The Spork is back

Readers of this paper with long memories will remember the seemingly mad gardener- come-inventor who, while tackling the brambles on a lonely island in the Thames belonging to Oxford City Council, came up with the idea for the implement - a mongrel offspring of the spade and the fork.

That lonely Eureka moment in the mid 1990s marked the start of a long lesson in reality engineering, or the mystic business of turning a notion into an object, for inventor Rob Todd, who has a background in engineering and a strong interest in metalwork.

Mr Todd, then 34, reminisced: "I found that I kept changing over fork and spade, which seemed a waste of time.

"After about 20 prototypes, the Spork can cut through roots, shake out the earth and make it easy to deposit weeds left on its surface. It also has the advantage over a fork in that the tines don't bend."

This week, when I met him again, sitting in an incongruous looking armchair in a rented 15th-century barn in Water Eaton which acts as his operational HQ, he said: "Your article really lit the fuse. I went on television three times, was in most of the nationals, and lots of gardening magazines."

Back in 1999, the first Spork, made in China, hit the market. Then, after a pause: "The Spork limited company went bust about a year later."

Now, after a seven-year slog which would have tested the metal of the most hardened entrepreneur, the good news is that a Dutch multinational manufacturer of garden tools, DeWit, is investing £500,000 in manufacturing plant to produce a whole range of Rob Todd equipment, all based on the Spork's simultaneous cutting and digging principle.

The Dutch factory will make seven different tools, each in top-of-the range or cut-price versions, ranging from the world's first cutting-edge rake to a trowel-sized hand Spork.

The revolutionary tools, now better and smarter, are already for sale at two Oxfordshire shops ahead of their launch worldwide - both Town Garden in North Parade, Oxford, and the Burford Garden Centre were indirectly connected with Mr Todd's successful breakthrough in Holland.

Gazing through the doors of the ancient barn, Mr Todd shook his head reflectively: "It simply could not have been harder. As Dyson himself said, it's so daunting for inventors that it's a wonder any ever do it. I reckon it has cost me at least £160,000 so far in simply keeping alive the intellectual rights, patents, worldwide design registration, and trademarks.

"I don't own a house because everything I earn has gone into this instead of into a mortgage. It's been a hand-to-mouth existence, to say the least. And the only stroke of luck I've had came this year."

The luck came during a casual converstion with the owner of Town Garden in North Parade, Steve Jebbett, who suggested that Mr Todd should seek some marketing advice from Johnnie Vizor, the so-called 'garden broker' and former owner of upmarket London store the Chelsea Gardener, now living in Gloucester.

Mr Todd said: "He has a passion for good quality and told me my old Chinese-made Spork was pretty ghastly."

Mr Visor also told him he needed to produce a range of products rather than relying on just one.

So Mr Todd returned to his Water Eaton barn and set up an old terracotta barbecue, using a leafblower as bellows, to make a forge - and started creating his range of tools. A few days later he was back in Gloucester - and the garden broker was impressed, even offering to introduce him to the DeWit brothers. A couple of trips to Holland followed and the rest, as they say, is history.

Mr Todd said: "I saw the brothers chatting among themselves and then they simply came and said they wanted to buy my design. Lawyers were then involved on agreeing a royalty."

Unlike a writer dealing with a publisher, it seems, inventors receive no advance for their invention when it is accepted by a manufacturer. Obviously, there is an element of trust involved.

Mr Todd said: "I was completely green when I started out and soon found myself paying out £1,200 a month to a so-called professional who said he could promote my Spork. That went on for about six months with no result at all. Then there was the continual business of keeping up the rights.

His advice to other inventors is - set up a limited company, or you will lose your rights.

When his company went into liquidation owing the China manufacturers money, they tried to take over his intellectual rights. Luckily these were technically worthless, so he was able to hang on to them, along with about 500 old-style Sporks that now live behind a covering blanket in the back of his barn. He still gets letters regularly from people wanting to know how they could get hold of one.

And how do the new tools, made of sleek carbon steel (stonger than stainless), and complete with wooden handles, actually perform?

Already they have won one prestigious award - and from my short experiment of using the cutting rake on some nettles, I can definitely say that I shall give a few of these tools to gardening relations for Christmas.

Perhaps more pertinently, how did Mr Todd stay the financial course to bring the tools to market and at the same time keep body and soul together?

"I make railings. Recently I made the railings around the gents in St Giles. That meant working at four o'clock in the morning when there was no traffic around. Then I spent the days working as a gardener in north Oxford, as well as working on the tools."

Then he pointed to an old Victorian letterbox in a corner of the barn: "I also have a passion for restoring old letter boxes and am sometimes employed by Royal Mail to do that."

Here's hoping he will soon have his own letterbox in his own front door, to receive cheques for increasingly large amounts of royalties.