Rhino Hide

If a shooter can’t get into a classroom, and they can't shoot or break through the walls, then they can't harm our kids. Based on our testing, shown below, a typical bullet can penetrate more than eight wall sections before the projectile is stopped. Stray bullets from police attempting to stop a shooter can also be dangerous to students and teachers. Our kids need a way to instantly shelter-in-place so they can be safe until the police arrive.

Rhino Hide - Developed to Save Lives

Rhino Hide is a two-part liquid that is poured into any wall and then hardens to become bulletproof!

Rhino Hide is a completely new category of products made from a two-part composite-reinforced liquid and filled with a special aggregate. The blend is poured into small holes at the top of any standard wall. Once the wall is filled, the liquid chemically cures in a few hours to a hard plastic consistency. The formulated composite in this new product makes the walls or structures they are filled with impervious to projectiles from small arms fire and even projectiles from extreme weather such as hurricanes or tornadoes.

We Blend Safety

Rhino Hide manufactures and sells a proprietary blend of 2-part polyurethane and cost-reducing aggregate made from recycled car tires. Car tires are one of the few materials that actually cost less than nothing. Tire stores must dispose of millions of tires per year and they are willing to pay to get rid of them!

• We offer 3 blends to meet various price points and strength needs.
• Rhino Hide includes an additive to improve flame resistance and reduce smoke in the case of a fire.
• “Part A” is red and “Part B” is yellow so when they are completely blended it makes Rhino Hide Orange to provide a visual cue that the product is completely blended.

Rhino Hide uses special poly-tube liners similar to the produce bags you put your tomatoes in at the grocery store. Each liner is inserted into the wall through a small hole at the top, and then filled with the liquid Rhino Hide. This protects the internal wall components and eliminates internal wall stresses caused by adhesion and slight shrinkage.

We offer Do-It-Yourself kits allowing homeowners to install Rhino Hide in their personal shelters. Small amounts can be mixed by hand with standard tools.

We also offer Industrial Installation Equipment for our large-scale Certified Installer Network. This allows Rhino Hide to be installed in huge building in a relatively short time and with a small crew.

Rhino Hide Sales and Marketing focuses on Certified Installers and Do-it- yourself (DIY) customers. We cultivate our contacts using Automated Digital Marketing Funnels and Trade-show or Home-Show Marketing. Customers in each channel will flow through the marketing process of awareness, interest, desire, and action. Qualified leads will be given to the sales group to close the sale and provide follow-up support.

Certified Installers: Rhino Hide has already began recruiting businesses that specialize in sheetrock, concrete, and insulation installations as well as security industry partners to become Certified Installers for our products. 

1. After our marketing has moved them into the sales funnel our automated website will guide each one through the onboarding process, systematically giving them the information they need to complete each section. We will also offer an account management team to monitor and nurture the onboarding process for each user and provide direct assistance anytime the user runs into hurdles. 
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3. Once certified, these installers will then be allowed to purchase equipment and supplies with exclusivity and discounted rates. Installers will then act as a customer service and sales arm for generating end-customer commercial and consumer sales as well as quality service.

DIY Customers:These customers include homeowners and individuals that buy product and install themselves. Rhino Hide will develop an automated digital marketing funnel as well as participate in home shows to generate new customers. 

Everything that our DIY customers need will be available online, from how-to videos to tools for calculating how much wall filler they will need. We will also have customer service representatives available to answer any questions, but by providing all-inclusive information we can give them the confidence they need to make the purchase and reduce the number of calls our customer support team receives.

Three Revenue Streams to Support Growth

• Includes forward-looking projections that cannot be guaranteed

1 - Installation Equipment

• Metered mixing pumping equipment

• Tank heaters, stirrers, handling equipment
• Training and certification included
• Estimated $8M equipment revenue in the first 2 years (not guaranteed): Our goal is to get 300 companies signed up to be certified installers within the first two years after sales begin. Each certified installer must purchase at least one of our computer-controlled mixing pumps. Each mixing pump costs $20,000. Even if we only reach half of our goal that equates to $4M of revenue. Each unit costs about $4200 to build. We feel confident that we can sign up 300 certified installers. In our first year we signed up 193 without marketing. Once we are ready to sell product we intend to market the installer opportunity to companies with similar expertise such as spray foam, concrete, and sheetrock companies. These projections cannot be guaranteed.

