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INNOVATION RESOURCES

Stopgap

Breakthrough:
A simple and elegant solution to stopping cold air coming through floorboards. Stopgap is a flexible polypropylene wood floor draught excluder system.

Inventor:
Marcus Plummer, United Kingdom

Financial reward:
$200,000+

The Story:
Stopgap

Marcus Plummer’s innovation started out like many other brilliant ideas. He discovered a problem, couldn’t find a solution, and so he came up with his own. “People see problems as a terrible disadvantage but problems can be an opportunity, and so it was very simple for me. I became an accidental inventor because I had a problem in my room.”

Plummeting Temperatures in a Period Property

Marcus and his wife had bought a beautiful period property in Cardiff, Wales. It was built in 1908 and underneath the carpets the couple discovered the house’s original pine floorboards. They set about restoring them and were overjoyed with the finished look.

However, as the days and months rolled on they noticed that the room was getting colder and colder. Even with the gas fire and radiator going at fall blast they couldn’t get the temperature to a comfortable level. Plummer knew the problem lay right beneath his feet: “Most people realize that floors are draughty, but until you do the math you can’t possibly understand the size of the problem.”

And so he grabbed a tape measure to work out the size of the gaps that were letting arctic-like blasts of air through. He was astonished with the answer; he calculated that the combined area of the gaps was about three square feet or 0.3 square meters – roughly the size of an open window.

Searching for a Solution

Plummer searched the aisles of several of DIY shops in Cardiff and looked online, but couldn’t find a single product that was cheap and easy to implement. He also consulted his sanding contractor who provided a few options which included filling the gaps with Papier-mâché or re-laying the entire floor. None of them appealed. And so in time-honored inventor tradition he designed his own product.

Introducing Stopgap

Stopgap is a neutral colored flexible strip of polypropylene that seals gaps in drafty floorboards. It is hardly visible after fitting and is also an effective barrier against dirt, dust, insects, smells, and even noise. The product can be applied to any gap between 1 and 8mm, and according to Plummer anyone can fit it.

When he set about creating his product he knew that it would have to satisfy several criteria. Plummer would “thrash out the problem” on his brisk early morning walks. The invention had to plug the gaps of course, but it should also be inconspicuous and allow for vacuuming and cleaning. He wanted it to be clean and applied retrospectively, and so it had to be some sort of solid seal; it couldn’t be liquid and messy. The draught excluder also had to compensate for the movement of the wood during the seasons, and be durable, inexpensive, and simple to fit so that consumers wouldn’t have to pay someone to do it for them. Eventually the solution presented itself, “a springy V-shaped design.”

Search for Material

A number of materials and designs were explored and investigated. Plastic foam which could be pressed into the holes was quickly ruled out because it wouldn’t be able to fit into small 1 mm gaps. The inventor credits several government organizations with helping him to get his invention off the ground. He received advice on the type of materials to use from Design Wales, a body that was created to provide a free and independent design advisory service to Welsh industry. And the Wales Innovators’ Network gave him plenty of advice about the patent application process. Through this organization he made contacts with many other inventors, “although I was a lone inventor, I wasn’t a lonely inventor.” This helped him through many of the challenges that came his way during the two and half years it took to get the product to market.

“We hit a wall at one time; we couldn’t find anyone to make it (Stopgap). Although it looks simple, the expertise to produce it is complex as the accuracy has to be spot on. We were stuck for months and months and started to lose a bit of momentum. And then at a meeting of inventors someone suggested a nearby company, and they said they could make it.”

Selling Directly to Customers

Plummer thought about the licensing route, but eventually decided to sell the product himself and so he created a website in 2004 to be his shop window. Not long after he received his first sale and remembers being “over the moon” at the thought that someone had gone onto his website, liked what they saw and clicked to make a purchase.

With a limited budget for advertising he has relied on PR to get his product known and Stopgap has featured in numerous magazines. He’s also fortunate that he has access to some of the best advertising in the world - his customers, many of whom give glowing testimonials as well as telling their friends and family about how to tackle their own draughty dwellings.

by Paul Arnold

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