Stuff Meets… entrepreneur Malcolm Lewis, who has brought his kids’ idea for a tech swim toy to life with Wellyweight

That I could stumble from having an idea to having someone make a physical product within a few days is mind-blowing. 

I’ve never made a thing in my life before – I even suck at Lego… My wife Helen and I were on holiday with our kids, playing in one of the pools and our daughter, Hermione, said we should make our own sinker. So, we said go on then, design it and she and my son, Fletcher, came up with this welly idea! I googled 3D printers, found a bloke near Soho, sent him a picture of what we wanted, and he made it. It’s the most lethal-looking thing, with super sharp spikes, and it look him a good few days. I didn’t actually know how 3D printers worked – it’s like a cake that keeps getting extra layers. 

My kids found the 3D prototype underwhelming and deciding we needed to add a game element. 

We got it and thought it was alright but doesn’t really do anything and then we tinkered with the idea of making it into an electronic game. We looked at sonar, Bluetooth – all kind of different technology we could use with it to build in the game element. In the end, as I have none of these talents, I went on a jobs board and posted for a circuit board designer, and we got five different choices back. Hermione, who would have been seven or eight at the time, said to go with the expensive guy as he’ll know most as he’s charging more… and he turned out to be fabulous. 

Covid made everything a lot harder 

When Covid kicked in, swimming pools weren’t an option, so we got a paddling pool in the garden to chuck it in and sort things out, asking questions like were the holes big enough and was it draining quick enough. When the pools opened and we started playing with it, I remember putting it down on the side and then seeing a kid had taken it and started playing with it. Then we started to get swim teachers asking about it and this was the moment when we thought other people might actually be interested. 

We found our man in Hong Kong and the rest was history 

We had another bit of fortuitous luck, when we got to the end of making the circuit work and thought well, how do we turn it into something we can make in production? The electrician chap said he spoke to a guy in Hong Kong and we thought brilliant and off we went to him. He’s sort of a middleman, who helps you find factories and make sure that they are compliant and that sort of thing. 

For testing, in China, we used a well rather than a pool…

China aren’t massive on swimming pools, which made testing quite hard. In the end we found a well for testing. It wasn’t ideal but you just have to keep going until you find the solution. 

Taking WellyWeight from idea to physical product has taught my kids a lot

Switches were chosen via a kind of gloopy gel – we had to decide which button worked best through this gel and then that became the bottom of the toy. The kids got to make the decision – it’s all been a fun, bonding thing and I think we’ve got to teach them things that they probably won’t get to learn in school. 

Accessible tech has allowed us to do our own marketing 

We are doing everything ourselves at the moment. It’s forces us to learn – I dodged social media for a long time and was probably a bit behind, then suddenly Herminie is smashing out all these marketing videos! Now that they are waterproof, the iPhone has been super handy for us and we also use GoPro’s, when we are being organised. 

I’m a note freak

I reckon my note freak days started with the Palm Pilot, the little green one where you used to be able to use the funny little shapes. Now I’m on the reMarkable 2. I’m a beast for notes, so those kind of things keep me honest and try and remind me to say the rights things and do all the things I apparently should have done….My other favourite thing for being sat a desk all day is my Theragun! 

See wellyweight.co.uk for more details.