Introduction
Gavin Laird is an Equipment Design Consultant with over 20 years of experience. His current designs include the Hip Thrust Bar, GLS Jammers and accessories, Bench Buddy, Crane Bar, Husa-Sled, G-Sled, Multi Yoke, and the Deadlift Training Station.
We started with how he began and ended with chatting about the future.
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(0:23) Intro
Gavin owns and operates Gavin Laird Strength, a design and consultancy based in Scotland. Through his company, he designs and licenses equipment and offers consulting services.
Gavin has been training his whole life, starting at four years old. He began designing his equipment 20 years ago when he opened his first gym. The designing of his equipment started with necessity and inability to get what he needed.
(2:50) His gym and first creations
To give you a vision of his first gym, Gavin says to imagine Westside Barbell, but with Scottish accents. It was about a 700 sq ft industrial building with a leaky roof and no heat.
The first thing that Gavin built/put into the new place was essentially a belt squat in the middle of the power rack. That was 20 years ago. He also needed a Nordic curl machine and some core movement machines in his gym.
(4:32) First designs for others
In 2015 while running a much bigger gym, Gavin ended up renting a booth at a national fitness expo and bringing two designs. He was able to get others interested in his plans, which was the company’s birth.
Gavin knew that he wanted to be the brains/design guy and not get into manufacturing. He was more interested in having the idea and creating it but not replicating it repeatedly. All of his interest is in the creation.
(6:05) Favorite designs?
Gavin has favorites that are the popular ones that pay the bills, and then there are personal favorites from a design aspect. One of those popular designs is a bench that he designed that can be broken down to store flat on the floor or hung up on hooks, but he says at the end of the day, it’s just a bench.
One of his design favorites is a set of jammer arms that he did for Primal Strength. That was one of the first jammer arms where you could adjust the starting position of the components and have the arms move in towards each other or away from the rack. Currently, Gavin is developing the 4th version of those jammer arms.
(9:04) Time of design
The jammer arms were sketched out in 40 minutes, and the prototype was done after three days with a welder. The time delay with that piece of equipment was finding a company that saw an interest in the product and wanted to bring it to market.
(11:01) Patented designs being used in other countries
A patented piece of equipment does not protect you from copies from other countries. The jammer arm design has made its way to the states, and multiple companies are offering it.
In an ideal situation, Gavin would like to be contacted and recognized for his design ideas by these companies, whether working with those companies to alter the design or seeing a small percentage.
Gavin does understand that this is a business and the job of these companies is to design something as cost-effective as possible and to make the company and its shareholders as much money as possible. So he accepts that being copied is a part of it.
As a consultant, Gavin is sometimes approached by companies, showing a design protected by patents, and asked to make a similar product that works around all the patents.
(14:47) Failed products and % of designs created that work
Gavin laughs at the question of failed products because, as a designer, he has many. Out of all of the products that complete a task, they then get weeded down by the market, costs, etc. In the end, Gavin shares that about 20% of everything he has drawn is in the market, leaving 80% never make it.
A product that never made it to the market that Gavin shares are a gearbox that increases resistance to bands. The issue this one faced cost. The tooling in making the product costs too much to make it viable, and it now sits in a corner.
(20:11) Time management
Gavin prefers to spend his time working on his work over consultant work. He says now he spends the vast majority of his time on his work and about 20% on the consultant side of the business.
Although, there is some crossover. With companies that he has licensed equipment with, those companies do come back with a problem they’re looking to solve, and then Gavin will do some consulting.
(24:20) Changes in strength training/home gym in recent years
Gavin talks about two technologies that have hit the market; inertia (think flywheel systems) and motor resistance. Motors for resistance have been tried before, but they never felt right, but now you can get a couple of hundred pounds on a cable column from a motor, and it feels much better. He sees more motorized resistance in the future.
(28:37) Following five years for fitness tech?
Gavin sees fitness tech as a slow creep into popularity with those who will never stray from the barbell. He says that absolute acceptance will happen once the sensor and motor resistance technology becomes affordable. Gavin’s prediction comes with a timeline of about 2030.
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