- POC are just launching a brand new
aero road helmet called the "Ventral,"
and they've very kindly flown us out to Sweden
to actually come and take a look at it.
There is a full, in-depth feature on it
over on the GCN Tech channel right now,
but before we get too into the minutiae,
I actually just want to find out
a little bit more about this super cool company,
the headquarters of which are just up there.
And you may be able to tell by
my borrowed coat, helmet, and bike,
I have already been there this morning.
(analogue urban soul)
POC's HQ is in a mega looking office block,
in a very cool part of Stockholm.
Actually, all of Stockholm is pretty cool,
or at least it certainly is today; it's minus seven.
But having said that, there are a lot of bike riders
still buzzing around the place, which is amazing to see.
Anyway, we're heading just up there.
(analogue urban soul)
♪ Doo doo doo, de doo doo ♪
♪ Dodoo dodoo doo de doo ♪
Right then, here we go.
I've not actually been in
a design-savvy Scandinavian office before,
but I'm not going to lie;
this is everything I hoped it would be.
We've got nice high ceilings, massive windows,
loads of natural light; open plan, communal dining:
very, very cool.
But the GMBN guys actually, who have already been here,
did tell me that I do need to check out
the branded coffee machine; I need no second bidding,
it seems like a very good place to start.
Mugs ... (machine growls)
♪ Hey ♪ - Ah!
(sipping) Ah.
Now POC have got quite a recent history in road cycling,
but the company was founded back in 2005
with skiing helmets, and then transitioned
over into mountain biking in 2007,
and then the first range for road cyclists
wasn't until 2014 when they came in
with helmets, eyewear, and clothing.
You can see then that there's quite a variety to the range,
but the central theme through all of it
is that's it's got to enhance the safety of the customer
in some way.
So, helmets, that's quite an obvious one;
body armour, obvious one as well;
eyewear, dual function that one,
because actually protecting your eyes is pretty valid,
and they say actually their latest range of lenses,
called "Clarity," actually enhance certain light conditions
and improve your visibility and thereby safety as well.
And then clothing as well, well that's just designed
to improve your visibility too.
So you can see where we're going with all of this.
So I don't know about you, but I'm really intrigued
just to know where this central mission
has actually come from.
I think we need to find someone to talk to.
After I finish my coffee.
(hip urban rhythms)
I found this man Damian who's going to tell us all about it.
Unfortunately you're not quite as Swedish
as I was initially hoping for, but you know,
that's fine, you'll do the job.
So how exactly did this mission come about,
this mission of safety?
- So, POC was founded, let's say 12 or 13 years ago,
and Stefan Ytterborn, the guy who created it,
was a passionate skiier, doing ski competitions
with his children, and then realised actually at some stage
with his kids, that the protection in skiing
was not developing as fast as other parts of skiing.
So the speeds the kids were travelling at
was a lot more, let's say in terms of downhill speeds,
and the impacts were a lot bigger.
So he thought there's definitely a need here
for something that's better, better designed
but better protection and just a better overall concept
in terms of protection and safety.
- Okay and then the move into mountain biking,
did that come from a passion of Stefan's, or is that ...
- Yeah definitely; he was definitely
into mountain biking as well; I think most Scandinavians
or Swedes, especially in this area,
have got a lot of mountain biking available to them,
so they're into mountain biking too.
But the reality is I think in downhill skiing,
and in sort of downhill mountain biking,
the terrain is much the same
and a lot of the needs are very similar too
so there was a natural shift across
from skiing to mountain biking.
- Yeah and if the safety thing runs through the whole range,
there is also a really clear design aesthetic
to all POC products, and so how do the two
kind of sit together, safety and design?
- Yeah it's funny, because I mean,
let's say Sweden or Scandinavia is well known for design,
so actually you'd kind of expect
some of that aspect of it to be in POC product.
But the reality is that safety is the most important part;
design comes afterwards.
But we realise also that the best or the safest helmet
is one that somebody chooses to wear,
and that's often down to a design choice,
and so we make a lot of effort
to make sure that the design is right,
but the safety is the starting point
for everything that we do.
So the safety is the starting point
and the design comes afterwards.
