RBD returns to BBC 2’s “The Dragons’ Den”!

Red Button Design will be returning to ‘The Den’ and your TV screens on Wed 28th Sept!

The new series “How To Win In The Den” will bring viewers up to date with RBD’s progress and showcase the Midomo water-purifiers at their most advanced stage of development. The units will at last be shown out in a community in Eastern Kenya doing what they were designed to do; providing locally managed, environmentally neutral, safe drinking water.

Directors Amanda Jones and James Brown will also be interviewed on the triumphs and tribulations they have experienced along their 4 year journey.

The episode will air in a fortnight: Wednesday 28th September, BBC2 8pm Scotland /9pm England

EDIT: check for regional variations / repeats via the RadioTimes.com listing

In the mean time, you can catch up with us on www.midomo.co.uk
and, for real-time communication, on twitter:
@RedButtonDesign and @MidomoBracelet

Kind words..

The Midomo Bracelet featuring in the ‘Stuff we Love’ section of School for Startups is just the latest in a recent run of media attention for Red Button Design. Here’s our five favourite pieces of current press, for your browsing pleasure.

1. Doug Richard’s School for Startups: The Midomo Bracelet initiative is described as ‘intuitive, ambitious and visionary’ and ‘the perfect gift for an enterprising woman.’

2. BSSEC blog: The Birmingham and Solihull Social Economy Consortium wrote an article on the successful implementation of the first Midomos in Mwingi, which were funded by the Midomo Bracelet Initiative.

3. Director magazine: Red Button’s CEO, Amanda, was interviewed on the topic of frugal innovation. She said of Midomo, ‘everything about it came down to needs, not wants’

4. Trendhunter: ‘The successful Midomo launch in Mwingi, Kenya goes to show that humanitarian product design coupled with grassroots initiatives can have buoyant results without disrupting a community’s livelihood and way of life.’

5. Elevator: Red Button Design in a double page spread that describes Midomo as ‘an extraordinarily effective solution ..that could very quickly change the lives of millions of people,’

Snapshot: July 2010

So the last post, June's Snapshot, was one of the most viewed posts I've ever written outside of the 12 Lessons Series. Who'd have thought you'd actually appreciate a bit of concrete info! Obliging as ever, I thought I'd make it a regular thing and see how long it takes you to get bored ;-)
Welcome to July's Snapshot...

Growing the Team
Spoilt for choice I have hired not one, but two new interns into the Red Button Family. Sophie Orbaum and Esme Jones are both fantastic UCL graduates poised to take over different parts of our sales and marketing efforts. Not exactly chosen for their propensity to be shy and retiring, I'll let them introduce themselves in due course!

Design and Build
Whilst awaiting delivery of our new units, design and build has turned into an operations and logistics mission relating to sales targets and the speed at which we are able to roll out in various regions/countries.. However, as ops & logistics is one of my least favourite things, it has also provided the opportunity for parallel fantasy-planning for our impending launch party! What can I say? Needs must on both accounts!

The Internets
Work has begun, not just on a new space for the blog, but a complete redesign of the site-that-never-really-was. Though, for convoluted and uninteresting reasons we have always based at thisisredbutton.co.uk, we've recently secured redbuttondesign.co.uk and midomo.co.uk for development. Big on ideas but strapped for time and resources, these are coming along very slowly indeed, so any web designers fancying a bit of pro bono work in return for love and beer/wine please do give us a shout! :-)

Sales and Marketing
Gosh this is an exciting subject at the moment! So, not only will you be able to buy a Midomo online this Christmas and donate it to a certified NGO of your choice, but we have a very sexy, top secret retail collaboration underway which .. well.. I can't say much (Sophie will kill me) but it's awesome. Really awesome.

Safety and Certification
Happy to say that following on from last month's hinting, we will be working with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to test our new prototypes and corroborate the previous trials undertaken up in Scotland and, subsequent to winning the National Laboratory Services design award for environmental technology last year, we will also be benefiting from this exciting partnership to create a simple water-safety diagnostic test, suitable for use on site. Cool, huh?

Problem Solving
Well, James elected to remove last month's problem by getting too sick to work for a while. Oh yes, despite me clearly telling him he was not allowed to go away and get ill, he managed to get Malaria ... all of two weeks before having his thunder stolen by Cheryl Cole! Don't worry though, he was well looked after and is now on the mend - meaning that I will very shortly get to battle with temptation at the Apple Store after all..

Reading
I'm currently reading The Island by Aldous Huxley on the recommendation of one of my shareholders and I just can't believe I haven't read it before.. No excuses, it's amazing, get your hands on a copy now!

