Census Bureau says there's 3 million people in the US that need assistance getting it out of bed every day.
No one questioned that number, but it showed me that those people really want this or can know about it. So we took some of the cash we had on hand. We built our site. We hired an MBA intern. That's another kind of strategy that has been fruitful for me in my ventures, hiring MBAs as interns, paying them to help. And we really started to build a presence digitally via Facebook, via Instagram. And next thing you know, we're starting to get inbound demand inbound inquiries for product. And we're very careful. We still to this day, it says on our site we're pre order, pre order, we don't want to give someone the hope or expectation that we're ready to ship something out immediately today, hopefully next year for talk at this time. We will be. But we're not there yet. And because a lot of these folks that were helping improve the quality of life, some of them are in a crisis, health crisis. Some of them it's ALS, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, spinal cord injuries, seniors who have reduced mobility, the obesity population, huge market. And so we just want to make sure we're being very clear with folks to say, hey, this is what we're trying to do.
This is the product. We have videos of the prototypes that work, and then it's, hey, if you want the opportunity to be first in line, small deposit that's totally refundable if we do not fulfill. And that's the best we can do. And that for folks who are raising capital absence, shipping a product to someone. We're trying to demonstrate to the investment community and to those who are looking for a series, a look here is real demand of people who are interested in and up with. And so for anyone that is looking to build a startup and they want to try to demonstrate demand, it's one thing to do surveys, market research, surveys. And there's other ways. Digitally, obviously, you can foster demand by even clicks on links or we have an opt in to sign up for a newsletter, which is great because you're not being overbearing to the individual. They're choosing to send us their information to stay in touch. And so that in COVID is really what we were able to start harnessing and executing. We really evolved that this year as we raise more capital and so direct to consumer home use.
Look, we could probably have a whole separate podcast on how technology that historically was only available to consumers by going to a doctor is now being able to be available to individuals in their home. The dermatological space is littered with these examples where you'd have to go to a doctor that now you can have a wand that you are utilizing for a dermatological rejuvenation in your home. So this whole Amazonification of products and services can come to your doorstep. You can have it quickly, you can use it at your home. They're FDA compliant. That's the space. And you throw into it as well. Baby Boomer population. I think there's a great opportunity. And I do think the venture community is starting to pay attention to it a lot more, even outside of aging age, tech and mobility of just, hey, there is a big market and the historical concern had been it costs so much to be able to create awareness to consumers. The terms most commonly used are customer acquisition costs and return on ad spend. If you can be able to demonstrate that the money you're spending is very nominal compared to the revenue that you're generating by using digital marketing channels, specific ones, that's the data that I think can be very compelling for an investor who historically wouldn't touch direct to consumer and is now starting to see, oh, my God, you can even make more margin by taking out costs of the supply chain and direct fulfilling to consumers for home use.
Absolutely. That's one of the big benefits of this whole online space. And being able to go to direct soon, like you said, you nailed it. Practically speaking, some of the so we're going to link to the videos and we're going to show people. But I've seen the videos of the product. It looks pretty compact, sturdy, easy to use. Two of the things that stand out to me are something that you mentioned on Viola and Dan's show the gentius, where there's no software running it, it's completely controlled manually, which was, I think, a really interesting decision. Why did you make that decision? What was the thought process behind that?
So look, the videos folks can see on our website. We have supplementary videos, people, and I invite anyone right now. We have our prototypes in San Diego. There's nothing like taking a ride in an uplift yourself that experience. It answers all the questions when somebody is able to have a demonstration. And so look, in any product evolution, especially for something like this, that it's a binary outcome, like can you lift the person up and can you put them into from point A to point B? And oh, by the way, you're not dropping them, you're not keeping them suspended in there. You're not pinching their skin. And that latter. It's subjective, but it's definitely not trivial, especially with our patient population. That has a lot to do with comfort and ingenuity. And so our inventor, he's a mechanical engineer by trade, okay. Through his brain and through collaboration with his son, he was able to, without software, be able to have an electric it's battery powered lift system, complete that whole transfer process. And so there's always the opportunity to add technology. And that's another thing for entrepreneurs that may be listening is that there's so much whiz bang technology out there.
