After leaving the hospital, it was back to work. High-risk pregnancies are frightening enough on their own—add in catastrophic errors like the one we had just experienced, and the stress was amplified a hundredfold. But life didn’t pause. Isophit was still calling.
The original Isophit wasn’t the sleek strength-training system you know today. It began as a foldable group exercise product made from ABS plastics. The platform was designed to be 72 inches by 30 inches, with a target weight of about 65 pounds. On paper it looked straightforward. In reality, it was anything but.
To manufacture something like this, you first need tool and die—the molds that create each plastic component. These molds are milled from hardened steel, designed to withstand the enormous pressures of injection molding. Every cavity has to be cut with microscopic precision. Cooling channels must be carved through the steel so the molten plastic can set evenly. Even the smallest misalignment means the mold won’t work, and in manufacturing, a non-working mold is nothing more than a six-figure paperweight.
The quotes we received just to make these molds were over $100,000. That didn’t include production. That didn’t include assembly. That was just to get to the starting line. For someone with no background in engineering or manufacturing, the cost and complexity were paralyzing. We had developed a product that was both simple in concept and overly complex in execution. And we hadn’t produced a single unit.
On the legal side, the challenge was just as daunting. Once our 2D and 3D drawings were complete, they had to be re-written by our lawyers into the language of patents. The goal was to secure the broadest possible protection. That meant choosing between two very different types of patents.
A design patent protects appearance—the way a product looks. It’s narrower in scope and less expensive, but it offers no protection if someone copies the function of your product with a different shape. A utility patent protects function—how something works, how it’s used, how the mechanics operate. It’s far more powerful, but it’s also more complicated and exponentially more expensive.
For Isophit, function was everything. A design patent would have been useless. We had no choice but to pursue a utility patent, knowing it would cost tens of thousands of dollars and bury us in complexity.
Then came the question of geography. Patents are territorial. A Canadian patent would protect us here, but leave us exposed in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Filing in each country individually was financially impossible. That’s where the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) came in. The PCT doesn’t grant a global patent—it doesn’t exist—but it allows you to file one international application. That application then acts as a placeholder, giving you about 30 months to decide which countries you’ll ultimately pursue. It was the only viable way to think beyond Canada, but it came with another round of fees, translations, and strategic choices.
The stress was suffocating. The molds were out of reach. The patents were draining resources. The dream felt like it was slipping further away. And then, as if to test us even more, the world’s economy collapsed. The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis spiraled into a global financial meltdown. Credit froze. Businesses folded. Optimism evaporated.
I was living off credit cards, barely making minimum payments, trying to push a project forward while everything else seemed to be falling apart.
Next Sunday, I’ll share how close we came to losing everything—and why I refused to quit.
Enjoy your Sunday,
Brad
At Isophit, we help the world’s strongest, fastest, and most dominant athletes—and everyday people—to win more, hurt less, and age stronger!
Buy your Isophit at www.isophit.com and join Team Isophit today.
Excellent read! Being a true innovator in your field is exponentially more challenging than people realize.