The outlook’s bright for sunscreen mums
THEY’RE the Dragons’ Den contestants from south Wales who came up with an invention that will be very useful in the current weather conditions.
Best friends Laura Waters and Kelli Aspland were on the show earlier this year with their children’s sunscreen applicator that has helped their business turn over £1.2m.
The pair created the product after a strict notouch policy was introduced in their children’s school, meaning teachers weren’t allowed to help pupils apply the sun protection.
The mums realised there was nothing on the market which helped children independently apply sunscreen and that many of the traditional suncream bottles and applicators were very difficult for children to use on their own.
So the pair, who have no previous experience of business, created the refillable, roll-on, mess-free sunscreen applicator after applying for a £5,000 investment from a friend and enlisting the help of product design students at Cardiff Metropolitan University.
They created Solar Buddies and went onto the BBC entrepreneurial programme to look for £80,000 for a 10% share in their business.
The applicator won plaudits from most of the Dragons, with Peter Jones describing it as “really good, very clever and very neat” and an enthusiastic Sara Davies told the pair: “It works really well.”
The pair, from Cwmbran, went on to choose to go with Peter and Deborah, who agreed to work together on Solar Buddies. It is on sale in Boots for £7.99 and is also for sale on Amazon and in 40 airports.
Wales saw its warmest day of the year so far on Sunday, with 23.3°C recorded in Porthmadog, and there is no rain in the forecast for the next week.
It looks set to remain sunny and dry, with above-average temperatures into the start of June.
Kelly told The Express: “There was nothing out there for the kids to be able to make this job easy and they always run away from you.
“It was just a bit of a moment where we thought, ‘let’s have a little Google and see if there’s anything about’ and there wasn’t.
“So we thought, ‘well, let’s have a little go at doing it ourselves.’”
Laura, who is mother to Emily, 22, Ffion, 16, and Ioan, 12, and Kelli, who has Olivia, 24, Sam, 22, Charlie, 16, and Harri, 13, started the venture when their children were younger.
They met each other when Charlie and Ffion were three and in nursery together and have been firm friends ever since.
They started working together when they realised there was an issue with their children applying sun cream when at school.
Kelli said: “One of the teachers at our children’s school had called me to tell me how my eldest son, Sam, had been asked to come help my middle son, Charlie, to apply his sunscreen at lunchtime and how much of a mess they had both got into.
“The teacher was telling me because it was a humorous story, and yes I laughed too, but when I told Laura about the story, she told me how her friend’s daughter, who attended a different school, had been badly sunburnt whilst at school because the teachers were unable to assist the children in applying the sunscreen.
“We then discussed how it would be great to have a product which would help the children to be protected from the sun whilst at school and an easier way for them to put lotion on, if they aren’t able to have assistance.”
The mums got talking and decided there must be a better way, and then spent time researching how a bottle should work.
Kelli says: “We went to our local healthcare shop and grabbed different types of applicator pads, rollerballs products and small containers. We took all these items home and ripped them apart and then started to combine them to create our designs.”