The Breakthough!

Thank you Chris Evans and Foxy! My best Christmas present was on the 5th December when I went to London to be interviewed on the Chris Evans Show. It was very lucky to be on Drivetime Radio 2 at the beginning of the Christmas season; on a friday evening at 6.30. It could hardly have been bettered. My three minutes of fame were very pleasant and barely intimidating at all. Chris genuinely thinks I am going to be very rich.
I spent the rest of the night over a bottle of brandy with a good old friend called Nigel, who I haven't seen for years, and I woke in the morning to a call from my wife saying that the website had crashed; a customer had phoned to tell us about it. I rushed home to find that it had indeed exceeded its bandwidth in one night! It meant that a lot of people were unable to see the product, but I already had more orders than I had had in the previous month! I got the site back up when the host site returned to work on monday morning and the orders just kept coming. It was only two days before Christmas that I was able to stop, amd take breath. Since then I have enjoyed a full Family Christmas with my delightful family and partners and I am feeling well replenished for the next stage of the development of the Dryline.
If you want people to know about something these days you have to shout very loud and get a vast crowd of people to hear you; the proof is in this brief window of time. Three minutes exposure equals three weeks of work. I have had wonderful feedback from the customers, genuinely pleased to hear of someone working against the tide of depression and bad news, who has a simple yet effective idea, one which some of them had envisaged but not carried through, and one which simple stunned others with its obviousness.
Thank you all for buying from me, and trusting in the change it can make to your lives. It works!

After Tesco

Last weekend I tried something very challenging: to spend the weekend in the local Tesco car park! I discovered that they rent out space in their car parks to businesses wanting to display their products, so I signed up with risk assessment and all to a two day campaign - which cost £600!
I had high hopes of interestingTesco customers and using Tesco's incredible customer profiling system to discover the demographics of my buyers. However, although we had a fair amount of interest I have only had one enquiry, which has not yet resulted in a sale. Most of the weekend was spent hanging around trying to keep warm, although the miserable wet and windy weather on the sunday did prove the point: the washing on the lines stayed dry.
It was an expensive piece of advertising then, but at least it put the Rotaire name and the product in the minds of thousands of people who otherwise may not have known about it, and next time their washing gets soaked they may look it up. It was fascinating to see the operation at close hand, a constant flow of shopping trolleys in and out of the store, the busy times and the less busy times - there was never a slack period. The car park nearly always full, the lively people going in, and the same people coming out devoid of interest, looking at the pavement. A large number thankfully used ther own bags; others emerged with six or eight of the things. Despite the weather, many went shopping in tee shirts, obviously coming from overheated houses to a heated car and a heated shop woth barely any contact with the outside world. Truly it was a watering hole for the masses.
As Edison once said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." It is a very steep hill to climb if you want to introduce an entirely new concept.

The Season is Over

The season is over as far as rotary washing lines are concerned - gardens in general suffer from neglect in winter, and garden centres quieten down. I always thought it would happen, but when the orders dry up it is uncomfortable. So I am brushing up on my marketing, and spending the time available to raise the profile for winter.
What I have to do is to peruade people that an airer with a dryline is an all-year round external drying facility, which is true. Even when the temperature dips near freezing the clothes come in iron-dry. A little damp but nearly all the water has been removed. It relieves households of loads of damp washing taking the energy from the indoor environment and replacing it with moisture. This is of course desirable.
I have gone back to Mike West's brilliant seminars on marketing enabled by MAS-WM, the regional support agency for manufacturers, in order to get my plan together. It is a really black art, and it shows for instance why Tesco is so efficient. Their tracking system is positively Machiavellian, and enables them to predict what will be sold from their shops and when. I won't bore you with the details but it is very clever indeed. What I need is a means of contacting likely customers to enable me to communicate effectively. I also need to spend more time displaying the product in public places, because it is only when people can see, touch and consider the Rotaire Dryline that they actually get the idea - something you can't communicate through a website. Then they realise what it could mean to their own lifestyle.
I spent Saturday in brilliant sunshine reading the course notes and talking to customers in a Co-operative car park with the Dryline on display. It proved to me that the time taken was worth while, even though I am unable to make actual sales on their premises. However, a lot of people were interested enough to take a leaflet. We shall see how many follow through to purchase.

