Guest Bio: Brad Hunter, iWalk Inventor

Brad Hunter used his self-taught engineering, design and manufacturing background to make a fortune by selling his high-performance bike parts business to mega-sports brand Easton Sports.

But it was a broken ankle that set the stage for the next chapter of his life.  

The story begins with a Canadian farmer who broke his foot leaving him unable to work the crops on crutches.  Never was the axiom, "necessity being the mother of invention" been so accurate as to describe what the farmer did next -- he created what looks like a pirate’s peg leg that he attached to just below the knee of his injured limb. Suddenly, he was hands free and able to tend to his farm again.

Sensing he was on to something, he assembled a group of investors with the hope of mass manufacturing the product.  However, he lacked the business/design/engineering/manufacturing savvy to take it to the next level so the "biz" languished.  

Fast forward a decade and Brad breaks his ankle and was desperate to find an alternative to crutches.  His Internet search landed him on the farmer's invention. He flew to Canada to learn more and ended up buying 50% of the company.  

Then, he went to work.  He applied all he learned from the bike parts biz to his new passion.  He spent the next decade redesigning and re-engineering the product and enlisted the Motion Analysis Research Center at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, Calif. to perfect the product.  He secured a Chinese company to manufacture the new and improved product and opened an assembly plant in Garden Grove.  

The result is the iWalk 2.0, which has earned national and international awards including the prestigious I-Novo 

 Award for “best design” in 2016, which was presented recently in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Fans of the iWalk 2.0 include actor Harrison Ford and sports stars like track & field Olympic medalist Ronald Forbes.