In simple terms, we had to supply a product, pay for all the products to be manufactured, produce all promotional brochures, find resellers willing to try and sell them, take a hit on the selling price and not get paid until months later. I looked at this business model and just thought whoever thought up this one was a genius as long as you weren’t the manufacturer. Everything was stacked against you unless you were a large supplier that had endless resources. Small time players just wouldn’t last and we were smaller than small.

We needed to either expand the product range to have any hope of surviving or change the business model. Expanding the product range meant we needed more cash and I was the only one with money and a house. This was not looking good. I was not going to risk my house and I didn’t want to spend any more money on a business model and partner that was dodgy.

We were at the mercy of the resellers. They had the client base via their mail order catalogues and traveling salesmen. They controlled the game. We were just expendable pawns.

There had to be another way to make money online and not get caught in the rat cage of wholesale, middleman and reseller.

Most nights while I was in partnership and losing bucket loads of money I kept thinking about how to tweak the business model. So I started to design different vacuum models and systems and I became quite skilled at it. I would look at catalogues or images online of different vacuum systems and wonder how I could make them using readily available parts from the local hardware store. Some parts just needed to be made specifically in a CNC machine, but not all. And with clever design I could keep the cost down. The main costs of building a vacuum are the laser cutting of the metal, the welding of the metal and the machining of the internal components. So I set about designing products with the minimal amount of welding and then finding a cheap source of machining.