A product design company that recently appeared on the BBC’s The Apprentice has opened a new studio in Bristol, with plans to create new jobs.
In an episode of the latest series of the reality TV show, Innovate Design’s team of product designers helped the candidates hoping to be appointed by Lord Sugar to create a children’s electric toothbrush.
Innovate Design's staff delivered prototype brushes with accompanying apps with games to encourage brushing for both teams. The boys came up with a brown, wand-shaped brush and wizard-based app while the girls‘ concept was a rocket-shaped brush with a tooth-shape character.
The company’s founders Alastair Swanwick and Barbara Bouffard said they agreed to the BBC’s invitation to take part in the show as it provided an opportunity to thank Lord Sugar for helping the business in its early stages.
Soon after its formation in 2001, the business magnate wrote an article in The Mirror about Innovate Design, praising the work it was doing to help inventors and entrepreneurs to design and market new product ideas.
Ms Bouffard told BusinessLive that Lord Sugar’s article had helped Innovate Design to “take off”, and the company considered taking part in the show’s challenging task as “payback” for the good turn he had done for them.
Ms Bouffard said: “It was obviously an exciting thing to do, we were on TV, it was really stressful, but really exhilarating as well.
“We were able to do something quite amazing, I don’t know whether people would have spotted that but the amount of work that my design team had to do to turn that around was amazing.
“Something like that would normally take six months to develop, and we did it in 24 hours. That was quite a challenge.”
Innovate Design’s staff helped the show’s contestants throughout the whole process from concept sketching and brush design to electronics and app development, character creation and packaging design.
The team created a brush capable of monitoring brushing time, and the exact orientation the toothbrush was held at, alerting the user to the speed they were brushing and with how much force. Bluetooth connectivity was added to facilitate sensor reading in real time and all this technology was made to fit within the confines of the size of a toothbrush.
Ms Bouffard said the company found all of the show’s hopefuls “easy to work with”. She also revealed Mr Swanwick had the opportunity during filming to thank Lord Sugar in person for his help, and presented the Amstrad founder with his very own specially designed electric toothbrush.
She said Lord Sugar was “chuffed” with the gift, the handle of which depicted Lord Sugar as an animated “business tooth fairy”.
“I think he must have liked his toothbrush well enough to carry it around; I think he was pleased. I wonder if we gave him an idea, because later on I saw on his Facebook page that he came out with an Alan Sugar pen; maybe that was inspired by the toothbrush?”
The charity pen, dubbed ‘The A-Pen-Tice’, depicts his likeness and plays audio clips of his catchphrases. All of the proceeds from the sale of the pens are being given to Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity.
How would you like to help Great Ormond Street Hospital @GOSHCharity AND get one of these fun pens? Well, if you buy one at ➡️ https://t.co/nPO7XNArgO the WHOLE £10 goes to G.O.S.H. and we’ll send you a #sugarpen (UK P&P free). pic.twitter.com/jGeX7EWaiB
— Lord Sugar (@Lord_Sugar)
Ms Bouffard said Mr Swanwick was pleased to be able to say thank you to Lord Sugar, who he had found to be “a rather nice guy” and “not really what he is pictured as on TV”.
With a design studio already based in Salisbury, Innovate Design has now expanded on its South West presence with a move to a new space at Bristol’s Paintworks creative quarter.
Many of the 15 members of staff at the company’s new Bristol design and prototyping hub, some of whom appeared on The Apprentice, relocated from the Salisbury studio. Ms Bouffard said the company was looking to add a further five app developers and UX Designers to the team.
“There were two things about Bristol that really appealed to us; the vibrant and industrial background the city has meant it felt like a natural place for us two be and culturally it is a better place to attract good talent," she said.
“We employ and recruit younger people in their twenties to mid-thirties that thrive in an environment such as Bristol. It is a lively city, it has got a lot of entertainment and the culture is amazing there, so our staff there are really happy.”
Some of the products that Innovate Design has helped to bring to market include the Eazy Peel - an electric peeler for hard-skinned fruits and vegetables - and Fuel The Adventure - a portable battery charge with a distinctive jerry can design.
Ms Bouffard said during the pandemic the company had seen an increase in the number of people approaching it with ideas for inventions, as people pursued creations made during national lockdown that could help them start their own companies.
Ms Bouffard said Innovate Design, which has offices in France and the US, was planning further international expansion, though it was keen to bring much of its work back to Bristol, where it believed it could provide clients with a “good service.”
“We’ve got an office in France and we want to grow that again," she explained.
"We deal with clients there but we want the work to be done in the UK. We want to replicate that in more of Europe, and use that French office to get expansion into other nations as well as America.
“We have a really small office in Florida; similarly we can use this to get some work and expand, and get that work back into the UK and into Bristol.”
The 16th series of The Apprentice features the show’s first winner Tim Campbell as an adviser to Lord Sugar alongside Baroness Brady. Mr Campbell is the co-founder of Bristol-based tech firm Iternal.
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