The Autumn Show

The Malvern Autumn Show was blessed with some of the best weather this year. It was worrying that it was the wrong weather for selling Drylines, which was, of course, why Fran and I were there. However, a small electric pump, some troughs and a length of pipe gave a good simulation of what happens when it rains. Last year, at the same show, people didn't understand so readily the reasons for owning one. This year most of our 1000 leaflets were taken away, and we sold nearly £1000 pounds of dryline covers. Dressed in our corporate fleeces we talked until we forgot what day it was, but we were praised for our low key sales technique. In other words, we didn't press folk to buy: just gave them the facts.
It seems that the credit crunch (as it is affectionately known) energy price rises and a growing ecological awareness have influenced the public to be receptive to new ideas. If that is so, long may it last. The awful weather this summer may have influenced them as well.
A day later more orders than ever are going out of the door, and there is good reason to be optimistic. It is not easy to introduce a new idea without national media support, and I hope that winter does not blind potential buyers to its benefits. In this country gardens are strictly for summer, and garden furniture does not sell through winter. It has a much closer relationship to the home and kitchen (or utility room) than to the outside world.

A long wet summer

If anything, this summer has been more miserable than last summer here in the UK. Certainly in Malvern we have experienced record rainfall through August and into September, with barely a glimpse of sun or moon through the overcast skies. The plants have put all their energy into growth and not into flower or fruit, and I only saw one bee all summer! Yet some people still insist that global warming/climate change is not happening - and happening rather fast.
I got an e-mail to a list of prominent Greens (although I don't know why I was included) from a man in America who insisted the the Physical Society had changed their opinion (50,000 scientists can't be wrong!) and now thought it was "not proven." He insisted that we Greens had no proof; where were our double blind trials, etc etc. He really ranted, if emails can rant. When I responded that he was clutching at straws he went as far as quoting me and giving out my personal details! Then he ranted again.
I decided to check the Physical Society website where I found that they had not (contrary to an internet rumour) changed their opinion but held fast to their view that the changes were moving fast. I wrote to him quoting the website and politely suggested he should get his facts right. I have not had a reply...
Here in Malvern we are establishing a Transition group, to enable the community to adjust to the new circumstances in their own way in advance of the changes to come.
My contribution, the Rotaire Dryline, is now available in 32 different shapes and sizes to enable people easily to dry their washing without using energy or finding their washing wetter than when it went on the line. It has sold very well through the summer and purchasers have all expressed happiness at finding a solution to a lifelong problem. This summer has been an excellent proving ground, and they will find that it works in winter too. However, I expect that sales will drop off in winter, as the British tend not to think about their gardens until Spring. I hope I am wrong because it would make a significant (4 million tonnes of CO2) contribution if tumble driers weren't used - and that is just in this country.

A rainy night in Georgia

You go away for a rew days and what happens? The Russians invade Georgia; honestly, you can't take your eyes of things for a minute without them going wrong!

In 1956 they did something similar to stamp their authority over Hungary, so 50 years on nothing has changed. They are punishing the Georgian government for wanting to join the EU. So what will the West do? While everyone's eyes have been on the Olympics Russia has declared its intentions of being No 1 in Europe and the West will make some pitiful noises; what else can they do? Declare War?

If everyone is going Green to avoid global catastrophy then who is counting the CO2 emissions from all the wars that are currently occurring? I think governments should walk their talk.

Green Travel isn't so bad

I just looked at my blogging output and found it very sporadic. The trouble, if you can call it that, is that the project is working: I am so busy selling Rotaire Drylines that I haven't got enough time for this recreation. I have just had a great break though. First I went to the Big Chill, mainly to see Leonard Cohen but also because the Big Green Gathering was not taking place and I like a festie now and again. Cohen was spellbinding. It is such a shame that the post-modern soundbite is "Oh, so depressing." If the truth is depressing then you need a counsellor.




Straight afterwards, only pausing to send out Drylines, my wife and I went to Venice and Rome by train. Last year's trip to Crete by air left me with a carbon defecit so we tried something different - and no children either, now that they are grown. The arrival in Venice was a joy, straight off the train, across the forecourt and onto a water taxi, a beautiful launch that took us through the canals to the hotel right near to the Basilica San Marco. The Venetians actually stole St Mark's remains from Jerusalem and set them up here. Marco Polo brought back spaghetti from China too, creating this international cuisine. Rome was fantastic too, but I don't think much can compare with Venice, partly because there isn't a single road, therefore no traffic. Then back on another overnight sleeper, eating dinner while the hills of Italy rolled by. It was so much preferable to air travel, you wonder why more people don't do it.

