In this sometimes bizarre microcap world we exist in, we’re often presented with ideas and plans that, at first glance, look like craziness.
One of those, dropped on the market several years ago, was a company called Drone Delivery Canada (FLT.C). At the time, I talked to Richard Buzbuzian about his company and, though I like drones in general and thought he put up a spirited defense of his desire to use drones to deliver goods in Canada’s frozen north, I figured too much tech had to advance too quickly, and laws needed rethinking, and competitors would be coming in swinging, so I gave it a pass.
Today, even accounting for a 50% shave from the high of early 2018, FLT is a $170 million company. It’s not delivering me couches or fetching my coffee, but it’s working with Air Canada and has commercial operations centres in multiple provinces and deals with respectable partners and I consider it a success.
So when Buzbuzian came looking for me to talk about American Aires (WIFI.C), his new deal, I eventually made time for him – but only after remembering my earlier mistake.
At first glance, it seemed like Buzbuzian was now into a dropshipping deal selling tchotchke gadgets on Facebook.
“Aires Shield Pro – reduces the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation emitted by commonly used electronic devices.”
Oh, eat a bag of dicks, Dr WildClaims.
To someone regularly bombarded by social media-driven gadget sales pitches, this sounded like one that I’d see on Facebook, right after using my phone to say the words ‘radiation’ to someone in passing.
You know the deal; you’re yakking away to your friend, he tells you that he wants to buy his wife some plus-sized lingerie, and every website you look at for the next year is mysteriously covered in plus-sized lingerie ads, leading to your HR person having a quiet word about inappropriate searches you never actually took?
No? Just me?
Huh.
Well, the moment I started writing this story, I started seeing American Aires ads pop up on other sites, so if this feels, at first glances, like one of those products you find running from a Shopify online store, it’s not for nothing.
But that’s where the connections begin to break down, because the price being asked for these devices is not small.
This isn’t an online impulse buy, like that time I bought the tool that would pull out the dents on your car, or the tool that cuts a beer bottle and turns it into a drinking glass, or the several cut price drones I’ve bought that are supposed to follow you wherever you go and shoot 4K video but instead get taken out by overactive low flying cats as they chew through 87 AAA batteries.
But I digress.
The Aires Shield Pro looks like a bit of metal you’d glue to your phone and convince yourself it was doing something good, but there’s more to it than that. Take it away, corporate marketing.
“When an electromagnetic impulse from an electronic device is perceived by the resonator antenna, as soon as the harmful charge has accumulated it is automatically redirected to the Aires microprocessor, then a surface wave is created. The microprocessor generates a three-dimensional structure with a regularly alternating maxima and minima of field intensity. The resulting hologram interacts with external radiation, harmonizing it with the body’s radiation, thus preventing a battle between external radiation and the radiation from the body’s cells. Since humans simply cannot break dependency on technology, technology that offers protection against technology is the way of the future.”
I’ve had my fair share of battles with online science charlatans. The anti-vax crowd, the climate change deniers, the ‘weed will make your kids insane’ guys, the flat earthers, the ‘cryptocurrency can never work’ crew, the true believer Christians, the ‘Olsen Twins are not aliens’ people… I’ve sufficiently argued with and dealt with them all.
And I was pretty psyched to tear this American Aires story apart.
Here’s the thing though… it stands up.
We are, daily, faced with exposure to chemicals ingested through our foods, heavy metals rife in seafood, medications that might not be as properly tested as we’d like, and yes, an enormous amount of radiation from devices. This won’t get better with the emergence of 5G wifi, an issue that’s already causing some regulators and municipal officials in a variety of places to opt out of the next generation of wireless tech.
Want to cure cancer? Step away from daily life. There’s really no other way to do it.
But the thinking behind American Aires is not to end radiation or go off the grid, but rather to harness it. To create a barrier of what you might call negative resistance, that sucks it inwards rather than trying to repel it outwards, a task that would be impossible short of carrying around your own private faraday cage.
