T I P S F ROM THE TOP
THIS FORMER WINNER OF THE APPRENTICE, 41, ON BRINGING IDEAS TO LIFE AND HOW ADVICE FROM HIS BUSINESS PARTNER LORD SUGAR HELPED HIM
It’s very important to say that the £250,000 does all go into the business. Contracts are signed, it’s very properly done. I was then based from Lord Sugar’s offices. I had a desk literally outside his office.
Was that intimidating?
Very intimidating. And I had one of his longest-serving team opposite me. That was how we started and gradually our team grew. Mainly we spent the money on stock. I had the idea for the curved nail file, the Stylfile. I spent some money redesigning it and then finding suppliers, visiting manufacturers and customers. Then we
Intimidating:. Lord Sugar. bought 50,000 pieces, having done a deal with Sainsbury’s. I did all the sales meetings and designed most of the packaging. Then it was a case of turning that stock into money so you could buy more stock, then going to Boots and Tesco to open up those accounts as well while trying to design other things that go with nail files.
Did being on The Apprentice help?
Yes, I’d walk into
Sainsbury’s and it wasn’t like
‘Who is the crazy person?’ it was, ‘Oh, it’s Tom from The Apprentice.’ Money can’t buy that. Also, I was portrayed very kindly on the show. I’d hate to have been a villain, where everyone hates you. It wasn’t always easy. Sometimes you’d have meetings just because people wanted to meet you – they didn’t want to do business with you. Luckily, in my game, you know who you need to meet. So the business grew until I was able to hire extra people. We turned over £5 million last year.
At the beginning, going into Sainsbury’s, we were launching with three products including a nail file and a nail buffer. My feeling was that they were the same brands so they should be in similar-coloured packaging. Lord Sugar was like, ‘No, no, no. Make the other one a completely different colour. Pink and blue.’ So I changed the buffer to a turquoise blue so they looked very different. I walked into Sainsbury’s and showed them, and the buyer was like, ‘I’m so glad you’ve made it really clear they’re different. People don’t have all day when they’re shopping to decide and then they are really irritated when they’ve bought the wrong one.’ That was within the first couple of months of working with him.
Did you know from a young age that you wanted to be an inventor?
I always loved taking things apart. Luckily, it was things that were actually broken. I would get given the stereo that was broken – the toaster, the kettle. Back in the day, you could fix stuff. These days it’s much more difficult to fix things. Health and safety is a little more stringent than it was in the 1980s.
The biggest thing to bear in mind when inventing is that it takes a long time. I would always encourage people to stick with their day jobs for as long as they possibly can and probably try to invent something in a field they know a lot about and have good connections in. That’s always been Lord Sugar’s mantra: stick with what you know. Then there’s luck and timing.
Are there inventors’ fairs?
There are but there’s a lot more to inventing than coming up with an idea and solving a problem. There is also marketing and sales and finding your customer. Regrettably, a lot of the personality traits you need to solve a problem aren’t the same traits you then need to market it. If you’re looking for advice, Rob Law at Trunki has a book out which is well worth reading.
Mistakes, you’ve made a few?