Every Cloud Must Have A Silver Lining

Since May, when we displayed the Rotaire at the Malvern Spring Gardening Show, sales have increased week by week. This is in no small way aided by the weather which as usual has been depressingly cold and damp. It is particularly in the summer when one wakes up and (hope srpings eternal) imagines that the entire day will be just like a summer's day. After putting the washing out and rushing out to work, to shop or to some other place one notices the storm clouds gathering and, yes! it is raining again. Returning home you find the washing wetter than before, and either dries it indoors (a total waste) or leaves it out in hope (risky). Given the consistent rain all through June some people have told me that they knew someone must make such a product and decided to track it down via Google and other search engines. Others have said that they saw it months ago, but didn't realise how much they would need it this year.

Purchasers have been very positive in their feedback, and one purchaser heard about the Dryline on the radio. He said he heard a phone-in programme where they asked for anyone who was doing something for the first time to ring in. A lady called to say that she had just hung her washing out in the rain and was sitting indoors watching it dry. He was so impressed that he tracked the Rotaire office down on the net and bought one. Another excellent place to display them has been at CAT, the Centre for Alternative Technology in Macchynlleth, Wales. Many buyers have seen it on show there and taken our leaflet. The best way is to log into http://www.rotaire.com/ and watch the videos. The new one spells out exactly why it is so efficient and ecologically desirable, while the Dry Humour silent film and the Rotaire Demonstration show how easy it is to erect and use the Dryline washing cover.

ROTAIRE DRYLINE ADVERT


As a result of all this activity, at last the company bank balance is in positive territory, and long may it remain so. The next major hurdle is paying for the International Patent Territories, which is very expensive, and I want to pin down as much as I can, because these rotaries are in widespread use on all five continents. All of them have one flaw - it still rains!

Sustain Ability ????

Yesterday I attended a conference in Loughborough called Sustain EM, and I left early and in a very strange mood. The reason I went was because I have tried for two years to secure support for the Rotaire Dryline project, and at last the government has started to address sustainability as an issue. My problem is that a practical consumer item that saves energy is not "sexy" enough to hit their g spot. They like to fund big projects that address leading edge technology and particularly if they tap into the academic and University knowledge network.
As you will have guessed I got no further with my quest. However, I listened to four presenters - Bruce Duguid from the Carbon Trust, Adam Morton of Rolls-Royce, Thomas Bennett of Intelligent Energy and Andrew Haslett of the Energy Technology Institute. When they had finished their presentations there was a Q & A session, and I asked the first question: "Have any of you done a Carbon Audit on your own lifestyle?" None of them had. Another member of the audience asked about Transition Towns, and their faces were blank. They had not heard about transition towns.
I asked the question because it became clear just how new all their initiatives are. Even Rolls Royce has little experience of alternative energy yet now they are actively developing machinery for marine energy generation. ETI was only formally set up in March this year, with seven main partners; Shell, BP and Rolls-Royce among them. These are three of the major energy pirates if you like, posting nearly a billion pounds in profits between them. Their investment is a mere 5 million pounds each, to tap into 1.1 billion pounds of government (our) money! Andrew Haslett talked of tackling energy poverty, not the need to reduce energy consumption.
Bruce Duguid alone referred to the climate change crisis, casually saying that at present trends the CO2 content of the atmosphere in 2050 is likely to be 650 ppm, resulting in a 3-4 degree rise in temperature. A 3-4 degree rise in temperature will be catastrophic. It was clear that he does not understood the problem. Thomas Bennett is involved in developing fuel cells, and was honest enough to say that hydrogen technology was not the magic bullet, and that there was no answer to the problem of clean energy. Despite helping Boeing to power the first fuel cell powered aeroplane and helping Suzuki to develop the first motorcycle he said the power density is not high enough to compete with fossil fuel.
What really troubles me is that the money that is channelled into manufacturing through the governmental Regional Development organisations mainly ends up serving the organisations themselves. This is a common theme in the European Union. Where a simple idea like mine would really benefit from a small (£100k) investment to secure international Intellectual Property they prefer to spend £6 million on new offices for Advantage West Midlands and to pay for the lavish facilities of the conference and perhaps 50 of the delegates who were tied into the system in one way or another.
Beyond this is the fact that these people are new to the whole field. I realised I was almost alone in the building. They have not thought about it for 20 years or more like myself and many of the Green persuasion. They do not understand it, and have not considered the prospect that "Business as Usual" is not an option. Yet these people are the ones empowered to solve the problem. When the population of the earth wakes up it will find itself in a nightmare.

