Neale 00:09
I am Neale Mighall. Welcome to another episode of the Another Bright’s Spark Podcast. Today, my guest is Matt Ralph. Local politician, engineer and background, owner and founder of Packed Pixels. Matt, welcome to the show.
Matt 00:22
Good to be here.
Neale 00:23
Excellent. I really want to get into, because I think the audience will be interested in your journey with Packed Pixels, Kickstarter campaign, marketing sales, the whole journey, the trials, tribulations, the successes. I know from the website that’s still up you are very connected to, very passionate about, it was very much a passion project. But you’re an engineer at heart, we’re an engineering business, what’s your origin story? Where does that passion come from?
Matt 00:47
So you know I’m a computer scientist by training, I’ve got a degree in that from University of Warwick, went into software development and then on into project management and IT management and then went into the world of freelance contracting and going around the place and it was while I was frequently out on client sites working that I was becoming frustrated of going from my multi-monitor base setup at home down to a single laptop screen and that’s where I was like well okay I need more monitors to take out with me. Had a look at the market for portable monitors, found them to be either low resolution and or the most clunky mounting systems you could see with big metal plates needing to be permanently stuck to your laptop and things like that.
Neale 01:36
So I suppose the other option is just having a second monitor with a stand and plug in and well, I’m very practical.
Matt 01:42
While I was in this sort of phase, that’s exactly what I did, I literally just lugged a massive monitor with me, and I then stumbled across a website where somebody had posted about being able to connect an iPad screen directly to a DisplayPort cable, and that was the point where I went, ah, because electronics is not my background, software is my background, and when I saw that actually the electronic side of things could be quite solvable, that’s when it piqued my interest to then start playing with, OK, can I come up with a better way of mounting? And I’ve always had an interest in physical design, I originally wanted to be an architect, was my original point. Oh, OK, that’s interesting. And so I’ve been around CAD for a long time playing with things, orbiting around CAD. And, you know, I’m a massive Lego nerd, always been, always loved, and so I like making things as well. So in the good place for the Lego. Yeah, so I thought, OK, can I design something that would be a better mounting system? And so I came up with a mounting system that was packed pixels and managed to get that patented. But also alongside all of that worked on the actual case design and everything else for packed pixels. And I was like, well, I think there’s a market here for this. Sure, sure. And that’s then what led me down in the path of crowdfunding, which was relatively new at the time. And I went down the path with Kickstarter and certainly found that a very interesting process. OK, so what was interesting about it? Well, it’s a fantastic format crowdfunding. And because it’s both market research as to what the market is out there and also a mechanism for raising funding.
Neale 03:39
I suppose by you can test the market, you can announce something and see what the interest is.
Matt 03:44
exactly that. So it’s great from that standpoint but equally it’s challenging from the standpoint of the buyer’s mentality because it’s definitely the case that a lot of people that peruse crowdfunding platforms, certainly when I was doing both of my campaigns, that there wasn’t perhaps the full understanding of what crowdfunding meant for the person putting money in because there are those who fully understand it as you are taking a risk with your money and having a punt at something and in return for that you potentially get something that is at lower than final market rate and you also get the excitement of being on that journey with the creator.
Neale 04:37
More like an investment than a guaranteed thing. So you invest in some shares, they may go up, they may go down, and with you.
Matt 04:43
it’s not exactly a share. No, it’s not. The only outcome you get is the potential finished product.
Neale 04:49
And that’s important potential finished product exactly that
Matt 04:52
Exactly that, and yet there are a good number of people who treat it as a cheap e-commerce platform.
Neale 05:01
I’m invested, I’m going to get something as a mentor.
Matt 05:03
and there is a real sort of sense of entitlement of I’m not happy with the delays that inevitably hit projects or if things go wrong or change or you know there’s a real vehement backlash that you can get. But the really interesting thing I found was when I did my initial kickstarter launch I actually had to do two because I did a kickstarter launch where I done all my maths of when figuring out what I needed to do to get to a finished product to market without any further forms of investment this being the main form of investment and that therefore had a fairly high target to hit of course and it didn’t hit that.
Neale 05:51
Especially for a first one as well, an unknown source and…
Matt 05:55
And what you find, and I found this when I went, when I did my sort of further reading up and research on this and then had a second attempt, is actually there are a lot of people who are sat looking with interest, but don’t necessarily say, okay, I’m pledging to that. Even though if you fail to hit your target, you don’t get charged. That’s how crowdfunding works. But they sit there still waiting until it’s a certainty. Right, okay. And so actually by lowering your target on crowdfunding and getting to that faster can be helpful in two ways. One, in terms of the platform’s algorithm of saying, this is hot, this has hit its target, I will therefore promote this more. And also that mentality of people going, well, it’s a sure thing.
Neale 06:47
Yeah, you guarantee they’ve hit the target, you’re definitely going.
