KEY POINTS:
Nigel King didn't think working in neck support was the sexiest of occupations, but he did believe in his friend's invention.
Ten years ago, rock climber Darrell Poole showed King Necprotech, a cushioned support for people who spend a lot of time looking up -
carpenters, painters, miners, mechanics, factory workers and belayers, among others.
Poole had suffered life-threatening injuries when he fell 6m in a rock-climbing accident. It transpired that his support person was not watching and had let the rope slacken.
When asked why, the belayer said it was because his neck was too sore. Amazed that nothing to ease such strain was on the market, Poole decided to make a neck rest himself.
The first model was a good old Kiwi do-it-yourself invention - plastic melted in a home oven, modelled into a head rest, with some foam attached for comfort. The whole contraption was incorporated into a harness.
While today's Necprotech is of better quality, it is essentially the same design.
It's taken more than seven years but the product is finally cracking the international market, starting with Britain and Europe this September.
A chance meeting with Poole's brother led King, who had just left his job as a director of a British search and selection company, to the invention that has consumed his life since 2000.
On a visit to Auckland, King met tradesmen who raved about Poole's prototype they had been trialling.
One thing led to another and King wound up staying in Auckland, taking the reins as managing director of Necprotech.
There were a few lucky breaks in the early days - grants from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, print and television coverage, supplying the product to Alinghi's trimmer in 2003 and two interested overseas manufacturers.
But each spurt of interest came to a halt and, after using up his savings, King returned to recruitment consultancy to provide a roof over his head while he continued applying for grants, doing market research and talking to people involved with safety equipment.
In hindsight, King says, if he was going to do it again he would have started with a lot more money up front. "We just went to friends and family and said, 'Hey, we've got a good idea here, are you interested in putting some money in to help with the initial stages of the business?'
"If I was doing it again, I would develop it as far as I could to start with. We just made a basic prototype to see whether it would work."
The tradesmen Poole asked to trial the product wouldn't stop raving about it and that's what kept him going.
"We didn't really know what we had. We thought, 'It seems like a good idea; it seems obvious'," King says.
After applying for government funding (twice - they re-applied after being turned down), King found a New Zealand manufacturer to produce 75 units for market research.
"We didn't want to be mass manufacturers ourselves, we wanted to go out and find a manufacturer who was already in the market, thinking that would short-circuit the years it would take to do ourselves.
"As it transpires, it's still taken seven years, but it is the best way of doing it: find a business that has the distribution channels, the safety products, the good brand and the ability to market the products."
King nearly secured a licence agreement within a year, but decided he was unimpressed with the potential manufacturer. Later, he was let down by a big international brand that could not decide whether to form a contract under Australasian or American legislation.
In the end, a new managing director from the United States took over in New Zealand and decided only US-tested products would be launched by the company.
"A few times I wanted to give it up because I had sunk a lot of money in and it did take a lot of time but, because I started this, I could never give up," King says.
Last year, friends in the business world encouraged him to apply for Dragon's Den, the reality television programme where investors (the dragons) pledge tens of thousands of dollars to struggling entrepreneurs to help their businesses.
Poole's brother joined King on the programme. They practised their pitch, and their passion for the product shone through.
They won and their investor, Paul Webb, pledged $300,000 in return for a 40 per cent stake in the company. Part of the funds went towards a marketing campaign including a revamped website and promotional DVD, as well as a trip through the US and Britain to meet four key market players and to go to the world's largest safety trade fair in Dusseldorf last September.
After speaking to a handful of companies, King last month shook hands with a protective clothing manufacturer who has taken on the licence for the British and European markets.
Although it's been a long road, King believes the market is now ready for the product.
"It was a totally new concept. Now a lot more research is coming out about the importance of protecting staff, and companies are starting to realise that," he says.
Necprotech has recently been approached by one of the biggest mining companies in the world, as well as Air New Zealand. And the tradesmen who tried the basic prototype are asking where they can get more.
"When we first started, I went to the building sites and, initially, they stood there giggling - no one wanted to try it out. But, eventually, they thought, 'Hey, when I'm working all day I get a sore neck looking up'."
The New Zealand Chiropractic Association, Site Safe and physiotherapists are also endorsing the product.
Stringent testing at Otago University showed it reduced the amount of energy the neck needed to hold the head by about 35 per cent. And an employment lawyer has highlighted the importance of employers investing in Necprotech, especially when occupational health and safety claims are going to court.
As King points out, staff are more productive if they are not in pain.
He will be heading home to Britain to help launch Necprotech in September. Next year, it will be launched in New Zealand and Australia, followed closely by the US. "It will be a global product within five years," he says.
Poole, a shareholder in Necprotech, is off on his big OE at the moment, but King is relaying his invention's success to him - and imparting a few words of wisdom too.
"Persistence pays off. I've learned you have to believe in the product - which we did, but we didn't understand what we had."