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September 26, 2005 - Dosho Design's Founder Wins Entrepreneur of the Year Award
August 1, 2005 - Dosho Granted Exclusive Rights to Market Newly Patented Fitness Technology
July 2005, Forbes Magazine - Victories in Capitalism
September 26, 2005 - Dosho Design's Founder Wins Entrepreneur of the Year Award
The founder of Dosho Design and inventor of the Bowflex is recognized.
Albany, CA - September 28, 2005 - Tessema Dosho Shifferaw, founder of Dosho Design, Inc. (DDI) was selected as the recipient of National Director's Award for Entrepreneurial Innovation, awarded by the US Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) on September 12, 2005.
This prestigious award honors individuals or organizations with an outstanding record of entrepreneurial innovation that demonstrates commercial utility, contributes to the public and private sector of the economy, and brings visibility to the national minority business enterprise community. MBDA granted this award for Shifferaw's invention of the revolutionary Bowflex exercise system and his creation of an exercise equipment line.
"Dosho is a true innovator", said Ron Langston, National Director MBDA. "His inventions revolutionized the fitness industry and continue to do so even today. Furthermore, it has made a tremendous contribution to the public and private sector of the economy".
Dosho Shifferaw an immigrant from Ethiopia, was elated. "I am honored to be selected for this prestigious award by the MBDA", says Shifferaw. "This is a story of the American dream come true". Shifferaw's father was a general in the army of the late Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia. A socialist revolution overthrew the emperor and stripped Shifferaw's family of nearly everything it owned. He came to America at age 17 with just $500 in his pocket and supported himself working as a cab driver.
While working on a student project at San Francisco City College, Dosho came up with the idea for the Bowflex exercise machine. He patented the concept and attempted to license the idea to fitness equipment manufacturers. Lacking vision, they all declined. He then wrote a business plan with help from the MBDA, and started marketing the product directly to consumers in the early 1980s. He led his company to a successful IPO, forming a public company called Direct Focus, Inc. (DFXI) with a market cap of over $1 billion. Millions of Bowflex units have been sold in the United State and abroad, and the brand is now owned and marketed by The Nautilus Group (NYSE:NLS). Dosho has 14 patents and 4 pending patents worldwide.
August 1, 2005 - Dosho Granted Exclusive Rights to Market Newly Patented Fitness Technology
Newly patented technology offers fitness solution for road warriors.
Albany, California - August 1, 2005 - Dosho Design, Inc. (DDI), the leader in innovative fitness equipment design and manufacturing, today announced that it has exclusive rights to market a new product based on a patent granted for travel fitness by the United States Patent and Trademark office.
Shifferaw has been granted U.S. patent number 6,921,354 for a portable exercise device that gives its users a full body workout. The technology, "exercise harness and method", has rugged nylon straps that insert into the hinge side of an open door and make it easy to exercise at home, office, or hotel room.
The invention has resulted in a cleverly designed mini-gym that is easy to carry and takes less than a minute to set up. The user simply inserts the straps in the door and uses the weight of his body as resistance for the exercises. It builds and strengthens muscles to sculpt legs, butt, abs, arms, back, shoulders, and chest. The user can change the resistance by leaning closer or farther from the door for a customized strength training workout.
The technology was developed and patented by Tessema D. Shifferaw, the inventor of Bowflex and an expert in fitness equipment design. Shifferaw has already been awarded 14 patents and has 4 pending patents world wide for fitness equipment. This patent is exclusively licensed to DDI for world wide marketing and distribution.
"I am from Ethiopia, and a majority of the people in third world countries cannot afford exercise equipment", says Shifferaw, founder and CEO of DDI. "I designed Jam Gym as a poor man¹s gym as it is small, inexpensive, and effective. But I have found that it also offers a great workout to executives who are on the road".
July 2005, Forbes Magazine - Victories in Capitalism
International - July, 2005 - As a budding industrial designer, Dosho Shifferaw, a young immigrant from Ethiopia transplanted to California's Bay Area, couldn't stop experimenting with his ideas. Working on the structure for an ergonomically correct chair he had drawn up, he tried bending a polymer rod into shape over his shoulder and invented an industry.
"The chair wasn't going anywhere, but I could feel my muscles burning," he says, after tugging and pulling on the steel rod. "I thought, wow,this is a great workout." With that, BowFlex was born, an exercise machine that uses rods, rather than weights, as resistance.
Even though Shifferaw was certain BowFlex was a terrific idea, he found no takers as he presented his device to different manufacturers in the early 1980s. Working as a cab driver to support himself, he was in no position to fund the plan on his own, and he was about to give up - until a friend suggested he contact the Minority Business Development Agnecy (MBDA). Representatives from the agency worked with Sifferaw and taught him what he needed to know about writing up a business plan, setting up a company and attracting investors. "That was the beginning of my dreams turning into reality," says Sifferaw. Today, BowFlex, Inc., which is now owned by The Nautilus Group, has sold more than $1 billion worth of rod-based exercise equipment.
All of which is just one more success story in the long and golden legacy of the Minority Buiness Development Agency. As part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the MBDA is an entrepreneurial organization serving entrepreneurs, and is committed to wealth creation in minority communities. "For minority entrepreneurs, we can make the difference between a dream that succeeds and a dream that turns to dust," says Ronald N. Langston, the agency's national director. "Our Mission could not be more important." Langston further notes from an MBDA-commissioned study by the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth that "the success or failure of minorit-owned businesses will increasingly drive the success or failure of the overal economy." In short, "As minority enterprises grow America," say Langston.
June 2005, The Washington Post - Importing Ingenuity
International - June, 2005 - In a Washington Post article printed on Sunday, June of 2005. The Washington Post features an article titled "Importing Ingenuity."
The 1974 revolution that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassi stranded this young Ethiopian in California, where he was studying industrial design and engineering.
He proved that he understood two American passions when he invented the Bowflex exercise machine and made a wild success of it by hawking it on TV.
Nov. 22, 2004, LA Times - Pocket Gyms Travels Light
Los Angeles, California, November 22, 2004 - Nothing beats real weight-lifting for keeping your muscles strong and shapely. But when life's commitments keep you away from the gym and regular strength workouts, a "pocket gym" can come in handy. Small, inexpensive and easily transportable, these clever products (Dosho JamGym™) use stretch cords, gravity and other methods to provide resistance to help you tone and strengthen.