I'll give you an example for uplift voice activation, remote control, up and down. It is so simple to honestly incorporate that and it's even very low cost. But what are the unintended consequences of that? And that's not to say we're not conscious and cognizant of the fact that probably anyone if they say, would you like it remote controlled and would you like it voice activated? Actually, we have done some surveys on this. Most people are going to say, yeah, they'd love that feature. Okay. But would they love that feature if we couldn't get them the product for five years? Or would they rather have the product right now without those features, knowing that as we move forward in our product evolution, those are features that we can incorporate. And so there's regulatory considerations, there's reimbursement considerations. And so what happens is regulatory strategy, I do believe, just as much as does it work? Does it do what it's intended to do? You've got to be compliant with the FDA, you've got to follow whatever guidance they've issued. And so software creates another hurdle, alright? It creates. It's called software validation and verification. And so I had to deal with that with my last company.
It takes time, it's not trivial, it takes money. And so we've just made the conscious decision out of the gate that our customers are telling us they want to be able to transfer on their own. If there's buttons, if there's joysticks, that's totally fine. And even with some quads, we were initially marketing saying, hey, quads, it's not appropriate for them to have an independent transfer. But we've even learned that some quads can actually have use of their fingers or knuckles. And so it's about creating a product roadmap. When are we going to incorporate technology? Getting out of the gate is so key. It's so validating to investors to have them see that the product is in customers'hands. And so if there are things that could get in the way or inhibit the time it takes for me to get product to market and to prove that it can do what it can say, what we say it can do, which is independently transfer, zero physical lifting assisted transfer. I need to triage that as part of my product roadmap going forward. And then guess what? We'll be capitalized plenty to be able to incorporate that in the next phase of design.
You're never done a medical device. There's always evolution. There's always a chance to add more bells and whistles. And I think the good companies are the ones that are able to capture the data from real world use. Case studies. We've done usability studies informally. We just completed a formal one about 45 days ago that that information is being incorporated in this phase of design. Before the units even go out to customers, we're doing another one so that when they do go into customers hands, we have a pretty high level of confidence that we've hit the Mark in most regards. I can think even on Viola's podcast, she asked the question a headrest. We are going to be adding a headrest because we got that feedback from a lot of preorder customers. And when we did the usability studies, several people were saying, hey, that would be great or I would consider buying it. The only thing is I need a head rest. And so it's that commitment, that almost obsessive commitment to getting used case studies, collecting that data, and then making the right decision as to when you're going to incorporate that into your product roadmap.
So that's just some of the lessons I've learned over time.
Those are valuable lessons. I don't need the device myself, but I personally agree that it's so needed out there that it's better to get it to market sooner and have it be easy to use and not have all these delays when you can always iterate after the fact. You can always make it better and see what's actually needed.
Especially when you compare to what the status quo is out there right now. And again, this is not meant to be. Look, and this is genuine when we're not out there. I'm the first one to suggest when we get phone calls and sometimes I pick up the phone if my salesperson is out there or my head of marketing and I flat out just say, look into these two companies, because if we're not there, you can't wait. Look, they're called most it's like clean X or Xerox. Hoyer lifts are the most commonly known, which are floor hoists, but you generally need a cloth sling or some sort of sling that many times you may have to roll a patient or use a board and look, the patient would much rather be able to lay there and be able to be picked up and not feel much of anything and have that sense of security and in just a couple of minutes be in their wheelchair or vice versa. Look at what is out there right now. And if you are meaningfully as a generic word, but if you're meaningfully making an improvement to what their alternative is, then go tackle the other technological bells and whistles after it.
Those are the nice to have. And again, it's generic. But with my engineers, I've had multiple companies now managing engineers. People like to say, shoot the engineer. I think that's a little too unkind because they're so brilliant. But it's the need to haves versus the nice to haves. And if it's a nice to have, that means we likely don't need it right now.
Yeah, I'm less experienced with engineers, but I've had a fair amount. And my challenge with them is always getting them to understand the practical realities of the situation rather than designing theoretically. But that sounds like the opposite of what's happened at Uplift. So, I mean, the device looks very practical for what it does, very compact as well. Like, you can fit it into some pretty compact bedroom spaces because there's so much variation in body type, though. Some people are shorter, some people are heavier, et cetera. We don't really have an average body, even though we like to think we do. There's really no such thing. So is it adjustable or customized to order where, for example, if somebody has longer legs because the mechanism kind of scoops under the person right at the legs and at the back level. So if somebody has longer legs or shorter legs, are those things adjustable?
