Segway - Why It Failed

foreign [Music] the Segway today is not necessarily one of the most respected pieces of technology in fact you probably do not even think about it at all maybe you'll use one to take a guided tour of a city or see a police officer or security guard rolling around on one but that's about the extent of it right it's become more of a novelty which is why you might be surprised to learn that the Segway was easily one of the most anticipated product launches of all time in the early 2000s everybody was talking about it like it was going to change the world of Transportation as we know it sure some of the hype was coming from internet speculation on blog posts and whatnot but a lot of it was coming from well-known respected professionals like the inventor of the Segway himself Dean came in if you're not familiar I would describe him as an eccentric genius millionaire type he's known for wearing denim traveling by helicopter he owns an island well while he was still in college in the 1970s he invented a small infusion pump that allowed drugs to be administered to patients in steady reliable doses he built a company around that invention called Auto syringe that he sold in his early 30s for millions of dollars he then took that money and used it to start a research and development company that would go on to invent more impactful medical devices some of those would include a portable dialysis machine that was much smaller than the existing ones and a flexible heart stent I'm talking about stuff that has improved the quality of life or even extended the life of many individuals in 1990 he saw somebody in a wheelchair struggling to get it up over the curb on the side of the road and it gave him an idea to create this Advanced robotic wheelchair called eye Bots it had six wheels a motor it can go up curbs and stairs it could even stand up so a person in the wheelchair could match the same height as someone else while designing this the team realized that they could take some of the gyroscope balancing and other Technologies they developed for that chair and use them to create a new vehicle that would ultimately become the Segway and I have to say that Dean came and saw a lot of potential for this investing so much of his time in money money into it he even made public statements saying I believe the Segway HT human transporter will do for walking what the calculator did for the pad and pencil or that it will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy he essentially thought that it was going to sell millions of them and that it would be the new standard for getting around cities all across the world it really is sad to think that the Segway has fallen so short of his expectations it has now existed for over two decades and tell me if I'm wrong but I'm going to guess that most of the people watching this have never been on one and I'm almost positive in saying that most of you have not bought one considering they have only sold an estimated 140 000 units in total and as of 2020 they are not even being produced anymore I would go ahead and call this one of the biggest product failures of all time so in this video I want to explore exactly why it failed so badly I have put together a list of what I believe to be the five biggest reasons starting with those initial expectations as I already said Dean Cayman was a respected proven inventor that was speaking so highly of the Segway and that was only a small part of it there were other respected businessmen in the technology field that were also hyping it up including Jeff Bezos at the time calling it one of the most famous and anticipated product introductions of all time another one would be Steve Jobs predicting that it would become as big as the PC could you even imagine what the world would look like today if he was right about that if the Segway was as prevalent as the personal computer John Deere a famous technology investor known for seeing early potential in Amazon Google and many others was not only an early investor in Segway but predicted that it would achieve one billion dollars in sales faster than any other product in history there was even an episode of South Park from 2001 it partially inspired not by the Segway itself but by the hype surrounding the announcement of the Segway the public was hearing a lot of these statements even before they knew exactly what it was just little tidbits here and there because because the project was so secretive people were out there speculating that it could be a teleportation device or some other wild science fiction fantasy whatever so by the time it was finally announced on Good Morning America in December of 2001 there was no way that it could live up to expectations I mean sure it was a cool invention made possible by the years-long development of advanced technology but it didn't seem all that impressive because it could not meet those unrealistic expectations that people had in their heads my next reason behind the failure of the Segway is the marketing that was behind it see the strength of Dean came in is inventing and that goes for the rest of his team as well for well over a decade before the Segway his company had been researching and developing all these medical devices and then relying on a different company to actually produce and sell them for example that I bought wheelchair was invented by cayman's company but sold by Johnson and Johnson but for the Segway unlike any of those other inventions he created a separate company for it that would would also handle the manufacturing and sales I think further showing how much he believed in the product but he didn't even hire an outside sales team and I strongly have to question if that was the best decision look I don't want to keep bringing it back to Steve Jobs I know we can be polarizing but he was one of the few people invited to see the Segway before it was revealed and I hope you'll agree he is somebody who knows a lot about marketing technology products his advice to them was to launch it with one model to keep things simple and straightforward for the customer that was actually a big part of his transformation plan over at Apple in the 1990s but segwayed instead it chose to launch it with two available models jobs remarked how the appearance of the Segway was very traditional and not reflective of the Innovative technology inside of it but they decided to keep the traditional design through the reveal and really never changed it all that much over the years jobs also advised them to have a giant launch to