The MXHandStand Story

First of all, if you don't know what the MXHandStand is, please visit that website by clicking here and see for yourself what a great product it is.

I had this whacky idea in about 2001 that there had to be a better way to make a dirt bike stand. At the time there was really nothing more available than aluminum box type stands. I am only 5' 10" tall and lifting my bike up onto one of those stands was always difficult for me. I always liked the lever stand that they used in the early days of motocross and still use in flat track racing.

These stands were simple and easy to use. It was easy to put your bike up on them and did not require you to lift the bike at all. The only problem was it only lifted one of the two wheels off the ground. If you wanted to elevate the other wheel, you had to take the bike off the stand and move it to the other side of the frame, if that worked at all.

So I thought, why not use the lever to lift the bike up onto a flat platform. Then I thought, why not make the angle of the platform adjustable? That way I could elevate the front OR rear wheel off the ground. As I dwelled on it, I wondered if it was possible to make the stand collapse to save space. I drew it up and went down to my father-in-laws house at the time to build a prototype. It worked! Not perfectly, but the idea was good.

Then, I dropped the whole project for way too long. Like everybody, I had good reasons, but it was still a mistake. A couple of years ago, I met a guy who did a lot of fabrication at the time and he let me have the run of his shop to build a better version and improve some of the issues I had with that original model. We did that and came up with a better mousetrap!

At this time, I was ready to begin shopping the design around to be purchsed or built. Either way I felt I needed protection and began the long patent process. Going back and forth with an attorney and making sure that the patent was written correctly, the drawings were correct and so on. All of that so we could use those magic words, "Patent Pending".

I didn't know where to go from here and stepped out and contacted a major aftermarket company here in the northwest to see what they thought. The gentleman I met with really liked my prototype. While I thought the adjustable platform was the best feature, he was thrilled with the collapsability of the stand and the room it saved over a rigid stand.

This businessman was generous enough to share a some of his manufacturing contacts overseas. I first priced it with various groups here in the states, but could not get the pricing anywhere near where it needed to be in order to make the retail price acceptable to consumers. I contacted the overseas company and began the long process of prototyping. Though I supplied detained 3-D drawings, there were changes to be made to the final product as I was not familiar with the manufacturing process, and obviously they were. The changes they suggested were very good and made for a much more professional looking final product.

The process was that once they had completed a prototype, they would take pictures of it and send those to me for review. If I saw glaring errors or omissions, I could make them aware of it and ask for changes. If the images looked satisfactory, then they would send me a prototype partOnce in touch with the manufacturer,

We have built the website, managed photography and completely managed this project from begining to end. We have learned by doing. We will continue to learn by doing. There are other products coming and we will continue to grow. Let me help you bring your idea to reality. There is no feeling like seeing your idea and efforts brought to fruition.

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