Yeah. So look, if a person is embarking upon medical device development, the human factors analysis is a standard procedure or kind of a protocol that one goes through. And so getting the prototypes that are in our videos, our founder did some of that at that time. But when I came on board again, nothing replaces the real actual use of it by folks. So just, I referenced the Usability study we did about a month and a half ago. We had seven year olds in it because I wanted to see that a device that we are manufacturing for folks up to £450. And also we had people up to 66, we had folks up to £275. And so I wanted that whole array of body types to be able to at least out of the gate because we don't have the benefit out of the gate of having this is a seven figure investment in FCA compliant manufacturing. So we have to get one out. We also have kind of a luxury of knowing the pre order customer dynamics, because we do after they submit an order, we go through a HIPAA compliant questionnaire to make sure we understand not just the human factors, but in our case, there are wheelchair factors and there are a home, there's a home environment, a roller hoist operates differently on a wood floor than it does on carpet.
And so there are things of that nature, again, the data collection. And so we absolutely, as part of our product roadmap, we're likely going to go or I should back up. When I came on board, I wanted to go to the top of the food chain of the major medical equipment companies. So the Hill ROMs the strikers in the Cares and many others, and I wanted to hear what was important to them. And my previous company was in the diabetes space. So I've lived for a decade in this environment that the United States, obesity is a major problem. And so bariatric clinics, post bariatric surgery, the lift technology that's available now is again what I consider to be archaic. And so we likely will expand. But we really wanted to encapsulate in this first run, as far down and as far up as possible. We have one preorder customer who she has a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, I don't believe is 4ft tall. Her body doesn't make collagen. And so she said the only reason she has to live with her parents is because she can't get out of bed by herself. And so, yeah, we want to cater to that market.
So younger folks as well have some of these diseases and conditions. We also want to encapsulate the wider bodies. We even, for example, for females, we're asking all people that are buying an uplift, we want another waist size, we want another height, their weight, it's all HIPAA compliant shed size. And so the more data we collect, the better we're going to be in our product evolution going forward. But that's why to do Usability studies, that's why to do human factors analysis. In our case, we have to do wheelchair constraint analysis. And so it's collecting information, making informed datadriven decisions with your team, and then just doing the best you can to put it in the buckets of we're going to tackle this now. We're not going to be able to now because some of the preorder customers, as you may imagine, there may be some certain situations that we can't serve them right now. And that's a tough thing to be able to have to communicate. But we do because we don't want to over promise and under deliver. And we really have to stay true to the company of, hey, we have one shot right now, one size, even though our product roadmap says we'll have another size uplift.
And so that's where we are right now.
I think you've touched on some really important points. There's so much variation. There's so many factors to consider. And as I'm sure you're going to want to go global at some point. And then different countries have different standards for wheelchairs and different wheelchair sizes, different constraints that you're going to have to work through. But it sounds like you're heading in the right direction and giving people. It's important to know that there are a lot of people. Right. It's not just for the aging in place community. This is a wide range of age ranges that you're helping give them independence. I would imagine that a seven year old who can use it and living with it throughout their lives is going to learn, how do I use this better? How do I adapt better? They're going to get used to it. And that independent mindset is already going to be there as they're growing up, which is huge.
Yeah. And even hearing you talking there, it made me think of a lot of businesses can be successful of getting the word out that they exist in their use by a conduit or somebody who's in the middle. And in our case, the analogies, the plumber and the plumbing. You buy a home and you have a problem with the plumbing. The plumber is going to know. And you should be selling your plumbing supplies to the plumber, not necessarily the homeowner. And so with us, it's genuinely the healthcare workers and nurses. And so my last company was in the diabetes space. It was an ephalmic diabetes test. And so we made it an effort to go to the schools of optometry and just let them know we exist. Even if it was like free, we were giving them a device. The more that each year all those students are coming through, or if you're not able to go to the schools and have reach to the schools, there's continuing education programs with any industry or any healthcare delivery and give free content. There are companies out there that their job, that their whole company is based on relicensing recertifying.
