A George Costanza Magsafe Wallet
+ A Radical Breakthrough for SAFE WALLET ULTRA!!!!
As we get close to finalizing the specifications for the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA, and prepare to start the tooling process, I find myself becoming even more obsessed with studying the way people use Magsafe wallets with their smartphones. I was in a SAFEWAY recently, and I noticed a checkout clerk who was rocking his iPhone in his back pocket with a fat-ass (no pun intended) Magsafe Tri-Fold wallet attached. It was so thick, he couldn't seem to fit the whole shooting match in his rear pocket, so he just kind of had it sticking out, las seen in the image below.
I have been obsessed with studying the way people carry their wallets for decades now, and it never ceases to amaze me how they almost always overfill them.
You can think of the upcoming BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA as being the "INVERSE COSTANZA" exploding wallet, as it has a hard limit to how much you can carry in it.
Speaking of wallet capacity, I have some amazing news to share with you. Out of all the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet cases we have ever made for iPhone, as well as the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet MINI, some models had a capacity of 5 plastic cards, and the more recent could carry 6 cards, and one cash bill in its Secret Stash compartment.
Don't ask me how we figured it out, but the new BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA can features an inner capacity of 8 plastic cards, while only being 11.75MM thick, which is ridiculously thin, and this includes 2MM of space for containing the MagSafe Magnet array!!!!!, and you can also easily carry one more card Piggyback of the front of the ULTRA, so it will have a real world capacity of 9 cards. The BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA 3D printed prototype (pictured below) is holding/hiding/concealing securely 8 plastic cards, and 2 tri-folded cash bills, as well as having a Tesla NFC key card attached to its hollow core wallet door.
The BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA keeps blowing my mind with the number of useful innovations we have been able to add. For instance, we have a new feature that allows you to easily lock the door out at 75 degrees which is the perfect angle for watching video content in landscape, and when you rotate it 90 degrees clockwise, it stands up in portrait, all without the user having to do or adjust anything.
Also, if a customer wants to use the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA as a freestanding wallet, they can add a 10th card to the back outside of the ULTRA. This basically makes the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA a Ridge Wallet Killer, as it flawlessly does exactly what the Ridge pretends to do, but without the elastic bands that stretch out over time, and the metal plates that get all scratched up.
SPEAKING OF RIDGE WALLETS
I friend of mine I have known for a long time and I went out to lunch recently. I showed him one of the first prototype BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA models and he said "Man. That is so cool. I can't wait to get an ULTRA!!!" I asked him what he liked so much about the ULTRA and he responded, "I have a minimalist wallet, and I always forget to bring it with me, but I NEVER forget my phone. If I could simply attach my ULTRA to the back of my phone, I would NEVER forget to bring it with me." He showed me his wallet, which appears to be a Ridge knock-off and it's named HAYVENHURST".
Above and below are photos of my buddies HAYVENHURST wallet, an it's a thick boy. No wonder he never wants to carry it around with him as it's so big and thick and bulky. His wallet holds 9 cards, as seen below, and he also had 5 cash bills folded in half in the money clip as pictured below
The bottom line is Ridge and Ridge copycat wallets let people turn into walking bricks, but the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA does the exact opposite.
A few days ago, I had a breakthrough epiphany where I figured out how to successfully hold more cards in the ID vault section of the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA as discussed earlier in this story, without making the ULTRA any thicker. I mentioned to breakthrough to my buddy, and he got really excited! I was surprised and curious, so I asked him why he was so excited, and he said, it was because he liked to carry around his insurance card, so if the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet could hold 7 cards, instead of 6, he thought that was great news.
The most recent BulletTrain SAFE Wallet design is pictured below, and on the right side in the hollow core wallet door, it is designed to be able to hold 5 plastic cards, and one tri-folded cash bill. The new ID VAULT tray on the right was originally designed to be able to hold one plastic card, like an ID, with one try-folded cash bill behind it.
We left a little more room in that area so customers could also place an item on top of their ID, like a paper parking garage ticket. At the time, the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA was a total of 12MM thick, and the ID VAULT area was 2MM tall. Then I had the crazy epiphany, where I figure out how to perfectly be able to secure two cards on the right, along with a tri-folded cash bill. The method we came up with is not easy to explain in words, and I don't want to give too much away before me launch this new model, but suffice it to say, my plastic engineer and I figured out a method to be able to press fit in two cards on the left side in the ID VAULT area, on top of a trip-folded cash bill, or business card.
Then I kept thinking, "If we only add .5MM more of height to the ID VAULT area, which is on a half of a millimeter, which is about half as thick as a credit card, it would allow customers to hold 3 plastic cards in the same area, all secured in place by press fitting. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks!!!! At one point, I thought, maybe I would launch with a BulletTrain SAFE Wallet model that could hold 6 cards, then maybe a year later, I might launch a second model that could hold 8 cards. With this recent breakthrough, there will no longer be a need to ever have to launch a second model or SKU, as this puppy can easily hold 8-9 cards!!! So just imagine with the photo above, that a user could hold an ID with two plastic cards underneath it.
More importantly, a user will now be able to hold an Apple Find My tracker card in the ID TRAY, with two tri-folded cash bills behind it!!!! This is outrageously great news, and is a fundamental game changer for the BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA!!!
I launched my Kickstarter campaign for the first BulletTrain SAFE Wallet back in 2012 and raised just over $25K. A few months later, Ridge launched their first wallet on Kickstarter and raised $250K. Fast forward to today, and last year it's estimate Ridge sold $300 Million their good, clumsy wallets.
The fundamental difference between Ridge and BulletTrain is that over the past 14 years, I have had to try to keep up with Apple coming out with as many as 4 new models every year, which has been a logistical nightmare, while Ridge has NEVER had to update their fundamental model design. The BulletTrain SAFE Wallet ULTRA represents the 6th generation of SAFE WALLET, but the great news is that since we are only going to need to make one SKU moving forward, we can go after Ridge and Apple's super goofy Magsafe Wallet, which is a fundamental copy of our 2017 SAFE WALLET MINI—just with MagSafe magnets added. The future for BulletTrain is looking brighter than EVER, so stay tuned!!!!!
