Queensland startup ANTI is creating a snowsports helmet that’s as comfortable as a beanie

It looks like a soft beanie and has the strength of a helmet: budding startup ANTI. is creating a snow sports product that sounds so radical on paper, yet it was just a series of home experiments with non-Newtonian materials helped form the idea that a beanie could be created to maximise comfort and safety.

Medical engineering student and cofounder of ANTI., Rob Joseph, spoke to Bullpen about what drove this idea.

Bullpen: I’ve seen your pitch video, the beanie sounds so radical on first impression?

It stems from my experience; being a Queenslander I hadn’t been to the snow a lot. Pretty much all my life I have been wearing helmets, for wakeboarding, motorbikes, push bikes, and I never had a problem with wearing helmets until I got to the snow and I found myself taking it off frequently. I found it really annoying whilst wearing the added gear such as gloves, face mask, beanie, ear muffs and goggles.

Yet as someone who is a semi-intelligent person it’s a foolish choice not wearing a helmet. But we realised it’s something that people do a lot, and we figured we saw everyone who didn’t wear a helmet, and even some who did, wore a beanie.

What goes inside the beanie, is it patented design or an application of utilising known materials in a new fashion?

It’s using known materials but the way we’ve used them is different to how anyone else has done it, and that’s our intellectual property. Read more

Clint Vojdinoski - Startup Daily - 15 June 2018