I'm a CPA by trade. I got to get continuing education every three years and go through these God awful books of all this information just so I could keep those three letters at the end of my name. But there are companies that make you very profitable that deliver that content. So do the same thing as an entrepreneur in the medical device space package that content so that these schools are accreditation organizations want to be able to tell people about uplift or maybe it can't be uplift specific. But the benefits of zero physical lifting, assisted transfer. And so there's some other Nuggets that were just in the early incipient stages of trying to execute. But again, it does come back to some capitalization. And so as we raise the capital we need to scale, those are some of the tactics we'll utilize.
I would think also that centers for independent living, occupational therapist, physical therapist. Right. Somebody might invest in this if they're going through a rehab process. There's so many potential injury. When you have an injury outside of the disability community, you break a leg, you break your ankle, you hurt yourself in some way. This device could be useful for a period of time to prevent injury, prevent further injury, to help the healing process. Right. There are so many risks once you get injured. And if you fall, you could be back to square zero instead of making that progress.
Yeah. I had text from multiple people when Tiger Woods got in his car accident saying, Craig, like they knew where we were from product development. But there are definitely opportunities for us as an organization, even from a temporal standpoint. And frankly, again, when folks that are leading these businesses, the path of least resistance is so big early on, because again, the path of least resistance, when I say that is and I'm just suggesting here the rehabilitation centers and the occupational therapists that work in those which many times are independent or maybe they're kind of under a franchise umbrella. There's much less red tape nose than a massive hospital that has hundreds of nurses and training. And it's going to take years. Now the carrot at the end of that is a major hospital or major chain of nursing homes is going to have a massive bulk purchase order opportunity. Well, that's great. It's going to take a lot of time to foster that relationship and to have some use case studies. And so finding that low hanging fruit, those early wins, just from my experience with my last company, really can go a long way. And so to your point.
Yeah. Occupational therapist, rehab centers, and even home health. Today I fielded a call. This is a direct to consumer call. So it's woman's head, her second back surgery. Her husband is paralyzed. She can't lift him out of bed. They have to get their kids over each day to lift him out of bed. And they don't have anything. They're physically lifting. And so when you think about that type of dynamic and all she simply said was I'm just going to talk about it with my son. And I disclosed price, and they're usually surprised at price. They think it's going to be more expensive than it is. I have a single point decision maker right there. And so I'm within one click away, basically, of having a pre order to be able to demonstrate inbound demand versus institutional healthcare. Again, hospitals being more cumbersome, nursing home chains, maybe a little less so. But independent rehab centers, independent occupational therapists or home care. That's a whole other channel that is now burgeoning again from baby boomers is that insurance companies are pushing you out of the hospital the moment they can from insurance standpoint, so you can be at home.
And then they'll contract with some of these independent home care organizations to give you care that you need in your home. Well, guess what? Those home care nurses that are going to four to five people, they don't want to be lifting people, human beings out of bed. And so just thinking through all those kind of touch points as to who can benefit from this and that example of home care or even at home nurses, they're the ones that would benefit the most, not the most, but as much that they can benefit significantly. And they may not even have to purchase it. It could be just a recommendation to a family to, hey, do you not want mom or dad to have to be physically lifted? Sure. Well, here's a product to look into. And so again, these are all just little tidbits that anyone that has a medical device company is looking for that validation as to ways you can go about doing it before product has officially gone out the door.
Are you willing or able to disclose the price? Because I'm curious as to what it is.
So right now, direct to consumer for home use, some folks have a hoist that they're currently using with the clothsing. Some of those hoists, we can utilize uplift all of our intellectual property for those that may not be watching the video. If you were to envision if you've seen a ski lift chair, imagine if there was a ski lift chair, but it was just for you, just for one seat. And it's hanging on the actual court of the stairlift. So that's the same thing with us. Uplift is just hanging from an existing hoist. And so there are some hoist that people have out there in their home already. And if we can integrate with some of those, it's just under $6,000 to purchase an uplift if they need a hoist, we're not yet in the hoist manufacturing market. We have to buy from an OEM hoist. We pass through that cost generally to work with ours another $2,000. So you're looking at roughly $6,000 to purchase it uplift. If you have a hoist, if you do not have a hoist and you need one from us, that we would provide the $8,000 total. And even for those if that is, a lot of people think that they thought it was going to be $20,000 or definitely over $10,000.
