HUB FOCUS: Neonight Lighting Solutions Ltd
NEONIGHT LIGHTING SOLUTIONS LTD
Paul Sherring and Brian Griffin (far RIGHT) Electroluminescent visibility aids for cyclists and motorcyclists
Paul: Using electroluminescent material we are trying to create a visual signal that you are looking at a human being rather than a vehicle. We are also trying to focus on making the rider visible when seen from the side.
We have finished our final pre-production prototype. Next we’ll be looking for the finance to go into production with the bicycle version, and we’ll be investing into development of the motorcycle version.
Brian: At the moment we are looking for funding to get us to the end of the development stage. After that we’ll be looking for additional sums to pay for production, and to develop the motorcycle version. We are working hard to get the bicycle version to market by the middle of 2007, and the motorcycle version by the end of the year.
Paul: Protecting the IP has been the most challenging thing. We filed the patent very early, before we had a product ready to market. This meant that we didn’t have any revenue coming into the company to pay for the patent protection.
Brian: The Hub have helped us with a lot of good business advice. For example, we wrote a business plan and sent it to the Hub and they came back with a lot of questions that we hadn’t considered. Answering those questions helped us focus our thinking, to the point where we could justify the company to an investor much more convincingly.
Paul: One of our main hurdles has been finding the right partners to work with, and the Hub have really helped with that. For example they helped us to find a prototyping company when our first partner let us down – they’ve been really excellent.
Martin Brassell comments: Neonight’s combination of electroluminescent and reflective technology gives it the ‘wow’ factor. We’ve focused on helping Paul and Brian identify viable routes to market that keep risks and costs manageable; we can envisage a host of possible applications once an initial foothold has been established.
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Created Date: 23-03-2007
