Finding the fast-track to commercial success is often as difficult for inventors and designers as bringing a concept to life.
The road to success for inventors is a difficult one with many obstacles. From the desire to get their technology noticed to finding the money to keep afloat and, ultimately, taking the right pathway to commercialisation, it’s often a tortuous journey.
For many, years of tinkering in the garage can end with a futile struggle for recognition by the corporate world. Increasingly, those who go that next step need to have some commercial savvy of their own to make the leap from technological development to market performance.
For Jim Plamondon, chief executive of Thumtronics Ltd, years as a marketing executive in Silicon Valley preceded his obsessive focus on the development of a new electronic instrument, the Thummer – but it was still not enough to avoid a big pitfall when he sought funding for his invention.
Mr Plamondon went back to the drawing board for financing, bolstered by the fact that the Thummer’s pedigree places it in the same league as previous commercial success stories.
Last year, the instrument won the Western Australian Information Technology and Telecommunications Association’ Innovation Award.
Previous winners PIVod Technologies, Commtech Wireless and iiNet have gone on to achieve commercial success, but Mr Plamondon is yet to taste it.
Mr Plamondon said he and business partner, Ben Darke, an electrical engineer and musician, were keen to get a major shareholder on board to fund their instrument.
The Thummer has a simple key independent display of musical notation where the pattern of the notes on the keyboard exposes the fundamental structure of music.
“I spent years in Silicon Valley as a software developer and marketing manager, later joining Mircrosoft where it was my job to take new technologies and establish them as de-facto proprietary industry standards,” Mr Plamondon said.
Retiring at age 39, he moved to Busselton in 2000. With time on his hands and faced with the need to make a living he decided to indulge his curiosity and find the simple truth of what was a complex music system.
“I put on 20 kilos in that time just working 24/7 making sure the Thummer was going to work. It was no good for my health but I needed to think about the project constantly in order to make connections and to advance the intellectual property and design of the product,” Mr Plamondon said.
In December 2005, after investing over $1 million of his own money into the working prototypes and with patents and business plan in hand, Mr Plamonden launched Thumtronics’ prospectus to the market, although he admits the company overvalued the product at the time.
“We made the classic start-up mistake of looking at the potential of a product which could dominate a billion dollar industry and overvalued it,” he said. “Of course it’s still speculative and so what we’ve had to do in effect is de-value the company by a factor of four.”
Mr Plamondon said Thumtronics needed an initial investment of $500,000 to produce the first commercial units of the Thummer, with the company still building its profile through word of mouth and online marketing.
Private funding is one avenue, but for Malaga company Formcraft an AusIndusty grant of $64,000 in January was just what it needed to continue the development of its insulated concrete formwork system for residential and commercial buildings.
Formcraft director and builder Mike Schock first saw the successful concept in the US and spent two years developing different panel designs and panel connection systems that were consequently patented and trialled on commercial projects in China.
“Our product represents a 5 per cent discount on the cost of double brick and can be constructed in half the time,” Mr Schock said.
“We’re currently developing a removable panel system with different finishes and are three months away from commercialisation.”
Mr Schock’s father, Rob, also a director at Formcraft, said the company had already constructed two residential projects in the eastern states, was currently building a multi-million dollar home in Yallingup and had other multi-storey residential projects in the pipeline in Western Australia.
The main challenges the company faced happened during the design, development and manufacturing phases, particularly in finding a market price that was reasonably acceptable.
“Initially producing in China was advantageous, but with shipping costs taken into account we’ve decided to commence some production in Australia,” Rob Schock said.
The business has had strong interest from buyers and investors but for now has hopes to expand throughout Australia and overseas, retaining the option of an ASX listing for “down the track”.
Taking the plunge and listing on the ASX in August 2004 was a confident step for WA company Shieldliner Ltd with its patented trenchless, pipe relining and rehabilitation technologies currently being tested and applied commercially.
Shieldliner managing director John Hassen, a former Pricewaterhouse-Coopers partner, has been involved with the company from day one, acquiring the intellectual property from another company, and with help from a creative team, turning the simple original concept into a new patented product.
Shieldliner has invested $320,000 in patents in four countries and has applications in 17 others.
Mr Hassen said many investors told businesses looking to raise capital “you’re too small, too early, come back later”, but with hard slog and a little luck the right investors came along for Shieldliner at the right time.
“Our early product runs were a disaster. When things broke down we couldn’t just go down to Bunnings and get new parts, we had to order from the US and wait,” he said.
Mr Hassen is not concerned with Shieldliner’s fluctuating share price, believing if it continues to “tick all the boxes”, the share price will look after itself. More pressing challenges for the growing company include developing a modular tooling program for lining pipes between 300 and 600mm in diameter.
