Hertfordshire-based EziDrops Ltd was incorporated in March 2019 after business owner, Bob Gokani, had been having difficulty applying eyedrops. After being unable to find anything suitable and easy on the market to help his plight, he decided to invent a gadget himself.

The EziDrops design was perfected and prototypes were created and once seen by Boots landed a contract to supply the the device into 1,800 of its stores. Furthermore, the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) have also agreed sell the product.

EziDrops was created from scratch by Mr Gokani, who funded the business from his own resources. He created it without having previous manufacturing experience and knew that there were challenges he was going to face. With that in mind, he contacted the Manufacturing Growth Programme (MGP) to access free tailored support and grant funding to give his venture the best opportunity to succeeed.

Amanda Freeland, the Manufacturing Growth Manager for MGP in Hertfordshire, helped Mr Gokani to gain access to capital grant funding from MGP to get the tooling made to enable the gadget to be manufactured.

The business has experienced challenges; Covid-19 delayed the whole process, since even though pharmacies remained open during lockdown, numbers of shoppers were greatly diminished. Also, the manufacturing and stockpiling of the product needed to be timed correctly to meet the seasonal needs of their major client, since eyedrops are a big seller during the hay fever season.

Other challenges included research on whether CE marking was required and navigating the legal requirements to register the intellectual property. Ms Freeland has been able to refer Mr Gokani to relevant sources of SME support and provide him with an in-depth business analysis using GROWTHmapper to identify areas of the business that need prioritising and areas that are performing well, providing him with an idea of where to make key improvements.

She said: “Bob has worked tirelessly to create a unique product from scratch, with all the technical complexity of getting it manufactured, packaged and now sold through all the right channels. It has been such a lot of hard work, and I am really happy that our funding has been able to help him succeed. He has created something so useful that he is now getting volume sales from a major retailer, pharmacy and optical distributors, and the Royal National Institute of Blind People.”

Mr Gokani concluded: “We are currently in the prototyping stage of a totally new invention, which is an ear applicator. I hope to seek Amanda’s expert guidance once again to have prototypes made. You can see the ear applicator on our website (www.ezidrops.com).”

EziDrops has had a strong start with orders from notable clients and it hopes to take on more staff over the next year. The company’s website is now available in German, Spanish, and French, and it is accessing support from the Department for International Trade (DIT) to increase exports. It is aiming to reach an annual turnover of £500,000 by March 2022.