Nick Rutter made his first attempt at being an entrepreneur at the age of
five. One day, to his mother’s dismay, he dug up all the flowers in the
front garden to create a flower stall.
The middle one of three children, he was born in Lymm in Cheshire. “My father
was a bit of a mad entrepreneur. He had numerous businesses but was never
very successful. While he was racing round on these ventures, people were
coming round trying to repossess the television set.”
His parents divorced when Rutter was six and his mother married a quantity
surveyor. “It has been very interesting,” said Rutter, “because I have the
genes of this slightly crazed entrepreneur yet the upbringing of a quantity
surveyor who was very sensible and reliable and made sure that the bills
were paid.”
At school he tried another entrepreneurial venture with a friend, attempting
to sell a homemade version of hacky sacks which he called Toe Tappers. He
said: “We filled them with split peas, which turned out to be a problem
because if they got wet they exploded.”
Rutter left school at 18 with a single E at A-level but managed to get onto an
automo-tive engineering HND course at Coventry university. He followed it
with a transport-design degree at Coventry but when the university was
unable to find him a placement he decided to try his luck in Hong Kong,
where his sister worked.
He spent the next two years there working for entrepreneurs and on his return
to Britain in 1997 to finish his course he was determined to give it a go
himself.
Rutter joined forces with another student on his course, Sam Tate, and in 1998
the two of them set about trying to create a branded niche product for which
they could charge a premium.
“We were looking for a product area where there was no strong branding, where
there was an opportunity to innovate, which was in plastic electronics where
my experience and contacts in China could help out, and for which there was
a global opportunity,” he said.
Hoping for inspiration the two of them starting looking around Tate’s house.
They noticed a smoke alarm on the ceiling with its wires hanging out and
realised it was the perfect product for them.
“We sat down one night with a pen and paper and a couple of bottles of red
wine and said we were going to redesign the smoke alarm. By the next morning
we had come up with the idea for a plug-in alarm.”
The smoke alarm would plug into a light fitting and have a rechargeable
battery that would recharge when the light was on and power the alarm when
it was not. Rutter and Tate managed to win £55,000 of funding through a
scheme run by Coventry university, which also helped them to file a patent.
They started developing a prototype but, realising they would need more money,
brought in three investors, who put in £250,000 in return for a 60% share of
the business, leaving Rutter and Tate with 20% each. After another year
spent developing the product, Rutter and Tate floated the business on Ofex,
raising a further £1.2m and leaving him and Tate with 15% each.
In 2001 the alarm was an instant hit on its launch in B&Q stores. Fire
Angel turned over more than £1.2m in the first six months and within nine
months the product was also being stocked in Woolworths, Tesco and
Sainsbury.
Rachel Bridge’s third book, You Can Do It Too – the 20 essential things every
budding entrepreneur should know, is published by Kogan Page and is
available from The Sunday Times Books First at £14.99 (including postage and
packaging) on 0870 165 8585 or at timesonline. co.uk/booksfirst Fuelled by
its success, Rutter then made a big mistake. He decided to go for the
American market, believing it was the only way to meet the expectations of
investors.
Unfortunately it led him into two-and-a-half years of approval wrangles and,
ultimately, a distribution deal that delivered few sales. Even now sales in
America are a tiny fraction of the total.
Fortunately, business in the UK continued to thrive and in 2004 Fire Angel was
invited to create a range of products for Tesco. The company also started to
sell carbon-monoxide alarms and developed a range of basic smoke-detection
devices.
As a result, turnover last year was £7.2m and after nine years of trading the
company made its first profit – £1m.
Now aged 36 and with a 13% stake in the business, Rutter thinks the secret of
his success has been staying calm in the face of adversity.
In the light of his experiences in America he has this advice: “Don’t bite off
more than you can chew. Stick to what you know and do it really well. And
only when you have done it, do the next thing.”