2 - Bulletproof Wall Fillers

• 330 gallon, 55 gallon, 5 gallon
• 3 blends available
• Part A and Part B for each
• Estimated $18M wall-filler revenue in the first 2 years: We expect sales to start slow in the first year, as we bring on certified installers and they become trained and ramp up their operations. According to our estimated trajectory of onboarding, we expect to be able to bring on between 150 and 300 Certified Installers by the end of the second year after sales begin. These installers will come on gradually over the first two years. On average we expect each will sell around 600 gallons per year. 150 Installers X 600 gallons X $35 per gallon X 2 years = $6.3M (Rhino Hide costs $12 per gallon to manufacture).This $4M in revenue is based on 120 active installers performing an average of $35,000 within the first two years. This equates to about 1000 gallons of product per Installer.

3 - Consumable

• Disposable mixing nozzles and elements
• Protective poly wall liners
• Equipment parts
• Estimated $60,000 consumable revenue in the first 2 year: Consumables include the disposable mixing elements, liner bags and replacement parts for the pumping equipment. With 150 – 300 computer-controlled pumps in the field we expect each installer to easily consume well over $400 worth of consumable per year, if each one installed 1 average size school per quarter. The cost of these parts it typically 25% of the retail price so the cost of $60,000 in sales would be about $15,000. The $60,000 is based on an estimated average installation of only 4 average-sized classrooms for each of 150 installers.

More Sense for Less Cents

Time to Shelter: Our competitor's shelters are constructed in the corner of the classroom and hold a limited number of kids. Moving kids from their seats to the shelter wastes valuable time. With Rhino Hide, the classroom is the shelter. Kids are safe at their desks until the police arrive.

Retrofittable: Other bulletproof wall solutions require the wall to be removed and reconstructed using hard-to-work-with materials. Some competitive products are attached to the outside of the wall. Rhino Hide just pours into the existing walls and hardens to become bulletproof.

Use of Space: Setting up a standalone shelter in the corner of each classroom uses a lot of valuable space and will only protect a limited number of students. With Rhino Hide, the entire classroom, with the maximum capacity of students, is protected without taking up any extra space.

Cost: One of our competitors recently installed its product in an Oklahoma school with just 6 classrooms. The total cost was a whopping $400,000 and took several weeks for the process. Rhino Hide could have been installed for less than $150,000 in a fraction of the time.

Schools are Seeing an Increase to their Security Budget

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are over 138,000 schools in the United States. K-12 enrollment is about 55 million students per year, with an average class size of 21 students. At an average cost of $15,000 to secure a classroom with Rhino Hide, we can estimate that the total available market size is $39 billion to secure approximately 2.6 million classrooms.

School safety budgets are getting a boost. A March press release from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations touted $2.3 billion in increases for school safety this year alone, with funds coming through programs at the Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services departments. Local funding, which makes up about half of the overall educational budget, is also being increased.

We've Already Raised Over $450,000

Since the start of the Rhino Hide business on June 13, 2018, we have made a tremendous amount of progress in a very short time.

In the last year we have:

• Entered into negotiation with large manufactures for deals that would be worth over $7M

• Developed and successfully live-fire tested the Rhino Hide bulletproof wall filler product. Certified testing for flame, insulation, and soundproofing is ongoing.
• Filed a provisional patent for our bulletproof wall filler. Several other patents are currently being pursued.
• Raised over $450,000 in our seed round and received significant over-subscriptions after the initial close.
• Constructed a small scale mixing plant capable of manufacturing $60,000 worth of product per day for testing and low level production.
• Designed computer-controlled mixing equipment for our certified installers. Currently building prototypes to be tested by early adopters.
• Recruited over 200 businesses that hope to be certified installers. The process of vetting and onboarding them will begin when we are ready to start selling.

