Entrepreneurial electrician Ray Taylor, the sparkie who wired his van to give 1,000-volt shocks to people trying to steal his tools, appeared on the Clive Holland Show on Monday. Ray was joined by Ross Dickinson the former plumber behind Kibosh quick-fix pipe clamps and Steve Roberts the inventor of GPS-tracker system, Smart Lead. All three entrepreneurs leveraged their industry experience to create products that addressed a specific market need. Ray Taylor developed the Stingray Alarm System after repeatedly being ripped off by tool thieves. Initially, he developed a burglar alarm consisting of sirens, sound bombs and flashing lights, but after thieves broke through the back door of his van, he rigged-up 1,000-volt electronic shock to the handle. After posting his idea on social media, the ensuing furore helped him to launch his business. “I put my idea on social media and said ‘do you like what I have done to may van?’ The rest is history – I got bombarded by the press, media, TV because they thought I was some sort of vigilante,” explained Taylor on The Clive Holland Show. Ross Dickinson and Steve Roberts followed more conventional routes to launch their businesses. Dickinson developed his Kibosh pipe clamp idea after being called to stop a flood and struggling to find the stopcock. Through the development of a prototype he was able to fine tune his product before showing it to potential partners. “Kibosh, although it is a simple clamp, there were a lot of things I had to do, to make it work properly,” said Dickenson on the show. “It is all to do with product design, and development – you need to make sure it definitely works,” he added Dickinson warned fellow inventors to protect their intellectual property (IP) before they start telling people about their ideas. Having a lawyer draught, a simple, but robust non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for potential partners to sign before they look at the project, should be enough to protect the idea from future claims. Determination and belief are two other factors needed if an entrepreneur is going to build a successful business. “Anybody can come up with an idea, but it is whether you have the staying power to follow that through and make a real success of it,” said Steve Roberts, of Sentry SL.
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