Watching
Professor Philip Zimbardo's RSA Animate contribution The Secret Powers of Time which looks at the way in which our individual perspectives of time not only affect our work, health and well-being but how, depending on which of the six "time zones" you live in, time also influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world..

Moonlighting
at Pants to Poverty trying to coax them into being an all singing, all dancing, blogging, tweeting, facebooking lot. Y'see what I did there? I'm worth every penny they're not paying me.. :)

RBD Snapshot: June 2010..

There's a slight possibility you've already noticed this, or previously had it brought to your attention, but it's June already. Yes, no less than 45.2% of 2010 has already gaily paraded by and is now drinking in the pub..

So having avowed to be better at communicating (as opposed to just making noise) here's a quick insight into a few of the goings on around here..

Growing the Team
Not content to settle at 12 we're after a Lucky 13th RBD'er. Using UCL's fantastic Advances Internship programme we have already had over a dozen excellent CVs and will be interviewing and hiring over the coming fortnight. For your interest, this is the 'job description' as advertised..

Design and Build
Work has recently resumed with alacrity towards our centrally manufactured prototypes and within a week we should know when the first samples will arrive in the UK.. Do I even need to say you'll be hearing more on this soon? ..

The Internets
I am trying to clear some space to tidy up our web presence. I know it's still rubbish, it's something that started badly way back in 2007 and has never really been resolved. Plans are afoot to create something worthy but, in the mean time, here's a sneak preview of this blog's soon-to-be new home. Don't switch your RSS just yet though - it still needs a little work!

Sales and Marketing
Speaking of online.. would you like to be able to buy a Midomo online this Christmas and donate it to a certified NGO of your choice? Yes, we rather thought you would.. working on it.

Safety and Certification
Just peeking over the horizon, we have some very exciting partnerships for certifying Midomo's performance both in the field and a repeat test under Lab conditions. Thinking a little further forward (and don't you ever accuse us of being unambitious) we're exploring the possibility of creating a new water-safety diagnostic test, suitable for on site use by minimally trained individuals..

Problem Solving
It would appear that, over the weekend, James was able to find a source of mains electricity for his MBP on the road towards Kenema. It would also appear that Salonean electricity and shiny Apple devices don't mix. Within a few hours of work, and just a few minutes on Skype with me, the power cable met it's demise with a exasperated little 'pop'* and the MBP would charge no more. Now we're both wishing he'd stayed old skool and stuck to the oil powered generator in Bo and all that remains is for me to:
    a) go to the Apple store and purchase a new power cable.. only a
       new power cable.. and NOT an iPad...
    b) somehow safely send my existing power cable to Sierra Leone..
    c) preferably arriving in less than the 8 weeks remaining before his
       visit to the UK
    d) get it somewhere James can collect it
    e) send him these instructions..


In other news, here's some of what I have been up to..

Reading
I've just finished reading The Spirit Level and can't recommend it enough. I tend to alternate between books I want to read and books I categorise under 'development' (professional or personal) I rarely enthuse about the latter, as useful as they are, so it came as some surprise that this was a funny, engaging and insightful look into why inequality not relative wealth / poverty is the root of society's ills..

Watching
“How to start a movement” ..what transforms a lone nut into a leader.
It's a 3 Min TED talk by Derek Sivers and I cannot encourage you enough to watch. Seriously, you can view it in the time it takes the kettle to boil and it'll make your morning

Moonlighting
On a project code named "Hackney Pirates" which is every little bit as cool as it sounds and gives me regular opportunity to drop nautical puns and speak like a pirate. Learn more via the usual ports of call ;) @HackneyPirates, Facebook and though still a work in progress, we're online at www.hackneypirates.org


Not sure that's quite how an informative blog post ought to go - but feedback always welcome via Twitter or comments below.

* I totally made that up. I have no idea what sound, if any, it made when it failed.
Picture credit to James who is has been uploading some amazing images to this album

Lets skip some of the narrative and get right to the good news..

Yeah yeah, I hear ya: "It's all well and good telling us what you did 12 months ago but where are you now? Are you still going? ..Does it work? ..Can I buy one?"

Well, the short answer is yes, yes, no, not yet. Let me expand, but skip some of the narrative... 'eh? (buy me a drink in the pub if you want the rest of the "Dragon's Den" story, the "Law suit against a major business support agency" story, or the "3 minutes away from losing our patent" story .. buy me the whole damn bottle if you want the "So, you're in London.. and James is living in Sierra Leone??!" story..) ..and get right to the good news.

