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INNOVATION RESOURCES

Pool-Mate

Breakthrough:
An innovative patented watch packed with proprietary software that recognizes swimming stokes and laps so that swimmers don’t have to count anymore. Pool-Mate does it for them.

Inventor:
Lisa Irlam, United Kingdom

Financial reward:
$1 million +

The Story:

Since its launch in September 2009 Pool-Mate has been making a big splash in no fewer than 60 countries. It is a fully automatic swimming computer and prior to its invention there was nothing like it in the marketplace.

The watch is equipped with a motion sensor, state of the art accelerometers, advanced digital signal processing techniques and software algorithms. It works out speed, distance swum and number of calories burnt. It also tells swimmers how efficient they are allowing them to work out how to become a better swimmer.

Irlam is an amateur triathlete in her spare time, and was looking for a device that would automatically keep a record of her performance, but the only products she could find involved hitting a button at the end of every lap.

There were lots of gadgets for runners and athletes, but nothing for swimmers, and so spotting a gap in the market she decided to have a go at coming up with her own product.

Irlam worked closely with her husband, and as both had backgrounds in the electronics industry they felt they possessed the skills to advance beyond the basic concept stage.

Forming a Company

They formed their own company in November 2007 and Irlam gave up her secure job in project management to pursue her vision full-time. Her husband Jim kept his so they could pay the mortgage and bills.

They had some savings but not a lot and were determined not to use investors to fund their enterprise. To keep costs at a minimum they decided to do most of the work themselves, experimenting with a number of different technologies and algorithms before hitting on the approach that would fulfill all the needs of their watch. They only called in professionals when the invention needed fine-tuning.

Buried Under a Mountain of Patent Applications

Irlam then went to the British library to research patents and after reading piles of them had a good idea of what was required, and so drafted her own application. She showed it to a patent lawyer who made a few modifications, reformatted it and then filed it.

Working Prototype

Once they had a working prototype the inventive couple took it down to their local pool for testing, and asked for feedback from the swimmers in Lisa’s swimming club. Armed with a slew of data they fed it in to their PC and used the information to refine the idea still further.

Major Modifications

Initially Pool-Mate was going to be just a simple watch for triathletes who actually only swim front crawl. But other swimmers said they wanted one and so it was back to the patent office for another round of research before filing another patent. During her research she discovered that swimming is the world’s biggest sport, with 70 million swimmers in the US alone. So a clever watch that would be suitable for every swimmer and not just triathletes made sense.

Their technology was not quite up to accounting for all swimming strokes and so Pool-Mate went through another round of development and exhaustive testing.

Half a dozen new prototypes were then handed out to swimmers at a number of different pool sessions and again the Irlams downloaded the data and made adjustments to their technology.

Marketing Pool-Mate

The inventive pair had no idea of how to market their innovation and talked to a number of different licensing companies. Although many were interested they said they wouldn’t be able to get it to market quickly which is what the Irlams wanted.

In the end they decided to go it alone. They found a manufacturer in China and to keep finances under control based the Pool-Mate on an existing watch case into which they would slot their electronics.

They had the money to buy 1000 of the manufacturer’s watches but the
company would only sell 5000. The Irlams didn’t have sufficient funds and so they spent weeks looking for another manufacturer. The couple also designed a bespoke LCD, and made the decision to get their own watch case made for the Pool-Mate.

Their son Christopher was studying product design at the time and so Irlam bought a CAD program and learnt how to use it, asking her son for help whenever it was needed.

Pure Profit

Pool-mate was launched in September 2009 and was an instant success. To get word out the couple made videos and posted them on You Tube and targeted sports magazines. Lisa also wrote a press release and submitted it to an online PR site. Within a couple of weeks it had been picked up by a slew of blogs and gadget reviewers. The Irlams also approached retailers personally and started to sell the watch through their website.

Within three months the Pool-Mate pair had covered all their development costs, and now they are in pure profit. Further products based on the original Pool-Mate are now in the pipeline.

[NEXT STORY]Article by: Paul Arnold

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