DJ Selects: How this Musical Shoe is Helping Hospitals

Most great startup ideas don’t grab your attention right away. It takes a while before the founder’s vision becomes obvious to the rest of us. On the other hand, the startups that immediately grab all the press attention often go out of business shortly after shipping their first product. Reality never seems to live up to the promise.

And then there are products like Orphe. This LED-emblazoned, WiFi-connected, social-network enabled dancing shoe seems made for fluffy, flashy Facebook sharing, but only when you really dig into it, do you understand what it really is and the potential it has in the marketplace.

Today we sit down with Yuya Kikukawa, founder of No New Folk Studio and the creator of the Orphe, and we talk about music, hardware financing, and why this amazing little shoe is finding early adopters in places from game designers to hospitals.

It’s a great conversation, and I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Show Notes

The inspiration for musical shoes Why Yuya's first musical instrument attempt was a failure The biggest challenge in moving from prototype to production Orphe's technical specs How Orphe is being used in hospitals and other healthcare applications How small Japanese startups can achieve global distribution Where the next big startup opportunities in Japan will be Why most hardware startups fail

Links from the Founder

No New Folk Studio Hompage See Orphe in action Check out Yuya's blog Follow Yuya on Facebook Check out PocoPoco on YouTube

[shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.

I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me.

As expected, my new Google duties are taking a lot of my time and taking me out of Japan quite a bit. Things will be returning to normal soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to bring you a special selects show with a really interesting update.

Yuya Kikukawa first sat down together a few years ago to talk about shoes, but if you listened to the last episode of Disrupting Japan you know that when you are talking about shoes you are never really talking about shoes.

In this case, the shoes in question are the Orphe, and they are a combination musical instrument and social network, and yeah that will make a lot more sense when you listen to the interview. And we also talk about what defines a musical instrument, the unique challenges of Japanese hardware startups, and the nature of innovation.

Oh, and I also have some news. In our conversation, Yuya and I debated a strategic decision that all hardware startups face, and just last month we finally got our answer. I’ll tell you about it in the update after the show.

Intro You know, most good startups are obvious. I don’t mean that I could have had the idea before the founders did. By obvious, I mean that right away you can understand the problem the company is solving for their customers and how they’re doing it. Naturally, that makes it easier for the customers to buy.

Most non-obvious startups are in reality still struggling to find the product market fit and are probably not long for this world. And then there are products like Orphe, an LED-emblazoned WiFi-connected social sharing enabled dancing shoe. Yeah, it sounds like something you would find on Indiegogo and that one time not too long ago, it was. But when I sat down with Yuya Kikukawa, founder of No New Folk Studio and the creator of the Orphe, it became clear that this was not some quirky side project or some overfunded crazy hardware startup.

This was something really different.

We talked about the original inspiration for the shoe and what does and does not qualify as a musical instrument and how Orphe is being used by the artistic community in Japan. But we also dive into the technology inside it, and that, well, that’s something special. That’s why this quirky little blinking shoe is starting to get used by game and UI designers, as well as hospitals and sports trainers in Japan. It’s a fascinating discussion but you know, Yuya tells the story much better than I can.

[pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ] Interview Tim: I’m sitting here with Yuya Kikukawa of No New Folk Studio. Thank you for sitting down with me.

Yuya: Thank you for inviting.

Tim: Now, you guys make Orphe which is an LED dance shoe but it’s so much more than that. Can you describe what Orphe is exactly?

Yuya: Yeah. Orphe is kind of world’s first smart LED shoes. Smart means it has a computer inside of the sole, at the same time there are about 100 full color LEDs. The computer can control each pixel. So the user can change the color through the smartphone application.

Tim: Okay. It’s always so hard to describe dance and visual effects on an audio podcast.

Yuya: Okay.

Tim: So it’s basically a dance shoe with an array of LED lights around the sole that are controlled interactively both from the cellphone and from motion sensors in the shoes, right?

Yuya: Yes.