make a big deal out of it but Segway instead chose to do it very slow and methodically following that reveal I'm Good Morning America it was only available to large companies early on police departments in the post office and Disneyland were all allowed to test them out in hopes that they would Place giant orders of multiple Segways which clearly did not happen to the degree that they wanted it to Meanwhile an average public consumer was not able to buy a Segway until almost a full year after that announcement and at that point a lot of the hype around it had cooled off another reason behind the failure is that in I would say most situations the Segway is simply impractical it's not even legal in many places to ride it on the sidewalk that has been a huge hurdle that they've had trouble getting over Segway was spending a lot of money lobbying to get these laws changed in various states and cities but they've been met with resistance from certain groups claiming that it's a safety concern aside from struggling to find a place to ride it the machine itself was Impractical it was Heavy it could only travel about 12 miles before having to be charged again it took both hands to ride it meaning it was hard to do anything else at the same time you don't have any of those issues just writing a simple bicycle around and you know what else a bicycle it typically doesn't cost five thousand dollars yeah a Segway was pricey and I'm not the only one who thinks that their former VP of marketing admitted the price was way out of whack and their former CEO said a lot of people said our products were too expensive they were too overpriced yeah they were you know why I needed the money to run the company it turns out that the battery that was required the way it was engineered and the fact that they manufactured it in New Hampshire instead of somewhere cheaper overseas that made it so expensive to make that it was difficult to turn a profit if they sold it for any cheaper also consider that before the launch a Segway had a 650 million dollar valuation but Dean Cayman was only willing to sell about 15 control of the company when raising Capital so there was always a financial struggle happening behind the scenes yet another reason Segway never really took off is because of all of these accidents like many forms of transportation riding a Segway takes a little practice before you can Master it you have to lean in different directions depending on where you want to go it's a foreign technology so people can find it to be tricky but there have been so many high-profile documented accidents involving Segways that they quickly started to develop a negative even dangerous reputation in 2003 only seven months after its release to the public by the way the president of the United States George W Bush was riding a Segway in Maine and famously fell off of it in 2010 Ellen DeGeneres fell off of one while demonstrating how to ride it on the stage of her talk show in 2015 a cameraman was writing one and ran into Usain Bolt during a Victory lap not to mention two separate recalls where malfunctions in the system were causing people to fall off of it but the most disastrous accident in my opinion happened in 2010. see by 2009 Dean Cayman was looking to sell the company I think it was clear that Segways weren't going to become the next big thing and he wanted to put his attention elsewhere they had recently worked with General Motors to develop some unique looking concept cars so it was looking like maybe they would by the Segway company but then GM filed for bankruptcy so none of that happened ultimately it was bought by a British millionaire named James Hazelden 20 years earlier he had started a company that makes barriers primarily used to protect military bases it was speculated that maybe he wanted to use his connections to adapt the Segway technology for military uses well here's where it gets crazy is since Segways were illegal to ride on the sidewalks in the UK Hazelden would ride his around his own property one day he lost control of it and wrote it right off a cliff and died it sounds like it would be a joke but unfortunately that was a real life tragic event when the owner of Segway dies while riding a Segway that'll make you stop and think that maybe a Segway isn't the safest way to get around my final reason behind the failure is that Segways pretty much just became a joke what's the first thing that comes to your mind whenever you think of a Segway it's probably not the best image for me my mind instantly goes to Paul alert Mall Cop probably not the image that Dean Cayman was hoping for when he and his team spent a decade developing the technology for it he always insisted that people don't call it a scooter but then it's an idiot on a scooter at night it's Gotta Be Joe yeah job on the show Arrested Development would ride a segue around feeding into that privileged lazy stereotype that was formed around Segway users Weird Al was writing one in the video for a song white and nerdy just so many negative depictions through how popular media that helped demonstrate how Segways quickly transitioned from a groundbreaking means of transportation to the simple butt of a joke to finish things up a Segway was sold in 2013 then again in 2015 to a competing Chinese company called ninebots who seemingly just wanted it for the hundreds of patents they held is so they can enter the U.S markets in 2020 they announced that they would end production of the iconic Segway device in favor of making other products that they feel are more cost efficient and less outdated so I guess that's the end of it let me know in the comments what do you think of the Segway was it an amazing invention that was completely mishandled or was it truthfully doomed from the beginning in other words in your opinion is there a different version of the story that would have resulted in major cities across the globe being filled with Segway users I'm also curious if you have ever ridden one at some point likely during a Segway tour would be my guess and please let me know if you are one of the few people who has ever owned one of these what made you buy it what would your experience do you still ride it and any other thoughts you have about Segway the device or the company leave them in the comments I'd like to hear what you have to say thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Company Man

Views: 1,334,244

Keywords: Segway, Technology, Failure, Company, Product, Business

Id: aQykTmY-LJ4

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023