Matt 06:50
Jump on that and so actually by setting a lower target you can end up with more money in the end. But it’s a delicate balance because if you only just hit that target and it’s not the amount you actually need, then you’ve got a
Neale 07:04
It’s a problem. Calculated risk, I suppose, isn’t it? So on that, in the marketing and sales side, how did you go about it? Did you do any sort of extra promotion around it? Did you purely use the Kickstarter platform? How did you present yourself? Was there a piece around that that you had to give?
Matt 07:19
Well as you’ve quite correctly identified I’m an engineer by heart and so the whole sort of marketing side of things is not my bag and I definitely felt that and it was a very steep learning curve of how to get out there more and I was pretty successful in terms of getting coverage in various tech blogs and even it ended up in, was it Wired magazine and stuff as well. So you know it was pretty successful in terms of getting that out there but entirely by look rather than by skill and judgment and certainly if people are wanting to go down this path I would highly recommend you know really finding somebody who’s got experience and good marketing instincts to assist you because the other thing is when you do start down this path you get bombarded by a lot of platforms claiming oh sign up to us and we’ll take a percentage of what you get and we’ll get you much greater coverage.
Neale 08:23
Yeah, I’m actually could be tempting as well, especially at marketing sales isn’t your your thing. You’re thinking percentage. Okay, maybe but yeah
Matt 08:31
And again, a lot of research needed around that. I batted a lot of that away because there’s definitely a lot of snake oil sales people in there.
Neale 08:41
Yeah, I’d imagine. So markets and sales aside, I said you have more technical background but software, what were the challenges in actually sort of you know building the physical
Matt 08:53
Well, yeah, I mean again while I had been able to create a design of a mounting system that allowed you to easily clip it onto any laptop any size and then you could hang the screen in portrait and landscape and it Was really natty very happy with with all of that And I’d invested in a second-hand 3d printer back at the time when you know 3d printers lead it needed a lot of cajoling to actually give you any kind of output So to actually physically prototype this I Equally recognized that I needed to get this ready for injection molding and factory ready production and also something that didn’t look quite So angular as to what I was playing around with and so again
Neale 09:39
Maybe on our soft smooth edges. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, Apple.
Matt 09:44
So I found a local product design company, I was recommended to them by another contact I’d had called Salsas Design who are phenomenal, they’re brilliant, and they then took my design and concept and we worked really closely, it wasn’t a case of hand it over, it was really nice to find a company that was very happy for us to just literally sit together and
Neale 10:11
thrash it out. Well you feel valued then don’t you as well. I mean not to give ignorance too much of a plug-in but you know it’s it’s very much if a company is adding value to what you’re doing and your opinions are validated and appreciated and it’s just really nice to work in a team rather than well you’re clearly an idiot this is the best way to do it. It never goes down well. So it’s great that you found them. Yeah.
Matt 10:31
they they got it all ready for injection moulding and it was then a case of okay I’ve got the Kickstarter money I’ve got the designs already I’ve got the obviously the PCB designs all sorted out who’s then actually going to manufacture this and that’s that’s when I was I was really keen to try and manufacture things in the UK of course yeah
Neale 10:56
and lots of benefits local suppliers and control
Matt 11:00
I actually, you know, good manufacturing. Yeah, and I hadn’t realized that actually around the Ashfield-Mansfield area there is quite a lot of injection molding companies there and so I put together a detailed tender pack of exactly what I was after and shipped that to two companies I’d been and visited and talked to about the project but also to another company that had been recommended to me that proxy things to China on your behalf and I was really disappointed with the results I got back from that process because within two days the proxy from China the China Engineers had looked at my designs gone in depth had then come back with a detailed report of how the design could be tweaked to Just make it slightly easier to to get the results. I wanted not big changes and a full quote One of the other companies despite me trying to ring an email numerous times never came back to me The other one I rang after a week and said how you getting on with the quote and they said oh We weren’t sure whether you were serious or not Yeah, I’ve sent you a detailed tender pack here. This isn’t sort of a back-of-fag package. I know
Neale 12:18
No, no, this is still through, this is genuine inquiry, this is going to happen, I want you to be a part of this and nothing bad.
Matt 12:25
and so they then said oh okay we’ll we’ll put together and they then came back eventually with with a quote but it was nowhere near as detailed it was just literally a one-page quote where they fully said we’re going to get the tooling made in China and then we’ll ship it across an injection mould over here right but the tooling cost yeah was i think 30 000 pounds more expensive you know well if it’s going to be made in China anyway then why would the per unit cost is going to be cheaper in China as well it was kind of frustratingly a no-brainer yeah and so that’s that’s what we did and but the first batch rather than being assembled in China were assembled on my dining room table right yeah which was a fun yeah process of lots of screws and lots of friends and relatives dragged in and uh but they love that oh absolutely
Neale 13:21
I’m sure they do. It must have been fun and exciting because you’ve got your kit. I mean, all jokes aside, it’s a passion project and, you know, you’ve got family and friends involved. It must have been an exciting time.