Tim: Okay. On a high level, the idea of putting lights in shoes isn’t new. I remember back in the ‘90s, there was a company, LA Gear or something, that made a shoe that lit up. Was that an inspiration or is what you’re doing completely different?

Yuya: To be honest, I don’t think it’s completely different because the inspiration was actually come from the LED shoes itself. My idea is combine instrument function and LED shoes. I combined the two ideas.

Tim: So your inspiration was really viewing the shoe as a musical instrument?

Yuya: Mm-hmm.

Tim: Well, actually when you think about it, there are some cases where the shoe is a musical instrument, right?

Yuya: Flamenco, tap dance.

Tim: So like tap dancing or lots of folk music. So yes, okay, that’s not so strange at all. Do you have global competition now? Are there companies doing what you do or is this truly unique for the moment?

Yuya: In the genre of smart shoes, there are some startups. For example, Under Armor is making smart running shoes. It has sensor in the sole. There are some competitors.

Tim: Okay. But they seem to be going after a very different market. Nike also released a product that had fitness tracking. But you seem to be more targeted at performance art, at least for the moment.

Yuya: Mm-hmm.

Tim: All right. Actually, tell me a bit about your customers. Other than having cool blinking lights on your feet, how are people using Orphe?

Yuya: Our main target is -- so dancer and performers. Orphe can react with performance motion. For example, the steps. There are already some users before Orphe, wearing LED shoes and dancing but it can’t react with motion and music.

Tim: So for example when the dancer takes a step, the impact sensor could trigger lights in the background or sound effects?

Yuya: Our shoes can send the information in a step. For example, background lights can be controlled by the step.

Tim: Right. That’s what I was thinking. Once it’s connected to the smartphone, it’s just data input?

Yuya: Mm-hmm.

Tim: Actually, we’ll talk about that a little later because I think that’s one of the most exciting things about this shoe.

Yuya: Okay.

Tim: For the moment, it’s dancers and performance art?

Yuya: Mm-hmm.

Tim: Okay. Another thing I find interesting is, you mentioned there’s also a social sharing component. So people can share their color patterns, their pre-programmed dance performances. Are people doing that now?

Yuya: The user can download the lighting pattern from the cloud but the motion sharing is not open yet.

Tim: Okay. So it’s just people sharing the lighting patterns?

Yuya: Yeah. It is important idea because now we are more open platform for the shoes. We are now developing the system to share the sensor data, for example.

Tim: Well, actually, before we talk about that, I want to take a step back and let’s talk about you for a minute.

Yuya: Okay.

Tim: How did you get into this? Because you originally wanted to make musical instruments, right?

Yuya: Yes, yes.

Tim: Tell me about that. Actually, you did create a different musical instrument, PocoPoco, right?

Yuya: In graduate school, I was major in Industrial Art Design and I studied designing musical interface in a laboratory. At that time, I came across the idea of mixing light and sound in one musical interface. So PocoPoco is one example. Now, PocoPoco is an instrument. It is black box shape and it is a kind of sequencer to make loop music. Just by pushing the buttons, it makes some loop sounds and not just sound, it light up at the same time it has a haptic interaction. Haptic means it has a solenoid magnetic power actuator.

Tim: So it gives a touch feedback as well?

Yuya: Yes, yes. Exactly.

Tim: It sounds like a really interesting project. What happened with it? Did you try to commercialize it?

Yuya: After the prototyping, we made video in a laboratory and it has big feedback from all over the world. So after that, I thought about commercialize the product but problem of design. It is very costful.

Tim: So it’s too expensive to produce?

Yuya: Mm-hmm. For business, it is not good.

Tim: Okay. All right. So a great project, lousy business?

Yuya: Mm-hmm.

Tim: I’ve had a few of those.

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Yuya: So after that, I thought about what product is good for merchandise.

Tim: Just thinking about it, it’s very difficult to introduce a new musical instrument. Even something like the invention of the guitar took about 200 years to become popular or even the piano for that matter. It took over a century before it really became widespread. It’s hard to get people to make music on something new.