SportsBiz Spotlight | OKKULO

Edition 17 of the SportsBiz Spotlight sees us sit down with Mel O’Connor, CEO of OKKULO to learn all about what they do!

What does OKKULO do and when was it founded?

OKKULO is truly unique. We use light to improve an athlete’s performance above and beyond with significant improvements. We’ve opened a door to a new way of training by making the athletes move faster and see quicker.  We actually slow their game down.

Our motto is “see quicker, perform better.” We’re also using the terms “evolution of motion” and “the economy of movement”, and we’re aiming to recode the athlete.

The reason I say that is because when the athlete goes into OKKULO,  whether it is an outfield player, goalkeeper or baseball player we try to work with the movements that they do in their specific sport, and by manipulating the light levels, they have to adapt and every time they adapt to those differing light levels, the body moves differently, it finds it’s economy, it moves from A to B quicker to accommodate for the visual delay. Then when they now go into their usual game at a normal light level, they have a double effect of this new quicker movement and the faster visual system.

The idea of OKKULO was two decades in the making, but we set up in 2019 as a business. We’ve got a strong team, fantastic investors, a great sales team and people from high tech companies who are involved in introducing technology into sport, so we really do have a fantastic team that can execute the product.

What is the main purpose of the organisation?

We want to improve every athlete in every sport, from grassroots to elite level, and that is important for me. I want to expose people to OKKULO so they can understand what they can achieve and take their performance to a new level.

If failure wasn’t a possibility, what would your biggest ambition be for OKKULO?

I know what OKKULO can do, I see it day in and day out with all the changes to the athletes who have been in the system. The sky is the limit. The system is so adaptable that it could be small enough to house one athlete or it can be as big as a full size football pitch, which would be the most ideal outcome because you get to replicate the actual game in OKKULO. You get all of those movements from every situation and position, and that’s something I would like to see in the sporting world and see that operated at every club. We see OKKULO being used at least 20 percent of the time in every training ground.

From the studies we have been doing over the last two years, there’s something really exciting further down the line that will open the doors to something even more profound. In the future OKKULO will also link into the health and wellbeing industry with a subscription model on an app available for every household, school, gym and at that point OKKULO will be for everybody and not just for athletes.

Who would your dream client be?

OKKULO is built with technicians and engineers from the northeast, so we try to make it as much as a north east product as possible because we are proud of our roots. The logo is black, white and grey for that main reason, and if I can have any client, especially now with all eyes of the world on Newcastle United, it’s a perfect scenario. For me as a fan it would be a dream to operate and have a system in place at the club. But also, the US is big as well in the strategy of the business, so getting a key client there in the baseball sector, like the LA Dodgers would hugely help with the American strategy.”

What would you say OKKULO’s USP is?

We are super unique in the way that we are the first and only company to use this system as a training tool to improve the athletes above and beyond, making them faster and evolving their movement significantly, whilst also allowing the athlete to enjoy the process. OKKULO is live and so very real.  The athletes can feel it and see the benefits within the first session.

How many people work at OKKULO and in what capacity?

There’s myself as the CEO, then we have a financial director, a head of business and partnership development, a sports scientist and coach, a sales agent in Santa Monica in America, and we have a strategist in the US. We’re about to take on a strategist in the UK, so we have about seven people.

Who are your usual clients?

We’ve worked with an elite level club in the Greater Manchester area to carry out one of our biggest studies alongside Manchester Metropolitan University and Team GB baseball.

With those studies, we got so much data and we’re about to start working with a major global cooperation in Santa Monica in and several MLB teams have asked to try OKKULO, so having the power of them behind us will be absolutely fantastic.

How can people connect with OKKULO? What’s your website and socials? 

You can check out our website www.okkulo.com and we’re also on Instagram and Twitter.