CARGO Seat, the Lanarkshire company founded three years ago by 52 year-old Gary Burns, has won The Scottish EDGE Award at RBS Conference Centre in Edinburgh.
In addition to the prestigious award, Cargo Seat, an innovative child car boaster seat, received £75,000… almost £20,000 more than it pitched for.
This will help the Lanarkshire father of two, currently on a career break to allow him to pursue his entrepreneurial dream, bring his unique car boaster seat to the market.
A total of 276 companies applied to Scottish EDGE Round 7, with 23 entrepreneurs pitching their businesses on the day in Edinburgh to an expert panel led by Lord Willie Haughey, founder of City Refrigeration Holdings and Bob Keiller, chief executive of Aberdeen-based Wood Group.
Scottish EDGE is a funding competition, backed by Royal Bank of Scotland PLC and the Scottish Government, aimed at identifying Scotland’s top early-stage and high-growth potential entrepreneurs.
Gary’s innovative and colourful Cargo Seat – a children’s car booster seat that doubles up as a travel wheely storage case, with a foldaway handle, wheels and a carry strap. It has enough storage to accommodate clothing, books and toys that children may have when they go on their travels – holidays or visiting family or friends.
The CarGo Seat light bulb moment came about when Gary was on holiday in Alacante with his wife Clare and his two kids, Cavan and Logan, and had to hire two booster seats for their hire car.
They were covered in sticky sweets and broken and costing 70 euros and he thought, “I can do this better”.
He came home and sketched his idea, and then with a design team brought his product sketches to life.
Three years on and Gary, who lives in Coalburn, South Lanarkshire, is on a career break from his role as recreation manager at South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture, to allow him to pursue the Cargo Seat development, has made significant progress.
“My key focus now is to get CarGo Seat to market as quickly as possible and this Award will go a long way to helping us get there.
“The fact that business giants like Willie Haughey and Bob Keiller awarded us £20,000 more than we were asking for is a huge confidence boost.
“We will be able to use this now to help accellerate our plans to bring Cargo Seat to market in 2016. What a great end to the year!”
ENDS
For Further Information:
Stephen Halpin
T: 0141 280 4480
M: 07966 148 227
Notes:
Cargo Seat won a Scottish Edge Award in round six in the wild card Edge category (Pre-trading). Cargo Seat was the only wild card winner to progress to the final of round seven.
Cargo Seat has been recognised by Glasgow’s Got Business talent, Intuit100up, New Start Scotland Bright Ideas and Entrepreneurial Spark (Best Creative Innovation winner 2012).
Late 2014, the company secured SEED funding from Glasgow-based Gabriel Investment group and mentoring from Prof John Anderson from The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship.
Photo caption: Gary Burns receiving his Scottish EDGE Fund Award from David Shearer, chair of Scottish EDGE.
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