Inventor flying high with idea for open-air leisure

Jun 17 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A FORMER miner has invested his pension to launch a business he hopes will put a lid on the problem of insects falling in your glass when you’re enjoying a drink in the open air.

Paloi Direct is the brainchild of Roger Harrison, who came up with the idea after his and his wife’s drinks were invaded by flies during a summer holiday. The name is an acronym of ‘put a lid on it’.

Mr Harrison said: “It started nearly three years ago in Spain when flies did kamikaze dives into our drinks. We fished them out but we couldn’t face our drinks after that.

“You could sit with your hand over your glass all night but that wouldn’t be very comfortable.”

Mr Harrison, of Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, began sketching and researching ideas for a drinks lid, starting with a beer mat and ending up with a plastic lid that also acts as a trinket box where keys and coins can be stored. The metal mould for the lid was created in China and the first batch of the completed model arrived in the North East last week.

Now 73 and retired for almost a decade, this is not Mr Harrison’s first foray into business. After 12 years as a miner, he opened a hotel with a partner and latterly ran a care home for elderly people in Whitley Bay.

However, he says he did not miss the buzz of business and only decided to come out of retirement because he thought there was a real market for Paloi Direct.

“I could see there was a niche for this. It’s a trinket box as well as a lid. It holds coins, keys, jewellery, etc. It’s a bit of a novelty,” he said.

“It’s functional and it’s fashionable. I hope to sell it to everybody from schoolchildren to the United Arab Emirates. I can sell any number from one to 1,000. Whatever the market asks for, I can get.”

Widescope web design in Blyth provided a grant which paid for half of the Paloi Direct website but Mr Harrison funded the design and manufacture of the product himself.

“I have invested my pension in it. I don’t owe anybody anything,” he said.