It's happened to all of us: our phone charger's cable has worn out; the freezer drawer has cracked; there's a hole in one of our wellies. What can we do – we'll just have to replace them, right? Not so fast.
In 2004, Kilkenny woman Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh was working on the final year project of her Masters in Product design at the Royal College of Art in London when it occurred to her that maybe the world didn't need another product that people would use and discard. Maybe it would be better if there was a way to ensure existing products lasted longer. Maybe, instead of replacing broken things, more of us should be repairing or even improving them.
Jane spent the next five years developing and launching Sugru, a mouldable glue that has become the fixer's go-to resource for repairing and upgrading. But what is mouldable glue? One customer said that if superglue and playdoh had a baby, that would be Sugru. It's adhesive, flexible, water-, cold- and heat-resistant silicone that sets in 24 hours. Jane told Richard Curran on Saturday's The Business that the name comes from the Irish word súgradh, meaning play.
"I love the idea that people are unknowingly saying the Irish word for play around the world."
In 2010, Time Magazine named Sugru one of the 50 best inventions of the year, ranking it higher than Apple's just-launched iPad. In October last year, Jane said, the company sold its ten millionth single-use pack of Sugru and it now has 70 employees and over five thousand stockists in ten countries, including Ireland . Following a successful crowd-funding round last year, Sugru are again turning to the public for investment in 2017 and a new product is on the way later this year.
Hear more from Sugru's inventor, Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh's conversation with Richard Curran on The Business by clicking here