We're funded.
We've re-designed, re-branded, we've got manufacturers, suppliers, and we're beginning production.

There, that's better isn't it?

I won't say too much while we're still pushing paper on the investment, but suffice to confirm the deed is done (was settled on my 26th Birthday none-the-less). And incidentally, for those who knew us way back when, this means that the, long in exile, 3rd director is no longer with the company in any facet; shares, power or intellectual property
(if you don't know this story .. add it to the 'buy me a drink' list above!)

Unbelievably this also means we are now a team of 12. James heading up product design and cultural implementation, myself on business model development and sales/marketing, we have a primary investor, a non exec director, 4 vocal and hugely talented 'value-adds' and 4 (mostly) silent loyal supporters!! It sounds more hectic than it is, though, as the reality remains I'm the only full timer and most days I work from home.

I should expand on my mention that James is living in Sierra Leone. He left (the country not the company!) about 6 weeks ago to apply his engineering skills to developing an appropriate and accessible way to dig water wells in developing countries. Not only is this a natural expansion for Red Button Design and extremely valuable in terms of the data being gathered, but we also hope that the team he is forming can become our first worker owned manufacturing co-operative. You can follow his work via his Blog, his updates on Twitter: @RBDAfrica and see some of his pictures on Flickr

Product-wise, thanks to a concentrated effort by James, our design support team at Quadro, and our international sourcing contacts at Tiger Global, we have finalised what would have been "ROSS 3.0" but is now simply known under our new name 'Midomo'.

Midomo is about to undergo its first production run with our new manufacturers and suppliers. We expect this to go ahead within the next 8 weeks, meaning we should have something for you to put your grubby paws all over come Autumn! And yes, expect a London-based launch party in which I force lovely influential humanitarians, entrepreneurs & willing volunteers to publicly drink Midomo-purified water and hope they're still talking to me a week later.. In more ways than one!!

Which brings me on to that very obvious question.. "When can I buy one?"..
Now, my team don't like me making promises about when we will be ready to make commercial sales, so I absolutely cannot say that I expect to close the first orders in November. But as soon as everyone is comfortable announcing November as our expected sales date, I promise I'll let you know... ;-)

Just one last thing, this post actually has a slightly ranty but honest and well meaning Addendum, which you can read, if you so wish, by following the link below...

Addendum: An Optional Explanation Of Time & Rescouces..

Addendum: An Optional Explanation Of Time & Resouces..

Appreciably, there are always a lot of questions surrounding the length of time this has been under development. Some genuinely interested .. some pushing on accusatory .. (some worse..) And I would be lying if I didn't say that, on occasion, I find this a rather irritating and difficult issue to address. I can't help but wonder what one imagines the capability could be, for two broke students to run and fund an R&D project on a new technology which needs certification from the World Health Organisation itself? Just how anyone, at 25, goes about getting meetings at the United Nations, raising half a million quid.. let alone the hum drum question of how to afford your mobile phone bill when you're refusing to take a 'real' job..

Don't get me wrong, though this sounds aggressive it really is nothing of the sort. I completely understand that given my pitch often includes the statistic "lack of access to safe drinking water results in 10,00 deaths every day" people gain a sense of urgency! The same sense of urgency perhaps that we all have, at RBD, and keeps us working on the project despite some unimaginably taxing and harrowing personal sacrifices.

I often use the analogy of a vaccine or a new drug to make my point known. because even once the development and internal trials are finished, the sheer beurocracy of creating something which essentially takes another human beings life, and puts it in your hands ...

Well.
That isn't a process I am willing to rush.

But I do get it, and I genuinely apologise to those of you who feel this has been a long time coming. I feel your boredom, eagerness and frustration more acutely than you know. I invite you to get in touch and find out how we've been progressing - you never know, there might be something you can do to help speed the process along..

We never set out to start a business... but this is how it started.

(apologies for the delay ..my dog ate my homework? Well, actually, blogger ate my first post and I was so dismayed at needing to re-write everything it took a while to replace it.. I'm sure the first version was shorter, funnier and more eloquent .. but here we are)

Red Button Design was founded by James Brown and Myself in 2007, six months after we'd come up with what we thought was a pretty cool idea; a water purification product that avoided chemical or electrical components, and made dirty water drinkable at the same time as assisting in its localised transport.

The idea itself evolved slowly. James and I were, even then, both actively involved in humanitarian issues and understood the need for more sympathetic technologies. Over coffee one day we were bemoaning the need for something more responsive than taking what the capital rich R&D departments of medical and military institutions were creating, tweaking it for robustness and economy, and selling into NGOs under the fashionable banner of 'appropriate design'. With typical student arrogance and youthful naivety - we thought we could do better..

