CHINA> Profiles
Heads up on bike safety
By Patrick Whiteley (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-05 12:57

"If I were a businessman, I'd keep this idea under my hat, start my own brand, work up the ads, finance a good business plan, and make a billion yuan overnight," he says.

"All it would be one guilt-inducing television advertisement, and every mother in China would be buying a helmet.

"They only have one child. Show them what brain damage looks like and sales would go through the roof.

"It was tempting. But I'd rather just see the helmets on Chinese heads.

Scott started buying and selling bike helmets on Jiangnan University campus last month and is selling them for 10 yuan each, which is about cost price.

"I can't believe that these helmets are made in China, but shipped to America and Europe while the Chinese ignore the largest market in the world.

"I'm practically giving them away, but that's what it will take to get this going. I've already ordered another 100."

Scott hopes to create a bicycle safety culture from scratches and believes it will catch on.

"If I can keep this up for 10 months, there will be a thousand helmets on this campus, and students will no longer feel like they stand out from the crowd if they wear one, which at the moment is the major sticking point with them."

In fact, selling the first 100 helmets has proved there is interest in bicycle safety despite warnings from his students that his plan was doomed to fail.

"They all told me that I couldn't sell any helmets to students, that nobody would wear them, that they didn't think they were necessary, that they didn't like them," he says.

"So this is totally new. I've been trying to get attention for the very idea, and I've been hoping that the administration of this university would wake up and take notice.

"I'm sure they will all get on board once they are presented with the idea. But right now... It's just me. That's because I'm just getting started and the very idea is strange and new here."

But it is not just university students buying the idea. Scott has also reached company executives, who also happen to be mothers. "I told them about my helmet campaign and accidentally sold three helmets. I would have sold four, but one of the mothers didn't have a bike."