Reinhold (Direct)

Question 1

What do you for a living Mr. Reinhold?

Answer 1

I’m a mycologist, which means I study mushrooms. Specifically, I’m a tenured professor at the University of Delaware, and I used to be the Chief Science Officer of QuikPhone, a subsidiary of Quick Brands, before the company went under.

Question 2

What kind of education do you have in that field?

Answer 2

I have a B.S. in Biology from Stanford and a Ph.D in Botany from Cambridge.

Question 3

Practical development

Answer 3

A large part of my career has been involved with researching mushrooms as an alternative to materials like polymers and plastics. That involves safety testing, of course.

Question 4

Are you published?

Answer 4

Yes. I’ve published over 100 peer reviewed articles in mycology. I’m a leader in the field.

Question 5

You said earlier that you used to be the CSO. What does that mean?

Answer 5

I was in charge of the research and development, quality assurance, safety testing, and preliminary production of QuikCases.

Question 6

When did you join the company?

Answer 6

In 2017.

Question 7

What was the structure of the company like when you were hired on in 2017?

Answer 7

Bree hired people to perform different roles, and people generally knew and kept to those roles. You had people handling communications, legal, accounting, HR, all that. And Bree was the CEO, obviously.

Question 8

To your knowledge, what was Bree’s role in the company?

Answer 8

Bree was the brand. It’s the Bree Plaza brand that put our company on the map.

Question 9

Specifically, about during the production of QuikCase. When did the production of QuikCase begin?

Answer 9

Early in 2017.

Question 10

Did you have an informed basis that the mushroom cases were safe to produce?

Answer 10

Yes. Not only did I test it, I actually had positive results from two sets of safety testing.

Question 11

What were those tests?

Answer 11

Before QuikPhone, Bree flirted with the idea of making car seats out of the TigerTail mushroom. I had reports from the product safety testing they did then. We also conducted our own independent set of product safety tests we did.

Question 12

Did that testing ever present any safety risks?

Answer 12

No. Even when we tested it in extreme high-usage scenarios, and later, with the copper in the product, we found nothing wrong, including no off-gassing. So we went forward with production since there were no known risks.

Question 13

How intense was production?

Answer 13

We started small. Then our production ramped up during covid, We had to expand the list of growers we were getting Tiger Tail to states other than Delaware, but I gave (detailed!) instructions to each grower on how to grow the fungus.

Question 14

Did that create any issues for you?

Answer 14

No. Tiger Tail mushrooms are not naturally occuring, they are a lab variant, it can be grown anywhere under the proper conditions

Question 15

Did you ever have a problem with the Tiger Tail mushrooms you were getting from your growers?

Answer 15

No. We checked every batch for bioidentity, and they all checked out.

Question 16

What do you mean bioidentity?

Answer 16

Bioidentity means genetically identical. The good thing about Tiger Tail is that since you grow them in a lab, you can grow them under the exact same conditions every time. That’s why bioidentity meant the growers followed my instructions: the mushrooms were literally exact clones of each other.

Question 17

Why was the fact that the strains were bioidentical important to you?

Answer 17

Since they were all the same Tiger Tail mushrooms we used to do product safety testing, we could rely on all that testing we did that made sure that they’re safe.

Question 18

Let’s talk about QuikCase’s reception. Were there any reported issues with the product, and if so, what effect did that have on the company?

Answer 18

Well, by now you’ve probably heard all about the allegations that the cases were causing headaches and muscle pain that started coming in autumn of 2020. It didn’t concern me though.

Question 19

Why?

Answer 19

The actual social media reports appeared to simply be ocular headaches from overuse of the phone during COVID. There was nothing in our safety testing that suggested that was happening, and our bioidentity testing was still showing green. My job is to address known risks, not to get into a panic over unreliable reports.

Question 20

Was that the end of it?

Answer 20

No. It turned out one of our employees, Jamie Cameron, had gone and done his own set of amateurish testing. And, if that wasn’t enough, he consulted with a third party, Jac Taggert, without the company’s knowledge.

Question 21

What effect did seeing those tests have on you?

Answer 21

I decided, just to put the issue to bed, to design a set of additional safety tests. But what Jamie showed me didn’t change my opinion that QuikCase was still safe for production.

Question 22

What was wrong with the tests he had conducted?

Answer 22

Because they were—to put it respectfully—unreliable. First off, Jamie isn’t exactly a mycology expert. Like I said, his testing was amateurish. Secondly, Taggert’s results were sloppy, they were incomplete, lacking data to support her conclusions, testing for the wrong things, and they were coming from someone with a horrible reputation in the scientific community.

Question 23

You said you prepared a report on the QuikPain issue for the board. Did you ever get a chance to present it to them?

Answer 23

No. We had an emergency board meeting in March of 2021 to deal with the issue. I was just about to present the compiled report when, guess who, Jamie Cameron bursts into the room starts frantically telling the board about his science experiment and overstating its results.

Question 24

What happened next?

Answer 24

Well, the board started going into a panic over Jamie’s exaggerated results until our dependable Bree calmed everyone down. She gave us direction and I later asked for and received funding to perform additional testing.

Question 25

What results did that testing produce?

Answer 25

Well, we couldn’t finish it. The company went bankrupt before we finished. But nothing in the testing we were able to do went against our expectations.

Question 26

Per your experience, did you follow industry standards?

Answer 26

Listen, at the end of the day we had unsubstantiated reports and unreliable testing trying to overturn years of product testing and quality assurance that we had been doing from 2017 to 2020 during the production of these cases. Given industry standards and the known risks, we reacted reasonably.