Ingenuity that opens doors

Quality manager George Daintree started telling the tale of how he had put a bigger door knob on his 84-year-old mother Ethel’s door to make it easier to open because she struggled to grip and turn at the same time.

Bull and Daintree started thinking. How about inventing a device which made it easy to turn keys if you struggled to grip? At the back of their minds was the idea that Ronco could manufacture the device, reducing its dependence on tyrannical clients.

“In subcontract machining the customer tells you how much to make it for and that’s that,” says Bull. “The holy grail of any machine shop is to have its own product. Even better if that product is backed up with the intellectual rights.”

It didn’t take long for Bull and Daintree, who had worked for 10 years in a shipyard drafting office, to come up with a prototype. There were three things to consider, says Daintree. First the mechanism, something that mimicked a spanner on a nut. Second, the device had to fit over existing locks. And third the key had to be guided easily into the hole, which suggested a concave shape.

“We didn’t use any computers,” says Bull. “There’s nothing like manual drafting for getting it right. You can see the whole packet, you can see the clashes happening.”

The first attempt didn’t work at all. The device, which they have called Handilock, is complex because different parts rotate in different planes and because of the tolerances. Some tolerances have to be purposely slack.

They persevered and by the end of February that same year, 2002, they had patented it and had a working model, made from brass. The Turnkey fits over an existing lock, a key is guided through the middle of it and then a level handle pulled to turn the key.

“That was the quick bit,” says Bull ruefully. “When you start trying to improve it and hit various standards, that’s when it becomes really complicated.”

But they knew they were on to a winner because the prototype was in demand. One of Ronco’s employees, 22-year-old Joanne Musgrove who has acute arthritis and joint hypermobility, asked if one could be put on the factory kitchen door. She found it really helped and asked for more for her house. Other Ronco employees soon started requesting them for friends and relatives.

Now Bull realises just how great the potential number of customers is. As well as older people who have difficulty gripping, and people with arthritis and similar conditions, there are over 300,000 blind and partially-sighted people in England alone. That all adds up to about four million people, reckons Bull.

The challenge for Ronco is how to get to those four million. They tried local business support groups for advice. Bull is scathing about them. “There’s lots of business support groups and most of them are absolutely useless,” he says. “We came across a couple who were worse than useless.”

Fortunately they came across the Knowledge House in January 2003, an organisation which connects local businesses with expertise and resources from the universities of Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland, Teesside and the Open University in the North. “Knowledge House had exactly what we needed, which was design capability,” says Bull.

Northumbria University’s Rapid Product Development department in the School of Engineering and Technology refined the device to improve its looks and make it ready for manufacture. All the prototype’s parts were metal but the final version uses other materials.

As it turns out, it will be much more economical to cast the Handilock than machine them in Ronco’s shop. There are several versions to fit different types of lock.

Success then for Ronco? Not quite, because there is still another hurdle to jump for Bull and his fellow directors, all of whom are directors of Axis (NE) which has been set up to hold the patent for Handilock. They have to market it.

“For us to market it would cost an absolute fortune and take ages,” says Bull. “And the banks don’t want to know. One bank, who we have borrowed £7m from over the past seven years, is just not interested.”

Bull has also discovered that the government’s small loan guarantee scheme doesn’t work in practice. The idea is that the DTI will secure 75% of a loan, leaving 25% unguaranteed. But the banks always want a guarantee for the 25%.

So Ronco needs to find a partner with some marketing clout. According to Bull, several major lock companies are interested. Sensibily, he doesn’t want to name any names just yet. But with any luck, Bull and Daintree’s bright idea will be appearing on a door near you soon in the not-too-distant future.