You may feel like that’s a problem few people are really bothered about, but if you do a search for a faraday cage on Amazon, protection from radiation is a massive business right now.
Like, for real. People care about this stuff.
And they spend some money on it.
There are Faraday pouches [see right], rolls of Faraday tape, boxes, wallets, there’s EMF reflective paint, duffel bags, there are socket-based EMF surge protectors, radiation protecting touques for your baby, you can even buy a cover to go over your home’s electric company smart meter so the infinitely small amount of current going through that meter when you unplug everything else in your home doesn’t dry your brain.
Hell, I even found an EMF proof box designed to look like a bible that you can keep your phone and car keys in.
That’s all weird and fun, but to suggest folks looking for lesser amounts of radiation in their lives are the equivalent of anti-vaxxers would be wrong. If you’ve ever stayed in a cabin in the woods for a few days and left the electronics off, you quickly understand exactly how zapped we all are. Generally, when I find myself in that situation, I sleep for the first 24 hours. I simply can’t stay awake as my body gets used to its regular non-radiated state. It’s almost instant.
So if you brought me a product that could get me even halfway there, just a little less zapped, and that to do that all I’d need to do would be to stick a chip on the back of my phone, or laptop, or wifi router, I would not only buy that but I would want a piece of the company that sold it.
If you work in IT and are surrounded by servers daily, you know this feeling.
If you go to sleep looking at your phone and wake up to its alarm, you know this feeling.
If your computer screen is next to your 66 inch TV screen, by your cable box and your wifi router and the XBox and your 8-slot USB device charger, you know this feeling. As I write this, I have six things charging within reaching distance, three screens, two phones, one tablet, a TV, a bar fridge, and a printer – and everything but the fridge is putting out a wifi signal.
Have you ever had the feeling where you could sense someone was watching TV in the next room, even though the sound was down? Radiation, bitches.
Have you ever stood in a Best Buy in front of a wall of TVs and felt a migraine was coming on? Radiation, bitches.
Have you ever felt a vibration on your thigh as if your phone was ringing in your pocket but it’s actually in the pocket on your other leg? Yeah.
So there’s a need. Now we need to understand if American Aires is simply playing to that need or a bona fide solution to it.
I’m not going to lay out all the tech science here because, frankly, the presentation I saw was long and detailed and I’d be doing it an injustice to try to recap it properly here.
But the company doesn’t hide from third party verification. In fact, in order to get approval from the exchange to go public, it needed to have that tech verified properly.
And when they got the approval to move forward, the brokerage house handling that listing put them through the same process again, because they didn’t believe what they were hearing.
Well here’s the information you seek. Actual peer-reviewed studies. No bullshit.
The stock has been on a nutty run and that gives any investor pause for thought. Have you missed the upswing already? Is a sell-off coming?
I can’t give you the answer to that, but I can say several things with confidence:
- The company is absolutely running around the country getting new eyeballs on the deal
- There will be those who got in early and cheap who’ll want to cash in
- There’s most assuredly news coming, and the company says their sales are ramping.
Product is handled by dropshippers to keep expenses down and service time short, burn isn’t crazy, dev costs not extreme. Patents are in place and, though they’re quite sure others will attempt to copy them, they suggest advances in the product design will be tough to keep up with.
But the big thing for me is this; I want one. I want one on my phone, I want one on my wifi router, I want a big ass one on the side of the desktop humming beside me and another that lights my damn bedroom when I’m trying to sleep.
Trade volume is increasing right now and I believe Buzbuzian’s track record is worth taking into account.
I want to see sales really take off, and to do that we might need to see a cut price version that onboards folks currently on the fence, or a reduction in cost to produce which is doable without too much stress based on current margins.
Normally I’d want to see some progress before jumping on to a story like this one, but time may well be of the essence. Depending on your tolerance for risk, this may be something to place a naughty side bet on.
Either way, watch it hard.
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: American Aires is an Equity.Guru marketing client.
