Mark Champkins

“I’ve never been afraid of an idea! I studied Engineering at Cambridge but my real passion was design so I applied to the Royal College of Arts. When I was there, in 2002, I won the British Inventor of the Year Award for my range of self-heating crockery.  

“One of my projects at the RCA was to work with an architect to evaluate new school buildings for their effectiveness. I noticed some issues that were inhibiting the children’s attention spans: dehydration, uncomfortable chairs and bad diets were making them restless and they were ignoring their teachers. So I did more detailed interviews with everyone and developed the Concentrate range of products. These include a padded seat bag that holds books but morphs into a seat cushion, a bottle-cooler pencil case and a lunch box for fruit.

“I funded my idea the through NESTA and was a runner-up in the Shell Livewire Young Entrepreneur Award in 2005.

“The products are selling well and I plan to expand the range with at least two new products per year.”