Tom, 22, is currently finishing an Electronics and Computer Engineering degree at the University of Leeds. Having been interested in making and inventing since he was young, Tom was able to turn two of his ideas into real-life products through the support of SPARK.
The first opportunity was through the SPARK Enterprise Scholarship. An avid music fan, Tom was a big admirer of vinyl records and turntables but couldn’t justify the price of a Hi-Fi setup on a student budget, especially as he already had a large collection of music stored on streaming services. As such, he set about creating a device to bring his virtual collection to life in a physical format.
The result was Vinyl, an audio-playing device that connects your virtual music collection to the real world, offering the tangible interactivity of a vinyl turntable without sacrificing the flexibility of digital streaming. The product is still in its early stages of research and development, but through winning a SPARK Enterprise Scholarship Tom has been able to dive further into refining Vinyl’s product design (using SPARK’s 3D printing facilities) and invest more into the electronics necessary to turn Vinyl into a production-ready device.
The second opportunity was the SPARK Business Plan Prize Competition. Being a plant lover and having lived in rented accommodation for years, Tom was disappointed that there were no effective options for mounting a houseplant to the wall in a renter-friendly way. Thus, he designed and developed a product to do exactly that: Klip.
