Poo-Poo Coffee or Shared Pogo Sticks: Which Refreshing New Idea Is Really Coming to S.F.?

I

've got a great entrepreneurial idea.

Ready?

Poo-Poo Coffee®.

I've got poo-poo. I've got coffee. I've got a blender. And I think people out in the world will really love my product, which promises a unique taste and olfactory experience.

I declare myself ready to entertain any and all investment offers. Look for bottles of cool, brown, refreshing Poo-Poo Coffee® in your grocer's refrigerator section this summer. (In answer to queries that are already pouring in: No, no civets involved.)

That's absurd, of course. For one thing, KQED frowns on its employees starting up business ventures on the side.

But it doesn't seem a whole lot more outlandish than the claim made by a Swedish marketing firm — a claim it insists it's making in utter seriousness — that it wants to distribute shared pogo sticks in San Francisco as part of the micromobility revolution.

The firm is Cangoroo. It's in a San Francisco-sized city called Malmö (MAHL-muh, if you're pronouncing at home), just across the Øresund Bridge from Copenhagen. As one of the more skeptical recent stories on the project notes, the pogo plan comes from a guerrilla marketing firm called the ODD Company.

ODD, it turns out, is an outfit with a pretty creative sense of humor. Among its recent projects was a campaign to recruit "inexperienced, mediocre" skiers as product-testers for a Swedish outdoor clothing company.

A few years back, ODD came up with the Stache Shield, a device to "keep men’s moustaches clean and dry regardless of what they choose to eat or drink. (The campaign was a promotion for Movember, the annual men's health organization.)

When you read Cangoroo's mission statement, you might be forgiven for assuming that it was written with tongue firmly in cheek:

"As we’re very well aware that a few people can’t do everything, our belief is that everyone can do something. Our contribution came to be Cangoroo — a shared pogo stick service that will disrupt the way we look at mobility in urban areas. Forever. Making urban commuting car-free and sustainable. Connecting people and cultures. Helping people stay healthy. One Cangoroo at a time."

Whoa. They had me at "disrupt."

Cynicism notwithstanding, a Skype call on Monday to a number listed for Cangoroo was answered by Adam Mikkelsen, the Cangoroo CEO.

"Yeah, we get that a lot, for sure," Mikkelsen said when I told him I assumed Cangoroo is a hoax.

He added that even though the company has not yet registered to do business in California or San Francisco and despite the fact it's waiting for its first shipment of prototype sticks from China, the enterprise is for real and hopes to have shared pogo sticks somewhere in the city as early as August.

Mikkelsen said that his team includes a former Apple software engineer, who's working on the Cangoroo app. The company is meeting with potential investors, he said, adding he had a call set up late Monday -- Malmö is nine hours ahead of San Francisco time -- to talk to a couple of potential U.S. manufacturers.

I asked whether Mikkelsen and company have ever developed a piece of hardware before. Kind of, he said.

"Oh, yeah, we've done product development," he said. "We've done a relaxation tent and the moustache shield and stuff like that."

The relaxation tent? That would be the Pause Pod. Everything that need be said about it was said here:

On the serious side, the Pause Pod apparently attracted about $150,000 in an Indiegogo campaign.

How does Mikkelsen see the Cangoroo pogo sticks fitting into San Francisco's streetscape?

"We're looking at trying to launch them in city parks and those types of areas, and not necessarily in the first phase trying to get people to take either a scooter or a pogo stick," Mikkelsen said. "More like you're getting your daily workout and challenging a friend — who can make the most jumps and stuff like that."

So — kind of a recreational product?

Mikkelsen said he thought maybe Cangoroo can appeal to what he called "an extreme sports pogo stick community."

But from its experience with about 50 beta testers, Mikkelsen said, the shared sticks might also appeal to "a specific crowd wanting to use them to, you know, 'I'm going to have a coffee with my friends. Let's take the pogo stick. It will be funny.' A lot of people kind of want to find ways, both in fashion and in transportation, to stand out today."

But as a form of ... mobility?

"It all depends on how good you want to be on a pogo stick," Mikkelsen said. "It could definitely be used for traveling from Point A to Point B."

Trying to envision how pogoing commuters might look traveling the sidewalks and streets of SoMa, the Financial District and the Mission, I asked about avoiding crashes.

Mikkelsen patiently explained that pogo sticks don't have brakes. "You just stop bouncing," he said.

But what about that car making the unexpected turn or the pedestrian darting into your pogo path?

"If you want to stop immediately — I would say the stopping distance is shorter on a pogo stick" than for bikes or scooters, Mikkelsen said. "Basically, just jump off it, and you stop right away."

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which regulates shared bikes and scooters in the city, said it doesn't know much about Cangaroo.

"We don’t have specific details about this company, but we will review any new transportation service to ensure compliance with existing laws," agency spokesman Paul Rose said in an email Monday.

I haven't asked the city what it might think of Poo-Poo Coffee®. Yet.