October 2010 Newsletter

October 12, 2010

Greetings from the LucidLights team! It’s time to get everyone up to date with news about LucidLights and LucidBrakes, so let’s get caught up.

Slow But Steady

As we all know, the current state of the economy is making a lot of business activities challenging. There are good signs that things are improving though, and we're very hopeful that big events for all of us are just around the corner. We want to thank you all for your patience, support, and understanding as we continue on with our "two steps forward, zero steps back" continuing progress.

As you'll read below, the exciting news is we have a lot of people who are ready to buy LucidBrakes, as soon as we can get them on the market. Now, it's been suggested by several people that perhaps we should get a large capital loan to take that final leap into production. We could do that, but if anything were to snag in the process causing any delays at all, we'd be risking everything and would likely not be able to recover. Instead, we've chosen to move forward only as we can, when we can, and to continue to be ever more prepared for the big step into production. Behind the scenes we've continued to make great progress - slowly and steadily. We are getting there, and we will achieve our goals!

So, Who Wants a LucidBrake?

The only public mention of LucidBrake continues to be our one and only 30-second video clip on Youtube. (If you haven't seen it, please take a look at LucidBrake.com) People continue to write in or call to have their names put on our list so they can be notified just as soon as LucidBrakes are available for purchase. The count, as of last check earlier today, is 1,007 (doubled since the last newsletter.) In addition, we've been contacted by several companies interested in wholesale quantities so they can add LucidBrakes to their product line. These product lines have included high-end 3-wheeled bicycles, gasoline power assisted bicycles, electric power assisted bicycles, human powered pizza delivery vehicles, pedal-powered "cabs", a fast-growing bicycle short-term rental organization, an advertising firm, and others.

Here's a quick example from one CEO:

We would like to equip our motorized bikes, trikes & quads with your brake lights. How do we buy them?

Several bicycle clubs and organizations have contacted us. Here's a sample:

We have a bike club of about 100 members. We'd like to buy at least 15 when we can, and maybe more after that.

It's been very encouraging that many people enthusiastically want to help sell and promote LucidBrakes:

I live in Redmond - the "Bicycle Capital of the North West"

I am an avid cyclist and regularly ride with both clubs, organized races and on congested trails where there are literally thousands of bikers that would benefit from your products.

I am seriously interested in becoming a distributor lucid lights. I can get you into the bikeshops, retail stores, cycle clubs etc

Most of all, I can get you exposure in this area. I can even get your product featured and used in large events such as STP (Seattle to Portland)

One interesting call came in this summer from a "biker" in California. His group of about 70 owners of 1912 Harley Davidson motorcycles were in need of brake lights before their September cross-country ride. (Note that they didn't make brake lights in 1912!) These first-generation motorcycles don't go any faster than today's faster bicycles, but their back-roads plans took them through several states with mandatory brake light laws. They have more trips in the planning and are eager to buy LucidBrakes as soon as they become available.

Progress Report

Here's a list of some of our forward steps since our last newsletter.

LucidLights.com: With patience and persistence, and at a grand total cost of something like $10, we finally acquired the Internet domain LucidLights.com which was owned by a European gaming company for a long time. We're very glad to report we now have LucidLights.com, in addition to LucidLights.net and LucidBrake.com among our company's domains. From here on, LucidLights.com is the main domain for our branding strategy. As we ramp up production and sales, people will be able to find us much more easily.

Membership units: Some people have asked about membership units in LucidLights vs. LucidBrake. Rest assured they are one and the same. LucidBrake is the product we consider to be the lowest hanging fruit, as you'll read about shortly, so our plans are to get it on the market first, but LucidBrake is completely part of the LucidLights company. We have membership units only for LucidLights, LLC - and as any or all of our products reach profitability, the dividends will be dispersed for everyone in the LucidLights "family". (Note we have several other very viable products on the drawing board, such as LucidFlare for automobile safety and even LucidScare, the world's best Pumpkin Light, but these will be pursued only when the time is right.)

Circuit Board Redesign: The original LucidBrake prototype was simply a repackaged LucidLight unit. Instead of a handle, the board was mounted in a package suitable for attaching to a bicycle seat post and the software was adjusted for the new purpose. In recent times the LucidBrake board has evolved into a smaller, light-weight octagonal shaped board, the same shape as a stop sign, and less than 3 inches from edge to edge. With eight state-of-the-art surface-mount ultra-bright LEDs mounted on the corners and all the other chips of surface mount design too, the board is really slick and the brake light is very bright. It's aerodynamic and much lighter in weight (every gram is important for many bicyclists), and will be much more cost-effective for final manufacturing. The same accelerometer chip as used in many Android phones was selected for this newest design, and many other technical improvements were made.