The market needed an answer. James, who at the time was in the penultimate year of the hugely esteemed Glasgow School of Art "Product Design Engineering" Masters, needed a dissertation project worthy of his skills and interests and I, only recently graduated with my second degree, this time a joint Masters in Psychology and Philosophy, was looking for a way to avoid "a real job" that was more productive than cycling back into the oppressive world of arts & academia...

We never set out to start a business... but that is how it started.

It didn't take long for the Scottish enterprise community to catch sight of our little hobby-project, and when they suggested that there were a few competitions with cash prizes for designs like this .. well. Have I mentioned my dislike of traditional work?

Our first win was the university enterprise group's "Big Idea" competition. We netted £500, a pleasing bubble of praise, a bit of publicity and a mandatory trip to the local high-street business advisory centre. They, with little more than a cursory glance, sent me off to "gather support", by which I suppose they meant conduct some market research and come back with interviews, case studies and testimonials. However, I was unsupervised (James was after-all still in full time education) and prone as ever to insubordination and grand gestures, I elected to take a .. slightly less traditional tack.

What we actually did was apply for and win a series of high profile enterprise and design awards and then, one night, about 3am, safe at home in my pyjamas, my ego got the better of me ... and I applied for the Dragons Den.

To be honest, the day the BBC phoned to interview me, I was at work in one of my many short-lived attempts at engaging with the concept of 9-5 in return for a wage. I conducted the interview hiding in the stock room and agreed to screen test 200 miles away the day after next. We had nothing. No prototype, just a drawing and some theory. I was supposed to be at work all that week, and I hadn't told James I had even applied for the Show (nor, infact, did I until we were on the train!! ..) It's a good story! :) However... it's not a story for today.

For what it's worth, we never did get a prototype together for the filming and yet the show yielded us the best deal ever seen on the programme at that time. All 5 Dragons' coming in for the full amount, for the original equity offered. Despite this, good TV is still just good TV, and off air some months later we turned the deal down. For the next year we proceeded agonizingly slowly, crippled by lack of time, money and resources.

It took a year, but when my ego finally gave in and we returned to the 'Den' to do the follow up programme we had a brand new working prototype show off. This first fully-functional unit was the fruit of James spending his 'summer holidays' hauled up in his Dad's garage with a tiny budget, a brief that industry experts said he couldn't achieve, and me 350-odd miles away. I will never know how he achieved it .. though I'm reliably assured the latter was somehow critical (!)

Thanks to a second spike in publicity we clawed in just enough support to commission a biochemical report conducted by a UN microbiologist, the last line of which, is probably the most boring arrangement of phonemes ever to have made me 'squee' with delight:

"It can be concluded from this preliminary study that the system was effective in the removal of organisms from contaminated water."

This prototype, hand built on no budget, fully expected to fail at every post, went on to pass some further stringent tests, won some more awards including one very notable scientific award from the National Laboratory Service. We were stunned. Don't get me wrong, it was not perfect and it also won us some harsh criticism. It was this polarized reaction, thought, that triggered what was to be a long hard slog to find the financial and experiential support we'd, frankly, been struggling to survive without.

It seems simple enough to say it now: "we built a prototype", "we commissioned a report", but that first year and a half was in every way the most extreme tax on our emotions and resources. By the time 2009 rolled around James and I were both, at once, ready to jack it all in and finally certain that what we had was viable.

I'll not speak for him but I will admit that there were times I had hoped that the prototypes would fail the tests, the patent searches would reveal prior IP, or that the market would be stormed by something better, and that I would be forced to step down, guilt free.

But it didn't. I haven't and that's just the first chapter.
So on to 'the now'...

An Update on the Update..

It's a very telling thing, but as I went to write that long-awaited update post, it became very clear that I couldn't update you without recapping where we were last time we spoke. I couldn't really say or justify where we were, though, without mentioning how we'd gotten there. How we got there necessarily involved mentioning 'why' or what the overall aim was, which I would assume you all know except that, thanks to OxfordJam and recent re-runs of The Dragons' Den, I have acquired a volume of new followers..

All in, it started to seem as if I should just start at the beginning.
So I did..
And it got long.

Too long for one post.

So, as of tomorrow I will be posting the following..

1) The Intro
2) The Status Quo
3) The Future
4) The FAQs

And if there is anything that lot doesn't cover (!) you'll be able to add additional questions in the comments section of the FAQs. How's that sound? :-)