Case Studies
MiDockspeakers
Shortly before launching their company, Mi-Dockspeakers, long-standing business partners Karl Grimsey and Richard Jones were toying with the idea of inventing a portable heated seat that could be used in stadiums.
The Oxfordshire-based pair had always taken a keen interest in sport and at the time it seemed like a good concept. However, warming the ‘backsides’ of thousands if not millions of spectators needed heavy investment in R&D, as well as marketing spend, and the economic environment was not particularly favourable during the ‘mid-noughties’.
Eventually kicking the idea into touch, Karl and Richard were still keen to explore other potential business opportunities following the successful launch of Cyclops, a GPS tracking product they had invented for the automotive industry, which is their shared background.
With sporting interests matched equally by one in music, it was while on a trip to China just a few months later that Karl stumbled across the potential to combine both, albeit through a pig!
“I discovered a musical device, an iPod player called the iPig, which had been developed by a company called Lanchiya Technology,” explains Karl. “Seeing its potential, Richard and I set up a sales channel for the UK market and eventually shipped several thousand of them. However, it was more of a novelty device and we wondered if it would be possible to develop a project along similar lines but with a longer term strategy, appealing to a wider customer base.”
Karl’s attention returned to his love of sport and a broad search revealed nothing in the way of a well designed sporting shaped device – a football, for example – that had high sound quality. “There were several products around with sporting themes, but the quality was pretty poor right across the board,” recalls Karl. “Sport has such a massive appeal to millions of people, so it seemed a good idea to produce an iPod player – one that would be more than just another boring black box - that would deliver extremely high end sound quality.”
In fact, the business duo’s vision was to produce a visually appealing product – a football design to begin with - which would compete competitively with high end sound products such as those produced by BOSE.
Karl returned to Lanchiya Technology with an outline specification and mould for a football. “I had no idea if it would be possible, and the main thing for us was the quality of the sound coming out of a well-designed and attractive looking product. We didn’t want to produce a great looking product if the sound quality wasn’t much better than any other low end device,” says Karl.
They were not to be disappointed. “It was like waiting for a baby to be delivered,” recalls Richard. “We weren’t sure what to expect, but when we saw the product for the first time after weeks of waiting, and then turned on the music, and turned it right up, we couldn’t believe it. The sound quality blew our socks off. It was actually better than we’d expected and we just knew that it would appeal to so many other people.
It was a very exciting moment.”
Meanwhile, Karl and Richard had to think about how their new invention might be funded if a high enough quality product could be manufactured. “It was impossible to get any sort of interest, we couldn’t even open a bank account the banks were that disinterested,” explains Karl.
Earlier research surrounding the heated stadium seats had placed them in contact with various business support organisations, including Business Link. Eventually this path led them to the Oxfordshire Business & Innovation Team which took a keen interest in the potential of Mi-Dockspeakers.
“They took us seriously, asking all the difficult questions to test whether this could be a viable business,” says Karl. “They really made us think long and hard about how the business could become sustainable, not just with one product but with a longer term strategy, including export. Before long we were preparing a business plan and exploring the potential for investment.”
Having set up Mi-Dockspeakers as a Limited company, the pair received the backing of Finance South East, earning an Accelerator Fund grant which would enable them to produce mouldings for the product.
The Oxfordshire Innovation & Growth Team also introduced Karl and Richard to UKTI for support with exporting, including the establishment of an international distribution network, which is now established and growing.
The result of Karl and Richard’s work and networking was “Mi-football”, produced in a partnership with Lanchiya. Every element is hand produced in-house by Lanchiya in a clean modern and ethically sound environment with a production capacity of 3,000 units per day. Every fifth production worker is a quality controller as the joint vision of the two companies requires absolute focus on quality.
“Our Mi-football has very broad appeal, from mums and dads buying their children an iPod player through to companies which brand them as high quality but affordable corporate gifts,” explains Richard. “The beauty of our product is that it ticks lots of boxes for lots of different customers, however design and sound quality are at the very top in almost every instance.”
The company’s aim is to develop further products, all in a sporting vein, including rugby, basketball, tennis, golf and American football. “Although sport is a global business, different sports appeal to different audiences, which is why we have a strategy in place to reach out to other markets around the world,” says Karl. “We are already in an advanced state of design and patents in place. All of our products are design, copy and patent protected.”
Mi-Dockspeakers is based in Bloxham near Banbury, Oxfordshire, employs nine people in the UK and currently distributes to 18 different countries with more being added on a regular basis.