Editor’s notice: This is an expanded excerpt from the quilt story on Lopes Live Labs within the August 2021 concern of GCU Magazine. To view the digital model of the journal, click on right here.
Story by Rick Vacek
Photos by Ralph Freso
GCU Magazine
Grand Canyon University college students can do greater than get invaluable expertise within the Lopes Live Labs. They even can begin a enterprise – after which get assist with it – whereas on campus.
That’s what Weston Smith did in 2017 when he created Lux Longboards in his GCU residence corridor room. He had grown up in a home on a mud street in Flagstaff and by no means tried skateboarding till his freshman 12 months on campus and waited till he was a sophomore to buy his first electrical longboard on a whim.
“It completely transformed how I got around campus,” he stated. “I had so many students stop me and say they want one – that sparked my entrepreneurial instincts.”
So he purchased extra longboards and began renting them, then grew to become one of many first tenants of Canyon Ventures when it opened in August 2019. He has continued to arrange store there since he graduated in April 2020.
Lux is a deluxe instance of GCU’s col-LAB-oration.
He has engineering and advertising and marketing college students working for him full time. Mechanical engineering college students helped him design the boards.
He enlisted the assistance of a graphic design pupil to create the sharp-looking Lux brand.
He additionally consulted professors within the College of Science, Engineering and Technology and the Colangelo College of Business.
Canyon Promotions, one other GCU enterprise that’s a Lopes Live Lab, made T-shirts for him and created the design and protecting pores and skin for the underside of his boards. He collaborates with the Lope Shop to provide arriving college students a take a look at his boards throughout Welcome Week actions.
Canyon Ventures performs a key position. Director Robert Vera helped Smith create a marketing strategy and pilot applications and hook up with college students. Kevin Youngblood of Youngblood Works mentored him. Corey Frank, CEO of Branch 49, helped him create a name script and had his workforce go on the decision.
Smith even has his personal media workforce.
“I think he’s shown that you can take your education, wrap it around an idea, create a company, grow a company and create a career for yourself,” said Vera, who owns two Lux Longboards and plans to buy another. “Wes has engaged the spectrum of GCU. We recently had a teachers’ camp here, and most of the people wanted to talk to Wes. They were really intrigued by what he has created.”
The key creation by Smith was the ultra-flexible battery pack that sits in a specifically designed indentation within the backside of the board. He started his enterprise by renting boards, and what he was procuring couldn’t stand as much as vibrations.
“I had to find a solution,” he stated. “It’s the same battery technology found in Tesla cars. They’re dense. They have a really dense capacity for energy. They’re not much heavier, but they’re lithium ion. Teslas have thousands of those on the bottom, which creates a low center of gravity – that’s why Tesla has such good safety ratings.”
Though Smith’s longboards have 4 speeds as much as 22 mph, he contends that they’re simpler to experience than regular skateboards.
“When I thought about it at first, I thought about flipping out and falling on my back,” he stated. “But on an electric longboard, you have stability. You can actually pull back the brake, or you can step on it and the board won’t move. You never have to shift your weight off the board. At all times, your feet are on the board.”
Other attention-grabbing tidbits about Smith:
- He is one in every of 5 kids, and all of their first names begin with “W.” His sister Willow additionally attended GCU.
- You invariably will discover him carrying a Lux Longboards T-shirt in his work space. He owns seven of them. “If you ask my girlfriend,” he stated, “she probably thinks these are the only shirts I own.”
- He did an unique collaboration with musician Mick Fleetwood and gave him a Lux Longboard not lengthy after the TikTookay video with Fleetwood driving a board went viral.
Smith’s many collaborations inside Canyon Ventures have been much more important.
“I think that speaks to the value of what we have here,” Vera stated. “There’s a collaborative community. Wes has done a really good job of building relationships with everybody here.”
Even his schooling is collaborative. Starting Lux impressed Smith, a mechanical engineering expertise main at GCU, to pursue an MBA.
“I had a really unique education because I was a STEM major who was dipping into the business side of things,” he stated.
Students can get entangled in different GCU companies as properly.
They play a key position within the operation of the campus espresso outlets, GCBC, which has 5 student-run groups: Research and Development, Promo, Catering, Social Media and Company Culture.
They present brainstorming, content material creation, overview/approvals and venture administration for the Student Ad Agency. And they’ll have enter in addition to study at Canyon Promotions, which this 12 months will supply college students a brand new Printing Live program that features classroom work and subject journeys that train them about printing strategies. Students will obtain a certificates upon completion of the eight periods.
“We believe this is a great opportunity for marketing and design students to learn more about how their designs will come to life, what limitations there could be, and show them exciting samples and real-world applications,” stated Renate Spilger, Canyon Enterprise Division Manager.
Senior author Mike Kilen contributed to this report.
Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or [email protected].
****
Related content material:
GCU Magazine: Creative sparks fly in hands-on Lopes Live Labs
GCU Magazine: Students dissect science in high-tech heaven