But even if that is tough to digest, we do have some consumer financing options available where if they can provide $1,000 upfront as a means of deposit and installation covers first and last month, it can be something as manageable as depending upon the person's situation or there is some qualification, $$2 to $300 a month. And so some folks have chosen that option, I will say, because it's the time of giving. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say on our site we have a give the gift of uplift. And today we had a call on that where someone was thinking they wanted to buy an uplift, they were going to go do a go fund me because again, these are like horrible accidents and situations at times. And I said, well wait, we have a button on our website, give the gift of uplift. So if you're hearing this and you're thinking of someone who could benefit from this, maybe you can club up with three to four friends, click the gift of uplift button and put the person's name that you want to buy for and Zoom, you can get one purchase.
So that's something I'm excited about longer term as far as this whole pay it forward. And this concept of folks that I maybe communicate with that are of a certain level of affluence and would be happy to make a contribution. It's not tax deductible, at least I haven't figured that out yet. But it's something that you can do in a time where it's all about giving and trying to feel good about yourself and doing right for other people. And so we have that feature as well.
For folks, that's a great idea. What does the installation process of it look like and how are you planning that through?
Yeah. So like with a lot of businesses, the last mile can be challenging. Before Jeff Bezos came around, I think anyone had figured it out. And so without getting old, bezosi on everyone on this call. Look, you heard me mention earlier, stair lifts. I'm a big believer in not recreating the wheel if you don't have to. And stairlift companies, the two most successful ones, Savaria, excuse me, and Acorn, it's public information. They're two to 300 million dollar revenue generating organizations doing 20 to 40 million of profitability. Contracting with certified white glove bonded insured general contractors in major municipalities is a way that some companies can figure out that last mile for installation because again, they have the skill sets and expertise to know how to install medical equipment. So we're aligning with those that have experience installing serialips because they're independent organizations. For us, the amount of time it takes is how much it costs us. And it can be as simple as an hour. It can be 2 hours. But honestly, for me as a company, it's way less about the installation. The installation, frankly, is not that challenging. We get a lot of the data before we even ship a product to somebody's home, before we will ship a product to somebody's home.
And so knowing what that environment is like is over half the battle. And then when you come to install, because there are different types of hoist, some people want a hoist that goes room to room. Other folks for the self transfer. You have a Ushaped hoist that's kind of an upside down field goal post over your bed. So it's residing over your bed. And there's some reasons why either of those are more appropriate. But to me, honestly, as an organization, our success because I have confidence in the installation component. It's really about training. And so with training, that is where the burden I'm going to gladly have on our shoulders with our marketing team, with our customer service team. It's an FDA regulated advice. So you're going to have a product manual. There's a product manual on the device, but there's all these different ways that people can learn better. And again, we have to be mindful of folks that have limited mobility. And so there'll be digital means as far to help supplement and augment the training. And I know this analogy is going to seem so ridiculous for something like this, but you asked earlier about software, and it's literally up, down, left, right.
You know the game in the bowling alleys, Gustavo, where you get the stuffed animal out of the machine. And so we're not a claw. Trust me, we're not a claw. It's reverse because you're sitting your seat on it. But it's up, down, left, right. And so it can be very much even my last medical device company, the engineers and manufacturers, I say keep it simple. Keep it so simple, my mother can use it. This is a product that my mother can use. And so it has to be simple. And that I think then helps with the training as far as how to use the device. So it's installation and training. Training is more important, in my opinion, and it's something that we as a company are bearing the weight of responsibility of making sure we're doing it impeccably well for our customers. And the loved ones and caregivers are taking care of them.
I know this is going to sound a little bit out there, but because it's just up, down, left, right, down the road, do you think maybe it's not even beneficial, but there's a lot of people who rely on service dogs. Do you think that's something that with some correct verbal commands and training, somebody could teach a service dog to press some buttons for them?