We Love it Here
Rhino Hide currently operates in a rented 3,000 square foot building located in Sandpoint, Idaho. We have set up prototype and low-level production equipment here and have enough space for up to about 10 team members, as well as a small amount of inventory.

In the near future we intend to relocate to a larger facility nearby and eventually manufacture our products in-house.

North Idaho is an exceptional place to live and grow a new manufacturing business. Work ethic is abundant, and a multi-disciplined workforce is plentiful in the northwest. The Sandpoint area has been deemed a federal opportunity zone which is a designated low-income census tract, eligible to receive private investments through Opportunity Funds as well as federal tax incentives. In addition, Rhino Hide has been offered local tax deferrals for the first 5 years of sales.

Our long-term plans are to manufacture in Sandpoint, but our initial manufacturing will take place at American Colors, a toll manufacturer located in Sandusky, Michigan with alternate manufacturing locations in Tennessee and Texas. They will be able to warehouse and manufacture product in each location and can drop-ship under our branding directly to our customers throughout the United States, until we are ready to transition to in-house production.

We Already Have Recruited Over 200 Certified Installers

We have recruited over 200 companies to be our Certified Installers, just in the last year. We will be going through these candidates to make sure they will be exceptional partners. Within two years after sales begin, our goal is to have at least 300 fully vetted Certified Installers installing Rhino Hide all over the United States.

If each Installer only did 1 average install per year: 

• Rhino Hide's gross revenue would be $75M per year: There are 140,000 schools in the US, educating a total of 55M students. The average class size is 21 students in 2.6M classrooms. Based on that A typical school has about 18 classrooms. It costs about $15,000 to protect one classroom, therefore, the average-sized install would cost $270,000. 300 installers performing one $270,000 install per year = $81M (Rhino Hide costs $12 per gallon to manufacture)

• Resulting in approximately 300 jobs
  

If each installer did 4 average installs per year:

• Rhino Hide's gross revenue would be $300M per year: There are 140,000 schools in the US, educating a total of 55M students. The average class size is 21 students in 2.6M classrooms. Based on that A typical school has about 18 classrooms. It costs about $15,000 to protect one classroom, therefore, the average-sized install would cost $270,000. 300 installers times 4 $270,000 installs per year = $324M (Rhino Hide costs $12 per gallon to manufacture)

• Resulting in approximately 800 Jobs

What Your Investment Pays For

We have raised $450,000 of investment so far using equity crowdfunding. We plan to raise between $250,000 and $615,000 more to get us to sales.

The funds we raise on WeFunder will be used for the following:

• Secure the IP we have developed over the first year of development
• Independently test our 3 product blends for UL certification
• Develop our website to include Certified Installer portals
• Develop video training assets
• Construct molds for the plastics used in our pumping equipment
• Build chemical and installation equipment inventory
• Begin the online and trade-show marketing efforts
• Facilities and operations

This is Personal

"My name is Jason Giddings. I am an aerospace engineer, and I have spent the last 25 years of my life designing and manufacturing product ideas for other people and businesses. I have had a lot of experience with my own start-up companies as well as others.

I invented Rhino Hide because I have a daughter in high school. I see that school shootings are a huge problem in the US. It is sickening to imagine this sort of violence occurring at her school. Unfortunately, the topic of school shootings has become a political tool. It is frustrating to see politicians on both sides using this, to further their own agendas. There is a solution and it is simple. Keep the bad folks out, and make it impossible to do any harm."

- Jason Giddings

CEO

We Plan to Make Schools Safer - You Can Help

Schools safety is a massive and rising market with tremendous potential, but more importantly, I believe we can make a meaningful contribution to end the school shooting issue now. Those of us who have the experience and the drive to develop products and businesses can use our skills to do some good.