Time passes

I have been really busy, which is why I have not written for a while. This is a brief note to explain that sales have been growing steadily. It has been a matter of time making the web presence strong enough to reach the potential customer for the Rotaire Dryline. I think I have now reached that threshold, and with energy prices going through the roof it makes the Dryline a good purchase for next winter.
My partner has taken part in filming for the BBC programme on inventors, Dragon's Den, but there is an embargo until the interview is broadcast and I can't say more. Very exciting. I have had a new video advert made for the Rotaire explaining all the cost benefits - which after all affects more people than the "green" side of the invention, despite the increase in awareness. It also features a beautiful young woman, who is a lot easier on the eye than I am. I showed the product at an Eco Fair in West Bridgford, Nottingham for the lovely Karina Wells of Eco List and received a lot of great feedback (but no sales). I also visited the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth to see it on display in their Eco House garden, where it looked great!
While cash flow is very poor and I can't buy items I want to add to the range the outlook is good as sales are steadily increasing. I will write more soon.

Making Progress

I am glad I have started a blog about the Rotaire project – there's not much there yet, but it is interesting to do, and it will make an authentic record of how the project worked out. It is also good for building up the web presence – which is all important nowadays. I also use Adwords on Google, though I am not sure of the effectiveness in my case. If a person doesn't know what a rain cover for a washing line is, then they are hardly going to be googling it.
The Malvern Spring Gardening Show response was very good, and sales have increased significantly since then. Some sales have come through from visitors to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth and some through the web. An Australian firm selling into this country as http://www.ecowashinglines.co.uk/ has sent me their first order – I set up an agreement with them a month ago and I am looking forward to many more. Their web presence is excellent for laundry products. A distributor called Country Platters who will be selling at 20 large Shows this year will be featuring the Dryline at each one, and taking deposits before passing the customer to me for delivery. As a result the Rotaire Dryline should be seen by a very large number of people over the summer. It was very satisfying to be able to present the distributor with an entire kit - Soil Screw, Airer, Dryline and Storage Cover that she would be able to set up in 5 minutes. Any other way of foundationing the airer would take too long when setting up for a Show.
I had to turn down two good offers of advertising earlier in the week because I simply have to make money before I can spend it, and I felt unhappy about that. However, yesterday I received a call from http://www.naturalcollections.co.uk/ , a firm voted Ethical Retailer of the Year 2007 which seems to be interested in the Dryline. So, all in all the product is live at last, and I hope to be expanding the range to include “bespoke” items, a Rotaire brand airer, soil screw etcetera. Money is still very tight, but a “Business Angel” may get aboard when she sees the project working.

