MHC alumnus makes it big

By Tim Kalinowski on November 18, 2017.

tkalinowski@medicinehatnews.com @MHNTimKal

Medicine Hat College alumnus Victoria Brilz spoke in the MHC Makerspace Friday to help mark Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Brilz co-founded Dynastream Innovations, a sports technology company, which became the first to sign a co-branding deal with Nike for its revolutionary footpod.

“You don’t knock at the front door of a company like Nike and just get in,” explained Brilz. “We went to a number of tradeshows, and we built relationships up with people in the industry, and it was actually someone who was doing some work for Nike who was inspired by what we were doing and set up a meeting.

“We convinced Nike we had the fortitude and the ability to take this prototype and get it tooled and developed into a product to market.”

The first footpod technology prototype was cumbersome and had problems with portability, admitted Brilz. This problem nearly nixed the deal with Nike, but Brilz’s team found an ingenious workaround which has become the market standard for many sports technologies today: Turning a steel watch bezel into a wireless antenna.

“That had never been done before, and it was another first for us,” Brilz told the attentive audience at MHC. “It was about thinking outside the box and came from a place of desperation. It was this place of desperation which turned into an opportunity.”

The footpod became an enormous marketing success for Dynastream. Brilz gave some insight into how Dynastream was able to remain in the marketing driver’s seat, despite working with an industry heavyweight like Nike.

“When you are making deals and you come to a big company, and you think we are going to have it made in the shade,” said Brilz. “There are actually two ways to look at it: You have this tiger by the tail and you are afraid you are going to get eaten by it. And they can, because they are so big. On the other hand, you have this tiger by the tail which can really help you take this idea forward. You have to know what is right for your company and what is right for your team.”

Brilz eventually sold Dynastream for $36 million to another industry heavyweight, Garmin. A few years later, she went on to co-found her new sports technology company 4iiii Innovations Inc., which has been steadily gaining an international marketshare for it its more recent innovations. Brilz said her success has turned her hometown of Cochrane into a technology hub of sorts, and felt Medicine Hat has the same potential.

“There are probably things that are going on in Medicine Hat that can be a (technology) nexus,” she said. “It’s all about clustering. It’s not about companies being the only one, it’s about bringing more companies of likemindedness together so you can share resources and networks.”

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