Peloton, Tonal and other companies have led the fire of smart fitness equipment, basketball equipment manufacturers also want to add a "screen" to divide the cup.
In April 2023, Huupe, a smart rebound startup, received another $11 million in financing, led by Protagonist VC and followed by Marvan Ventures and TRI Investments, and this round of financing will be used for the subsequent research and development of smart rebound technology. Huupe has previously raised $3 million in seed funding.
Huupe is a smart backboard with a screen that can be used to play games, watch streams, record shots, and even make video calls. By connecting a smartphone to enter the relevant application, Huupe's built-in visual capture system can track the user's shot, record the hit rate, hollow goals and other data in different areas, and analyze and feedback the basketball trajectory, speed, shot time, etc., so as to help the user optimize the shooting performance.
Huupe plans to settle in schools, private gyms, community exercise institutions and other places, hoping to reduce the cost of product production by expanding the scale of procurement. The product is scheduled to go on pre-sale in North America in 2023, after the design has attracted a number of investors, including NBA Toronto Raptors forward Thaddeus Young and former NBA player Trevor Booker.
Huppe's ultimate goal is to be set up on the streets of every city, so that basketball lovers around the world can shoot to their heart's content.
Paul Anton, a freshman at Boston University 12 years ago, and his brother often interacted through Snapchat, recording basketball jumpers. "That's how we had an interaction 1,000 miles apart, and it was this experience that gave me the idea to start Huupe." Anton said in an interview with SportTechie. Four years later, he went to the University of San Francisco to continue his studies.
Anton was born into a basketball family, and both parents were members of the college team. Initially, he and his friend, Lyth Saeed, the product's co-founder, were inspired to interact remotely with his brother to develop an app that helped people record footage in real time and across time and space.
In 2018, they released Real Shot, a basketball app that can experience augmented reality. Immerse yourself in and interact with basketball participants around the world by wearing AR glasses from brands like Microsoft (Halo Lens). All kinds of information such as hit rate and score will be fed back to the user's eyes through the app.
"Lyth told me that if we could put screens or pads on the backboard like Peloton and Mirror, we could really combine apps with basketball," Anton said. ”
In 2019, the team's challenge was to ensure that the screen was not destroyed by external forces when shooting and dunking. Anton discussed with the founders and finally decided to use NBA-grade tempered glass to cover the smart screen, which greatly improved the safety and reliability of smart backboards, but also greatly increased the cost.
Dan Hayes, CTO of Huupe, who graduated from the University of Madison with a computer science major, commented more scientifically: "Some NBA players have tried the Huupe product and think that the product itself is no different from traditional rebounding. Our improvements ensure that the screen and glass are not simply stitched, that is, when the force is transmitted to the backboard, it is absorbed by the backboard frame without causing damage to the screen. ”
Huupe staff will continue to verify the safety and crashworthiness of HD screens to ensure official delivery within 2023.
In Anton's view, their next step is to improve the shot tracking function of smart rebounds, which will also make this smart basket have new statistics and gamification functions. At present, Huupe can count the user's shooting data, track the user's shooting action, build a perfect shooting trajectory for the user, and can also display the hit rate and error rate of different positions on the court. In addition, Huupe has opened the same business as Peloton, users can access hundreds of professional guidance training sessions on the platform, and even apply for online coaching by trainers.
Smart rebounds essentially become displays, which means that users can use Huupe rebounds to browse YouTube and NBA live games while practicing shooting, and can also meet social attribute needs such as video chat with friends and remote PK. Practicing shooting while watching videos has become the biggest selling point of the product.
Since 2022, Huupe has embarked on a national tour to further test its working conditions. The trio traveled across the United States several times, reaching several cities, including Milwaukee and New York. The team recorded Huupe's nationwide tour and posted interactive videos on Instagram and Twitter, but the effect was not significant, Ins has only 39,000 followers, and attention and purchase intentions are extremely limited.
But Anton was still full of confidence, and the group continued to push Huupe to the streets of Los Angeles and New York for display. Anton said: "Wherever we put Huupe, it will quickly attract hundreds of people to gather. There were no announcements, flyers, no promotions, no so-called teasers and scripts, we simply asked people to test shots, and Huupe's charm was revealed. ”
Currently, Huupe offers a 60-inch backplane and a 72-inch adjustable backplane priced at $4,995 and $6,495, and the product is expected to be delivered by December 31, 2023.
Although the home fitness track is no longer popular, the Red Sea market for smart devices earlier has made a number of basketball equipment manufacturers red-eyed and joined in.
In 2020, Frank Sinopoli founded the brand Home Ballerz, claiming to build a Peloton-like home shooting machine. Daina Falk, daughter of famous NBA agent David Falk, who has held star resources such as Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing, is the co-founder of Home Ballerz.
Places where Peloton aligns include price and features. According to Sportico, a shooting machine with two baskets costs $1,500, plus a monthly online subscription. In terms of function, Home Ballerz also added a touchable electronic screen to the shooting machine, from which you can choose online opponents, including celebrities or professional players, and the game screen can also be uploaded to Ins, YouTube and other social media to attract interested users and potential audiences.
However, Home Ballerz's official Ins was suspended on March 9, 2022, and there are still users consulting about refunds in the comments, and the homepage of the official website is also marked with pre-order news before September 2022. Obviously, the company is no longer operating, and the exploration of smart home shooting machines has failed.
In China, there are still few companies involved in intelligent basketball equipment, and its main intelligent basketball equipment is also dominated by the ball machine, supplemented by mobile phone software for dynamic monitoring, intelligent remote control, data recording and team management and other functions. This technology is not new, and related products entered the market as early as 2014. Quasi-Sports, Spooaz, etc. are the earliest enterprises in China to develop intelligent basketball equipment.
Similar to the situation of Huupe, the high price of smart ball machines makes domestic basketball fans prohibitive, and the price of tens of thousands of yuan is also doomed to the development dilemma of intelligent equipment manufacturers in China. In addition, although the combination of software and hardware ecology helps to improve the added value of products and user retention rate of intelligent manufacturers, how to grasp product quality and break through the bottleneck of user growth will be a problem they need to solve after scale.
The bigger problem Huupe faces is that the product has not been delivered, and it is difficult for potential users to continue to buy it by word of mouth and lobbying. The word-of-mouth fermentation in the first time after the launch of the product may become a lifesaver for Huupe.
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