It's amazing. I have my dog running around here right now. Should I ask her? Look, you got to think big, right? And so I don't know the answer to the question about service dogs. I love dogs. And the reality is there are service dogs out there. And I'm sure a lot of our customers utilize service dogs. I do think, though, it kind of segues into the concept of robotics. And so we get that question a lot of, hey, we're evolving this field, but we're not at robotics. And so the question is, what about robotics? Is that going to make you obsolete? And so my response to that is, show me a robot that's been FDA cleared so far. And again, there's been robots around in Japan for years that you see marketed and discussed. They're not cleared in Japan. And so I think there's still a far way to go with robotics for health care. Everyone can see an article or listen to a Pocus about hypotheticals and possibilities and utility and even those videos you can see on Twitter. Otherwise where the robotic dogs are out to get you and they're marching away and oh, my God, the world is that big.
And so I'm not suggesting that there won't be a point in time where robotics is really starting to be more entrenched within healthcare. But until that time, and I got to keep being educated on it and being aware of that, I'd be lying if I said, hey, we get this out. You talked about remote control and voice activation. So if you have 180 degree spectrum and we're maybe 60 degrees in and voice activation and remote control gets you 80 degrees in, there is that whole spectrum from 90 to 180 of robotics that I think there's a place to play. I'm not quite there yet as to be able to articulate where that will be for uplift.
Yeah. I think the robotics based the technology tends to be a lot of hype and potential for longer than we'd like to believe. And the application of it or the correct, efficient, safe application of it takes considerably longer. I think robotics is a fascinating space, but so far I've seen outside of warehouses and car manufacturing and the dancing robots that we see on YouTube. I haven't seen a lot of practical use here.
Yeah. You're seeing as well as far as uses in a home care. Again, this whole home care environment, maybe medication dispensing. But when you're starting to get into this touching aspect where you're touching humans or you're moving humans, that's where I've yet to see. I still see there being a chasm that's present.
So this is a good segue into the next question is, where do you see kind of once you get this initial product out, you've got all your last mile figured out, you've got your things ironed out, you're doing well with it. Where do you see the next is the next step, voice control and some automation functionality, or where do you see it kind of evolving and improving?
Yeah. I think, look, weight of the individual is a driving factor as far as wide scale application, in particular in institutional health care facilities. And so we consciously at this time. And you look at hoists that are on the market, even with claw slings they're sold based on they literally have a number of like this is for the 300, it's up to £300, the 456 hundred. Those are the kind of the lines of Demarcation. And so I think honestly, the voice activation remote control, that's not even that complex. That's going to be incorporated. Again, you have to go through some software considerations. And so honestly, even before that, there probably also will be technology incorporated that helps us assess usage or be an aid to our customer service function if something goes wrong. My last company, I didn't think of it. Our engineer did. And it was about remote diagnostics and the ability to we could do it through our computer and remotely. We could tap into any device and literally with a camera, granted, with a camera in it, we could look around on the insides and see, oh, that's broken or that's not working, that's not turning on.
And that saved us. I don't know, on the order of hundreds of dollars of having a person go out to repair it versus hey, we see what the problem is. We're spending the $50 to send them a new device and put the old one in that box and send it back. So honestly, I think I view getting Ducks in a row to make sure we are becoming excellent at serving our customers from bed to wheelchair and vice versa with the current device, maybe with some bells and whistles added onto it, some of the software utility. But honestly, and then you want to make sure we're manufacturing one for the morbid of these population. But honestly, if I'm doing my job, either a we may be partnering with an existing company that already has distribution entrenched in institutional health care. They already have a pulse on the customer and what they want and what they need. And so we'd be probably leveraging their insights as to what the customer wants to evolve the product for the institutional healthcare community. We already out of the gate, even though we're doing demonstrations with our core director, consumer vice device for institutions.
There's already been enough feedback from institutional facilities about having the industrial grade extra wide. Oh, by the way, we have to make sure we're from an It compliance standpoint, not interfering with other, you know, from a signal standpoint or otherwise. There's other considerations that are creating an institutional product that is separate from a direct to consumer home product. And that's not unusual for other medical technology. And so what I really see, honestly and it may be different than what you're thinking is going back to this directed consumer and you and I were talking about it offline. The aging community has been dismissed for a long time and there's books written on this. The longevity economy and why has there been all that was discussed for so many years? And even still to this day, when you're thinking about for your grandfather or grandmother or if you're over the age of 65 or over the age of 80 is safety and durability, safety and durability. And what is lost in that is that 80 year old person, they're human being. They have aesthetic interest. They've had a long career or several careers. They're in a different phase of life.
