Dragon’s Den to pitch his range of school accessories designed to help kids concentrate, it was clear that we were looking at an inventor with ambition, genius and a touch of insanity. Most of the Dragons were unimpressed with his prototype products, but Peter Jones saw potential in the entrepreneur, offering the full £100,000. Since then, Mark’s educational design company Concentrate has launched several products including a schoolbag that transforms into a chair cover (to make kids more comfortable), the voting ruler (to help kids express their opinions), and novelty pre-chewed pencils (less chewing, more concentrating). Mark popped into Mother last week to talk about how he designs things. The Pre Chewed Pencils started out as a joke idea he said, but became an overnight business and viral hit. Instead of employing an army of hard-toothed interns to help him, he developed a production process that would help keep up with demand. Now he just needs to come up with a pre-written to do list and an already updated Facebook account and we’ll all be distraction free.

Thanks to lovely star intern Lizzie Lowrey for this story.

Reference
Dragon’s Den

Image Credit
Concentrate

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