I was good with a design program called Adobe Indesign which was basically for desktop publishing, not industrial design. I had also been using Adobe Photoshop for years so was skilled at that as well. I started to look at existing vacuum systems and then copying them and trying to see if I could make them cheaply and sell them via my website. I of course made plenty of mistakes with vacuums being too heavy or large or not quite what the customer wanted. The more mistakes I made the better I became at fine tuning design and also building something with profit in mind. I also started to pay more attention to what the customer wanted. I would hand over my basic designs to a laser cutting company and they would transfer my two dimensional industrial drawing to an expert Cad Cam operator who would then convert it to a 3D drawing that could be transferred to the laser cutting machine to cut the metal to size and shape.

A customer would ring up and see my basic website with a few vacuum pumps and some of the vacuum models that I had designed and built and ask if I could make a variation to it. I would say I’ll call back in 30 minutes as I was busy with another client. Of course I wasn’t but I need to cost out what it would cost to build a unit. Then I would calculate the profit I wanted to make which gave me a sales price.

I would ring back and say yes we can do it for this price. Three times out of four they would say thanks and pass the cost over to management and I would never hear back from them.

We had everything stacked against us.

• We looked small when you went to the basic website I had setup
• We didn’t have vacuums on the floor, we had to build them
• We had a small range of vacuums
• We had hardly any testimonials as we hadn’t sold that much
• We had no prices on the website so people had to ring up

There was so much wrong with the setup that we felt like Kings when we finally got a client saying yes we want one and what are your bank details. We had about 10 resellers and they sold next to nothing and when they did sell, I almost had to beg them to pay on time. To this day I still have one of those resellers. They never pay on time and they always treat me like a leper. I could axe them at any time but I don’t. I keep them to remind me of what I don’t want and what I won’t put up with. They buy from me about once every few months and it is always a hassle. I have given them a 30 day account and they should pay by the 1^st of the following month. By about the 14^th of the following month they haven’t paid and I have to ring up and demand the money. I am waiting for the right time when they have a client that wants a big order and I am going to demand payment in advance or I won’t supply.

The more I designed and built the more I knew exactly what sort of business I wanted and what sort of business would work for me.

• I needed a business that had a product that everyone else wanted (of course)
• I wanted to make a product that nobody else had
• I wanted to be paid in advance
• I wanted to set the rules
• I wanted to decide whether I offered or refused an account to someone
• I wanted to be able to go for coffee or a movie and then process an order the next day
• I wanted a business that was like a pension on steroids
• I needed to design products that were just outside of what other companies were selling
• I needed to be unique
• I needed to create a niche within a niche

In short I wanted to be in control and the only way to do that was to make my own product and sell it from my own website and set my own price and conditions. Sell to the end user and bypass the resellers

The opportunity arrived and I almost didn’t realize it at the time.