Provisional Patent: As hinted at in the last newsletter, a new algorithm has been implemented for detecting braking that opens the door to many new applications. A provisional patent application was submitted. Without going into all the details, the brake light can decipher the difference between rotation and true linear deceleration. This means, for example, that the brake light can be mounted on a helmet, and braking action is detected and signaled when deceleration happens, and not when the user rotates his or her head. There are many, many other unique applications possible as a result of this idea, too many to cover here. Just one example for now - Recall the Harley Davidson bikers mentioned above? How many Harley enthusiasts would pay for a leather jacket with LEDs sewn into their back spelling out "Harley Davidson" - letters that glow dimly but then light up brightly as a built-in brake light? (As a side note, the market for ANY Harley Davidson paraphernalia is huge!)

Funding Strategy

Capital investment continues to arrive, although much slower due to the economic conditions. Rather than put tons of time and effort into conventional capital raising efforts, we are committed to raising the rest of the required capital ourselves if need be. Although we still have a ways to go, these efforts are starting to pay off, and we hope to be able to apply the incoming funds into a LucidBrake production run soon. Cheer us on, check out what we're working on, and as always, be sure to let us know if you want to increase your investment, or if anyone you can introduce us to would like to invest as we get closer to production. Also, check out our projects as listed here. We have several irons in the fire, and several of these efforts are expanding fast:

Empowered Self-Publishing, is a recently launched class we created to educate authors with ALL the details of publishing they should know before they proceed with editing, cover design, printing, publishing, and marketing their book. This class can save the typical author thousands of dollars in unexpected or not-explained-to-them costs, and enables them to choose the absolute best path to take to get their particular book into the hands of readers. If you or anyone you know has a book in them, or about ready to go, this class provides an excellent way to proceed. Check it out at Getting-Published.com

Secrets To Creating Passive Income, coauthored by EJ Thornton and John Clark Craig. In July the sales of our book suddenly zoomed, literally over night! We had no idea why at first, but soon learned that our book had been suggested in an article titled "What Rich Women Know" in the July edition of Essence magazine, a publication with over a million subscribers. You can read more about this, and see the magazine's cover too, at Passivillionaire.com Our book can be ordered on Amazon.com.

Advanced Book Marketing, by EJ Thornton. EJ continues to publish books for authors with the intention of "making the world a better place". Recently, sales of Kindle eBooks has begun to outpace the sale of paperbacks, so we're aggressively leading the movement into this part of the publishing phenomenon.

Android Cell Phones. John still has plans to put the "Droid" phones to good use for marketing and promotion of LucidBrakes. Our Droids have also been great for showing people the LucidBrake video clip on Youtube. Recently, John's Droid was featured in a very interesting video as described next.

GE ECO-magination Challenge. Recently John entered two submissions into the big GE sponsored contest seeking creative ideas for helping the world with it's green energy and power grid goals. The prizes to be awarded late in October total $200 million, and there were only 3,000+ entries in the contest, many of which were unrealistic or lacking in other ways. Winning anything is a long shot, but John likes the odds! Please take a look at his entries, both of which include short video clips to explain them visually. John would love to receive any comments. Note that much of the same circuitry as used in LucidLights and LucidBrake are in these two inventions, just put to a much different use...
http://bit.ly/biyFJT
http://bit.ly/bfFPXW

Rocky Mountain Writer's Summit. Last year's event was a big hit, and this year's repeat is going to be even better! We are seeking bigger corporate sponsors this year, stepping everything up a notch. Most of the presenters and participating publishing service providers have eagerly agreed to being there again this year. LucidLights and LucidBrake will have a presence as corporate sponsors, helping to raise awareness and to increase our branding. Last year we provided the Food Bank of the Rockies with over 3,000 meals for those in need, and this year we hope to help even more.

Thank You!

With gratitude we thank you all for being a part of the LucidLights family, whether as an investment partner or as an interested party.

-John & EJ

John 720-879-3493, john@LucidLights.com
EJ 720-879-3495, ej@LucidLights.com