(analogue urban soul)
So Simon I've also heard quite a few things about glasses,
and how old your glasses are. (Simon laughs)
They really need replacing, so I think it's about time
that you got some new eyewear.
- Well, thank you very much.
How do I look, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?
No?
(urban soul music)
In total, there are 35 people that work
here in the Swedish office, and this is like
the engine room of the company.
They've also got other offices in the U.S.
and Central Europe as well, but it's still
a relatively small team to have made quite such a big impact
in snow sports and mountain biking,
and road cycling as well.
And I think part of it, certainly my impression anyway,
from puttering around and chatting to people here,
is their openness to collaboration.
An example of which would be the POC Lab,
which is a panel of experts from different fields.
So you have neurologists, who can consult on brain injuries;
orthopaedic surgeons, who are doctors
that deal with fractured bones;
but then you also have people that can actually
help prevent accidents in the first place.
Perhaps the most interesting one for us roadies
is a woman called Magdalena Lindman
who works for Volvo Cars, and she is a traffic data analyst.
So to find out a little bit more
about that particular partnership,
we need to talk to Johan,
who's the digital business and collaborations manager.
And he's just down there.
All right, so I've just been talking
about the partnership with Volvo;
what do POC get out of that exactly?
I'm really interested.
- Well the partnership with Volvo is very important.
And from a realistic point of view,
we share the same heritage when it comes to safety,
also the Swedish quality in design.
And it allows us to explore possibilities
and experience and knowledge within safety
to find new ideas, for safety functions or design.
- So how's that worked in the past?
And is it an ongoing project as well?
- Yeah we did some projects and concepts in the past.
Now we are in two different projects together.
First project where we want to be a part
of the connected vehicle environment;
vehicle-to-vehicle communication
will be a standardised protocol,
and I want the cyclist to be part of that network.
- [Si] So that's a little bit like autonomous cars
actually being able to see cyclists, because at the minute
I gather we're a bit of a problem to them.
- Normally this industry's very automotive focused
in the development, and I also want to be
a part of that environment, to be able to
have the information and take decisions
and give feedback to the cyclist from the same environment.
- And so does this come from the traffic data analysis then?
- Yes, exactly.
- And so they've literally been able to tell you,
you know, these are the incidents
that have been with Volvo cars and cyclists,
and these are the most common?
- They have a lot of statistics and background
when it comes to crashes, where they occur and why
and what kind of environment they were in.
And if you go from that and see
where the statistics is the worst,
we can try to solve that also from our side.
- Now I noticed as well in your job title
that you are digital business manager as well.
So how does digital technology come into safety as well?
We haven't seen too much of it on the roadside of yet.
- Yeah, so POC Aid is about finding and integrating
digital applications and electronics in our products
to support the safety mission.
How can we use technology within electronics
to make the product more safe?
And that can be from simple integration,
when it comes to, you know, visibility,
LED or even more advanced printed lights, electroluminents,
inside the garments, to increase visibility.
How can we help the user to be searchable?
How can we help the user to be trackable?
Communication devices, so more simple applications
and also adaptive geometry, how can we integrate,
for example, airbags and stuff like this
in the cyclists' environment.
(raucous urban jazz)
- This little fella is Gustav Larsson,
Swedish time trial ace, and this is a POC aero helmet
that was designed specifically for him
for the London 2012 Olympics.
Now it's fair to say that it rather divided opinion
when it comes to the aesthetics,
but when you stick it on Gustav's head
you kind of see exactly why it was designed like that.
Amazing; so it was a complete conceptual design.
It was a project specifically for Gustav Larsson.
Check it out, the most aero helmet for him.
I'm not sure that's going to go over my ears.
Has he got small ears?
(modern urban jazz)
So Johan's just been talking about
one of the POC Aid digital projects,
and that is this little bad boy here
which is the wearable and washable printed LED fabric.
So this product is still in development.
You can see it's a vest, or a gilet,
and here on this back panel you've got your wearable LED.
Which is just genius, because you kind of
wouldn't really know it was there.
But then it doesn't have to be quite so complicated as that.
The commuter jacket that I was wearing
first thing this morning has this,
as you saw, built-in iPhone holder
that you can then tuck away in your pocket.
