Zac Garton and Kitson Broadhurst, two student entrepreneurs, have recently been encouraged to seek funding for products they have developed.
Garton, who is studying for a BA in Entrepreneurship at Lancaster University Management School, developed a bottle fitted with a special filter component which produces juice when the bottle is refilled with tap water. The removable filter, containing a changeable capsule, is thought to be both environmentally and economically friendly especially as one capsule is capable of flavouring several water bottles.
Garton told Lancaster University News: “I was a joiner’s apprentice when I left school – it was then that I realised I would never be happy working for someone else so I left and enrolled in college. The attraction to me was finally doing something I truly wanted to do and having the opportunity to achieve what so few people do in creating a successful business.”
Central to Engineering student Kitson Broadhurst’s idea, was the stigma associated with asthma inhalers. “I’m an engineer so I like to tinker and improve things and I wanted to remove some of the stigma of having an inhaler,” he said. “I’ve had asthma all my life but for someone my age, I thought it would be better smaller and without a protruding corner so the inhaler fits in your pocket better.”
Broadhurst, a postgraduate student, has also personalised the inhaler, producing designs based on TV characters for children. There are also plans in the works for branded inhalers for teenagers with asthma, which Broadhurt hopes will sell both online and on the high street.
“It’s so easy to be an entrepreneur at university,” Broadhurst stated. “There is so much help on offer. I want to make my own job rather than end up in a job I don’t like and now is the time to do it when you have the opportunity.”
LUSU Involve’s Joe Buglass, who helps to provide innovating students with contacts and advice, has commented that both students have a bright future ahead.
“Both of them have the tenacity, the ideas and the drive to make things happen and we already have companies in the UK who are interested in helping them,” he told Lancaster University News.
The two students are now hoping to secure funds that would enable them to manufacture their products in China, with the aid of LUSU Involve and Allan Rennie of the University’s Product Development Unit.