Green Democracy

It's funny, I thought as I was brushing my teeth, how little changes through one's life. It is as if your past returns to haunt you with ironic echoes.
When I was in primary school, at the tender age of seven I was placed in a team as were all the arriving pupils. There was a choice of Red, Blue, Yellow and Green teams, or Houses as they were known. The Red team was very popular, but did not excel in quite as many fields as the Blues, who seemed to dominate everything as if by royal decree. Then there was the Yellow team, which while quite clever lacked leadership and commitment to the greater glory of the House; and they just didn't do very well. Then there was the Green team, who seemed always to come last. They failed at everything. If there was a three-legged race they would grow an extra leg and get disqualified, or trip over it. If it was a question of achievement through class work the dunces of the Greens could never cut the mustard. While the Yellows were seen as Also-Rans, the Greens were seen as Never-Rans.
I was placed in the Greens.
In the last year at primary school I managed to come top of the class one week, after working my way up by sheer hard work, and I had also become Green Vice Captain and a Prefect. After years of failing at sports and lazy scholastic mediocrity I had groped my way to the top of the top class in the school. Sitting in my place of pride in the number one desk at the back of the class I put my hand up to answer a question the teacher had asked: what is the name of the mark that goes before an 's' to show a missing letter, an abbreviation as in "it's". I knew the answer was "An apostrophe" but for some reason my brain locked up and my mouth fumbled, saying "A comma in the air." With a withering look, a sneer and a scornful echo of my words, she finished my career of excellence as she turned away to someone who knew the correct answer, and a hot flush of shame suffused my whole being. I realised in that moment that there was no point in a Green trying to rock the established order of things. I decided to take it easy and loaf along in the middle ground where I could comfortably get through life at school without the strain of trying to be top.
Jumping forward a half century, the Greens are still at the bottom, although everyone knows in their hearts that they are right. The Reds (or New Labour as they are now called) are in control at the moment, but the Blues (or Conservatives as they call themselves) are jostling to regain control. The Yellows (or Liberal Democrats) still lack leadership and still are unable to decide which side of the fence they are going to land on. Like the others main parties they are neither Liberal or Democratic! None of them seem to realise (for instance) that the planned expansion of air traffic will negate every other measure on the domestic front to curb emission of CO2 and other climate changing pollutants. It is an uncomfortable truth, I am afraid. We will all be suffering deprivation at home in order to permit more jaunts abroad and inward migration, without affecting the increase in our emissions.
So, as I said, nothing seems to change. Nuclear energy is now linked to renewables in the Doublespeak of our Orwellian Government and is again the flavour of the day for both the main parties, while the Yellows aren't quite sure. And everyone has forgotten Chernobyl.

Investment Readiness

On Friday I attended a seminar on investment readiness, and as always I picked up a little nugget or two of information that made me think differently. One nugget was that the product often was less important than the Business Model. Normal people tend to think of an article and put a sale price on it - so in this case the Rotaire Dryline is priced from £29.99. However, smart business people would think: "How else could I get value for this item?"
Howard Hughes was the heir to the Hughes Corporation due mainly to his father's foresight in leasing his revolutionary oil drilling head rather than just selling them. Nowadays the internet will allow you to subscribe rather than selling the programme because the downstream revenue is higher than if it were simply sold outright. I have to think of other ways to sell the product in case I could find a better business model.
Another nugget was when I was talking to a lovely woman called Melanie about the difficulties of public speaking, selling a product and the Elevator Pitch. She said that you only need to make three points and one central message in the short explanation of your product, and I think she is right.
1 Everyone has a need to dry laundry.
2 Drying takes energy wherever it is done.
3 Energy is expensive and is literally costing the Earth.
MESSAGE: Get energy-free drying with the Rotaire Dryline, so every day can be a free drying day.

I also need to produce a list of Frequently Asked Questions about rotary washing lines and about the covers. For instance, Q: "What is the mesh skirt for?" A: "Because rain doesn't fall vertically." Q: "How does the mesh catch the rain?" A: "Because the holes are just the right size, and as soon as a raindrop touches the mesh its surface tension causes it to adhere and then it runs downwards under its own momentum plus gravity."

It's Not Easy Being Green

As my friend Brigit Strawbridge says, "It's not easy being Green."
But then it is important, isn't it? When you see your culture going the wrong way, like lemmings over a cliff, isn't it important to say... "Hey, hold on, I think there may be a better way." I took that decision a long time ago and when I recently took a carbon footprint test (I recommend George Marshall's excellent book Carbon Detox, which has a good test in it) I found that my footprint is only half a ton over the 2050 target. That is less than half the present average figure. I was amazed, but it just means the rest of you must be consuming LOADS!
Anyway, about 3 years ago two friends and I invented a cover for a washing line; one that would fit a rotary line, drier, airer, whirligig, call it what you want so that you could dry clothes at any time rather than just when it is sunny. Since then I have done most of the work, and at last I have a product ready for sale, patented, trade marked and all. People who have tried it like it and it will typically save up to 1000KW a year as against a tumble drier. That would mean 4 tonnes of CO2! Nearly a third of your annual average. Even modest use is a waste that is avoidable, and the Dryline will pay for itself in about 6 months. It even speeds up the process when it is sunny, which I still find surprising.
So now I spend most of my time out selling the product and trying to find those ethical consumers who want to do the right thing, or the busy mums who need to put the washing out before going to work and hate coming home to find it wet. Perhaps the older ladies who like to dry outside but have to watch the clouds and dash outside whenever a spot of rain falls... And now I have started a blog to record my progress or lack of it. I have no idea who might read this but I hope you enjoy it, dear reader.