A businessman has seen his revolutionary gardening product ideas blossom into life, with the help of the Product Development Service at the University.
Owner of the hanging basket company Plantopia, Chris Haley, had a vision for a new premiere line product - a wall basket with durability and strength that would allow for multiple planting through its front section.
Developed through 50 years of experience in horticulture, Chris had thought through even the finest details of his new product line – right through to how the basket fix to a wall to how it should stack and fit on Europe-wide standard trolleys.
The University team was tasked with drawing up plans, creating prototypes, working with a tool-making company in China who created the moulds and seeing through the process to the finished product.
The result is what product design senior lecturer and business consultant, Karl Gregory, describes as the 'Rolls-Royce of garden baskets'.
Said Karl: 'Chris' vision of what he wanted to create was incredibly detailed. His experience clearly gave him a strong vision and exacting quality focus – my challenge was giving him everything he wanted.
'Our rapid prototyping equipment here in the Product Design Studios is perfect for this type of challenge.
'Quickly and simply, they allow us and the client to see before us what should work on paper. I was concerned we might miss the challenge's demands by fractions of millimetres, but the rapid prototyping machine enabled us to create a perfect model of what would be finally manufactured.
'We have been involved in almost all the key moments in bringing this product to the customer and so we have picked up some new skills ourselves.'
The tool-making equipment was made in China and transported to a firm in Blackburn, Lancashire, called High-tech Plastics. Using recyclable plastic to create the baskets in three colours, 35,000 wall baskets have been manufactured since March and now sell as far away as Moscow.
Chris says that in the UK alone, 25 million hanging baskets are bought every year. He says his slice of that market is small, but growing. Plantopia hanging baskets have been featuring on a shopping channel and demand is rocketing.
Plantopia now produces three types of hanging basket – a 12" and 14" traditional, as well as the wall-mounted. They all have the 'gateway' feature, allowing plants to be planted within the basket body, giving layers of flowers which can potentially cover the basket in blooms.
Said Plantopia's owner, Chris: 'I'm a third generation nurseryman and remember making hanging baskets with my grand-dad, so that's 50 years in the business.
'It is only through years of manufacturing that we've concluded "there has to be a better way than this" and applied science to the problems.
'They are undoubtedly a success – we can't make them fast enough at the moment. That sort of success brings its own stress, but it's a good stress!'