PaintTopper is a father-daughter story
It was sometime around 2014 that the PaintTopper story began. I’d had an idea, and I immediately went to my daughter, Tara After eagerly laying out my thoughts, we both became excited, and started making plans. It was the start of an entirely new adventure for us. My background had been in tunnelling, a completely different ball game. Could we really do this?
The concept was actually fairly simple. It was an elegant solution to the question, ‘why does painting have to be so messy?’ We took our idea and filed it with the intellectual property office (IPO) to get the ball rolling.
The next step was to firm up the design. We found a design studio in central London, and sat down with our designers to dive into the creative process.
It was a whirlwind of 3D CAD drawings, material proposals, artworking and prototype testing!
Some months later, we had our finished design. The product as a finalised idea had been born, and we named it PaintTopper.
We now needed a moulder. After a long period of searching high and low, we found Barry. Based in Kent, Barry is an experienced moulder, and did a terrific job of creating a finalised mould for us. After finding a factory in Folkestone, Kent, to take the mould and start creating the first batch of PaintTopper.
It gave us both a real kick to get our hands on the product after so much time of thinking about it, planning it, designing it, working to get to this point. Having the PaintTopper there in our hands really made us feel proud of how far we’d come! But there was still much more to do.
Working with a local designer, I designed the packaging, and pretty soon PaintTopper was being packed and ready to enter the world commercially.
It was at this point that we were invited to showcase our new product at the National Painting and Decorating Show in Coventry. Feeling nervous, and a little like fish out of water, my daughter and I attended the show and let the world see our brand new painting product. The response we got from the public gave us an enormous boost: it was overwhelmingly positive! We had so much great feedback, we knew we were onto something with PaintTopper.
After the show, we were contacted by the company that hosted the DIY Week Awards to ask if we would like to take part in the Paint and Decorating class. We were excited to hear that we’d been named a finalist for Decorating Product of the Year 2019 category, and we were soon swept away to the awards ceremony near London Bridge.
At the awards show, we rubbed shoulders with many of the biggest brands and most influential people in the decorating industry.
It was as daunting as it was thrilling, but we were just happy to be recognised for all our hard work.
And then the announcement came in: we had won! PaintTopper was officially the Decorating Product of the Year 2019! We could hardly believe it. Our elation must have been palpable, and that day remains a true highlight of our journey with PaintTopper.
But as special as it was, what I’ll cherish most, and feel most proud of, is all those long hours spent working on something with my daughter. From a simple idea to a successful commercial product, we’ve created something unique that’s being used by thousands of people. And we did it together, with the help of many talented people, from designers, to Barry, to the factory workers in Folkestone.
That’s the PaintTopper story so far. But I’m confident it will continue for many years yet!
Robert Mitford