You know I love to find inspiring business models to share with you. And this has to be one of them…. MADD, best known (if you have any children age 7 – 12 right now) as the makers of the MGP Scooters. You know, those colourful things that have condemned all other, perfectly good working scooters to the back of the shed or onto TradeMe. Yes, every child has to have an MGP scooter and no other scooter will do. The wild phenomenon that is MGP only became clear to me when my 9 year old son George insisted that he use his Christmas money to buy a new scooter. There was some resistence from me as he already had a perfectly good scooter which he hardly used. He didn’t even seem interested in scooters, hadn’t used his for months. But he was adamant. He HAD to have an MGP. Life depended on it. Only when he scootered proudly into school with it did I realise how many other MGPs were in the playground. I counted 30 lined up in the new scooter stand (which only seemed to have appeared in order to house the rapidly multiplying number of MGPs hitting the school premises all of a sudden). From then on everywhere I looked there were colourful MGP scooters. 15 outside the dairy, 9 counted with country kid riders when we went over to our holiday home in Martinborough. MGP scooters taking over the world.
But it didn’t stop there. Soon George was talking about wanting to customise his scooter with different handlebars and wheels. 
He started learning tricks on his scooter and watching videos on You Tube. It seems MGP are seriously cool. I began to realise something very special was happening from a business perspective here so I did a little digging. When I googled MGP Scooters, the full scope of this great business became apparent. We are talking cool gear – shoes, t-shirts, hoodies the like. We’re talking merchandising onto kids’ collectable toys… mini collectible scooters, ramps etc.
MGP stands for Madd Gear Pro… so I went to the maddgear.com website to discover even more to marvel at. MGP has teams competing in and are sponsoring major scooter events all over the globe . The business was started ten years ago by a guy called Mike Horne who had a vision to “create an Aussie Brand for Aussie kids”. It seems he’s done a lot more than that. He’s created a brand phenomenon for kids all over. A company that is living its brand, loving its sport, getting involved in the community, taking its Pro Team on tour to ensure regional fans get to be a part of it.
It’s example to me of a business doing everything right… and a business owner clearly truly on purpose, driving a sporting culture with his MADD enthusiasm. Mr MADD, if this blog happens to find its way to you, I’d love to interview you to find out more about your journey and your vision for this rocking company. Thanks for the inspiration! And in the meantime, I guess I know what will be on a 9 year old’s Santa list this Christmas…
Check out www.maddgear.com