They desire emotional connection a lot. You see a lot, especially in covet about senior isolation. And so what I'm actually more interested in is uplift, even though it has double on tundra or triple on tundra about what we do as a device and what we want to achieve with people. As far as greater independence is, I see uplift potentially being merely a vessel. I mean, yes, it's going to do those tasks. And we get a lot of questions about the bathroom. So also having a product extension that can be used in the bathroom and for more wide scale transfers outside the bed and any product, any medical device company one of the story around ancillary products. But to me, for direct to consumer home, I think there's an opportunity to create a community. And because by definition, these folks have limited mobility, they're at home a lot. There's isolation. And so through a service offering through IoT connectivity, a lot of folks that are reading statistics the other day, how many people over the age of 75 have a smartphone, how many people have an Alexa? And so the technology is there. It's what we do with it.
It's easy to bring up the example of Peloton. You sell the device, you sell the bike, and then you have a $39 a month community that is almost cultic about what they do and that's with exercise. But that community feel is real. There's a competitive dynamic to it of I need to be Jane or Sam. That's 45 is beating me, and I'm Jade is 35, and you have someone who's interacting with you even if it's taped. And so I think there is an opportunity from a community standpoint. And so that's my ideal vision. And so, of course, operating as an independent company, really whoever our partner is, be fascinating to see if we can accomplish that and really get to that state of a community.
Yeah, that has a lot of potential. I'm also thinking and again, just outside the box a little bit is when you do have plenty of people with limited mobility who still need to exercise, they still need to be physically active. The aging and place population, a lot of the pool lifts and hoist mechanisms for pools and pools, like swimming, is one of the best exercises across for various age groups and various I love to swim, but a lot of people have difficulty getting the pools are not designed in a way that make them easy to get in and out of. So if you guys can adapt the mechanism to a pool and integrate it into the pool design through universal design, through the right engineering. I think that would be another interesting opportunity. And it would also uplift again, you're uplifting more people to become physically active, to share what they're doing, to have even more spaces out there that are inclusive and adaptive to different people.
I think it's a great suggestion you're hired Gustavo.
Well. So Craig, I really appreciate the time. This has been a really interesting conversation. The last two questions, number one is what have I missed that you think is important to talk about?
We covered a lot of ground. We covered a lot of ground. I think we talked about things that can be helpful for other entrepreneurs that are listening, for those that are listening that may have a disability or have limited mobility. I am a sponge for feedback, and I have fixed skin from having raised capital for multiple ventures. It's like the whole thing. When I hear no, like, no, we're not going to give you capital. I have dyslexia to that I hear that is on. So please give me your unadulterated feedback. And I really don't think I have anything to add. I mentioned the giving, and I think the best gift someone can give to another person is the opportunity to have greater independence than they currently have. So if you know someone that may benefit or you think may benefit, just go to myuplift.com. It's spelled with a Y Atmyuplift.com. We're on every social, Facebook, Instagram, My, Uplift, and we're happy to provide information and experience, share and costavo. I think we covered a lot of ground as far as other different things we could discuss. I don't know if we missed much of anything fantastic.
No, I think the product is really well thought out. I'm really excited to see where this goes. And we're going to help support you guys and spread the word as much as possible because this is fantastic and you already told us how we can find you and connect. Is there anywhere else that people can connect with you and reach out?
Yeah. So again, our website, that all funnels to my team, but I think our socials are generally the best with everyone's attention. Spin. So if you go on Instagram or Facebook, it's my uplift, my up, L Y, Ft. You can find us easily. You can Ping us or DM us there. And we're happy to give you the information you need. And Gustavo, for you providing the kindness and the time for this platform, I have to ask you, what can I do for you and for your listeners? I'm sure Offline will talk about ways that we can help promote this episode or otherwise. But please tell me what we can do to be helpful for you and your audience.
Absolutely. I really appreciate that. We'll definitely have that conversation offline. But in the meantime, thank you this has been a pleasure. I'm so glad we met and I'm really looking forward to this episode being released and helping promote this amazing product and service and team that you've been put together.
Thank you very much.
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