And they've also built an app along with
another collaboration with a tech startup called POC See Me,
and it basically turns your iPhone into
a blinking rear light or indeed an indicator
when you tell it to turn left or right.
Which is kind of cool; I actually first saw that
in Eurobike a couple of years ago,
and it has to be said I was quite taken with it back then.
But it's not all about digital in their clothing range.
So I mentioned at the beginning,
they've got clothing to improve your visibility.
And so it's called "AVIP," which stands for
Attention Visibility Interaction Protection.
And basically they've worked out
through their own research the key colours
that can really help to make a cyclist stand out.
And not only the colours but also the print as well.
And so this mirrors, effectively,
the design of the helmet as well,
and then you've got these really
super bright, vibrant colours.
And then they've also built in
protection into other garments as well.
So one of my favourites is in the rain jacket,
they've got this new super tough
Vectran fabric on the forearms.
So the whole jacket is made of like a normal
super lightweight waterproof breathable fabric.
You couldn't make the whole thing out of Vectran
because it would weigh a tonne,
but in a key area that matches up,
funnily enough, with scars that I have on my own forearms,
so it actually gives a bit of extra life to the jacket
and also a bit of extra life to your forearms,
much like this next one here,
which is actually a ceramic-printed fabric.
So it's like a normal Lycra, so it's stretchy in every way,
but it's been printed with a ceramic coating
that basically helps to make it slide.
So if you were to fall off your bike wearing this,
then you'd basically get much less gravel rash,
which sounds like a bonus.
So that can be printed onto key areas of your shorts,
or like you can see here, again on the sleeves
of a long-sleeve jersey.
So there we go, cut down on gravel rash.
And then finally, I know this is technically mountain biking
but bear with me because it's cross-country mountain biking,
they've got another Cordura fabric on the shoulders there,
so anyone who's been mountain biking in the summer,
in woods, you know that you bash up against
loads of trees and brambles and stuff.
And so that adds life to the jersey, again,
but also a little bit of security to your body as well.
So a bonus there.
Right, so we've talked about POC Lab, POC Aid;
we've talked about AVIP clothing;
what we haven't done, and seeing as
that's kind of why we're here,
is talk about helmets yet.
So I think we need to remedy that, and remedy it quickly.
And finally then, we have got the helmet design team.
Would you believe it, there's only three of them.
We've got Claes, the designer in the corner;
hello Claes. - Hey mate!
- As well as helmets you can see
he's also a designer of eyewear.
Then we've got two engineers, so we've got Magnus just here,
and then we've also got Fredrik,
who unfortunately isn't in today.
Now they work across all disciplines,
so skiing, mountain biking, and road cycling,
which is pretty cool if you ask me,
because if there is going to be innovation in one sport,
it can therefore also spread across to the others as well.
So for example if we look at the construction
of ski helmets it's very different
to the normal road cycling helmets that we see.
They're basically more robust to repeated impacts.
Or some of them are anyway, because of those that designed
for ski racing, where you wallop your head
repeatedly against the ski gates.
And so the construction is therefore slightly different,
and that construction then migrated its way
over to commuter helmets.
So instead of that EPS foam, it's made of what's called
an "EPP foam," and so you can see, it's slightly squishy,
and that elasticity allows it to bounce back
when you have those smaller impacts.
It is however, a little bit on the heavier side,
which is why roadies don't normally use this kind of thing,
but perfect for commuters.
Right, now as I mentioned, we have got a video
over on the tech channel where we go into this,
the new Ventral, in great detail.
Magnus is going to talk us through not only the safety
but also the aerodynamic side as well.
So why not head over to watch that video right now;
there will be a link very shortly.
Safety, it's not normally a glamorous kind of subject,
but POC are definitely making it cool.
And not only that, there's also this
kind of infectious sense of enthusiasm on the subject
that pervades the whole company, and I really like it.
So thank you very much to POC, in fact,
for having us here for the day.
I think it's been absolutely fascinating.
Do make sure you give the video
a big thumbs up if you think so as well,
and of course don't forget to go
and watch the video on this, the new Ventral, after.
The link is just there.
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