Mobility Designed to ‘bottle lightning’ from viral video success

The international spotlight is shining bright on Mobility Designed, a Kansas City startup that’s snagged tens-of-millions of viewers interested in their futuristic crutches.

Last week, Mobility Designed’s ergonomic crutch was featured in a Tech Insider video that’s now attracted more than 38 million views around the world. That particular video has now been re-edited and published by dozens of other platforms — The Verge, Gizmodo and Weather.com to name a few — garnering the company millions more viewers.

And here’s the kicker: Mobility Designed had no idea Tech Insider was planning a feature. But thanks to the unexpected windfall of attention, Mobility Designed has prioritized capturing a torrent of potential customers with a pre-order sale.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to bottle lightning,” Mobility Designed co-founder Max Younger said. “It’s felt like we’re in a movie. We had to start rebuilding the website instantly because of traffic. … At one point, (the video) was hitting a million views an hour.”

Mobility Designed’s first product, the M+D Crutch, is what’s creating all the buzz. The crutch allows a user to apply the bulk of her weight on her elbows — as opposed to the armpits or wrists — offering a more comfortable experience. It’s versatile, too, accommodating users from 4’7” to 6’8” and up to 300 pounds.

It revamps a device that has largely remained the same for more than 100 years, Younger said. And in addition to millions of viewers, Mobility Designed has received a flood of personal stories about how its crutches could change people’s lives.

“We’ve had users writing us, begging us for our products, saying ‘Please send me your prototypes — I need them now,’” Younger said. “There are so many people with big injuries or in the hospital right now sharing their stories that I’m reading in bed at five in the morning — literally crying — because of their overwhelming stories and now we’re trying to figure out how to get this product to market faster to help these people that need it now.”

The company’s pre-order sales are now underway, allowing customers to reserve a pair with a $100 deposit. It’s planning to ship its first batch of crutches in the U.S. on Aug. 31, 2016.

To learn more about the company and its crutches, check out this video.