Matt 13:33
It really was and seeing the parcels packaged up and being collected by DHL and sent off and then the feedback coming back of people really very positive about what they’d receive because I’m very much a case of, I want to do it right, I’m not trying to just make a quick book here and so I even now, and it’s really heartwarming, you know, units that I shipped 10 years ago, I’m still getting emails from people saying I’m still using it. I still love it.
Neale 14:03
So to go back just to Chinese manufacturing, because I had a bit of an eye opener, my first job was working in an art and crafts company. And my experience of Chinese manufacturing, prior to being a grown up in the real world, was cheap tap naff sort of thing. But what we did was we had, we used to sell crayons, paints and pencils, and we’d have our own branded stuff. And we’d send our purchasing guy over to China, and he would take the quality sort of materials that we sold, and they’d be like, look, we want our own branded stuff. And they’d be like, great, well, we can make it like that, we can do it one grade down, we can do it two grades down, then bring it back to our product testers. And the high grade stuff was better than the stuff that we were getting in from like, there was a company called Bunze, which I think was in the Netherlands, or certainly Scandinavian countries, the quality pencils. But if you go to Chinese manufacturing, you say, we want this, they will deliver. The reason why it’s associated with cheaper naff stuff is because we will pay for cheaper naff stuff when it comes through. But if you sell us out there, the quality can be absolutely insane.
Matt 15:05
Absolutely. We like to think of the UK as being a step above everywhere else for engineering. And it is absolutely the case that we have an incredible talent here and an incredible track record here. But that’s not unique necessarily. And as you say, you can go and get that elsewhere. And it’s one of the things that I’m really keen and one of the things I work on in my local politics side of things is trying to get local businesses to understand you’re really good, but you also need to have the hunger to deliver. Be competitive. And be competitive. Yeah. And I’m working on various things to try and support that. I’m project chair of the Automated Distribution and Manufacturing Centre that I’m going to be building, which is about bringing and exposing businesses across the East Midlands to better technologies for, okay, how can you free up people from the mundane tasks to get on with the hunger task, the creative task, the business.
Neale 16:06
and this growth tasks as well. Bring out those USPs that are really gonna make you stand out from.
Matt 16:10
Yeah, because there’s absolutely no reason why I couldn’t get, I shouldn’t be able to get PacPixels made in the UK. We have the skills here and I think certainly since I started the PacPixels journey, you can see various world events that have disrupted supply chain.
Neale 16:32
We had a lot of problem over COVID supply sources, one of the big problems that we had, well, it wasn’t a problem for us, it was a joy for us because we had to help our customers and clients. But all of a sudden they had a device that had an FPGA or chips or whatever, that they were used to paying 50p a unit. All of a sudden they were going up to 10 pounds a unit and that’s just cost prohibitive. So it’s a case of innovating, finding alternate, but then of course software reprogram from the start, but it’s better in the long run for them to…
Matt 17:02
do that. And so I think there is a real merit of, okay, how do we build up more of our local supply chain and more of our local ability. And part of that is around investment and technology, but also, as I say, I think part of that is around a focus on attitude of how we tackle and consider ourselves in that world market.
Neale 17:22
Absolutely. Do you think, I mean, with when it comes to the UK, I always think we innovate and we do that really, really well. Is it the manufacturing side that lets it down? Is it the the cost of labor, do you think? What’s the where’s the
Matt 17:36
It’s a lot of things. I think definitely labour. I definitely think we need to be far more aggressive in our investment of new technologies. I think historically we’ve had a reticence to engage with mechanisation or automation or whatever the latest term is for, okay, how do we free up people from a mundane task to do something better? Is that a societal thing, do you think? Yeah, and, you know, I mean, I could go down a rabbit hole on discussing that one. But I also think it is around how we tackle skills in the UK. I have a big issue with how we teach in schools at the minute. I think there is far too much focus on cramming kids full of things to remember.
Neale 18:31
to pass exams, to facts and figures, how many wives Henry VIII had. Exactly.
Matt 18:36
Yeah, rather than, you know, in my first year of university, I can remember distinctly on the software engineering module, a brilliant thing where they said, we are not going to teach you a programming language. We’re going to teach you how to learn a programming language. Okay. And it sounds fairly innocent on the switch, but it’s critical because actually, throughout my career, I’m not trying to remember Pascal off the top of my head. I am trying to go, okay, what’s the latest technology? What’s the latest approach? And how do I take that knowledge and then apply it to the task at Hampshire? And that, for me, is a far more important skill to be teaching people, because that’s far more about innovation and adoption of new that I think is what’s holding us back in the nation at the moment.
Neale 19:26
it takes you to the position where you can actually approach any language, any task, and you can just go ahead with it. So if on that, you know, lessons learned from PacPixels, if you had your time again, top tips, what are the key things that you would change, do things differently down the…
Matt 19:44
I would definitely try and build more of a skilled team around me rather than trying to be maverick and doing everything on my own because definitely found limits to my knowledge and also just sheer capacity so definitely a team is a helpful thing to have around you. You know as much research as you can do on the things that you are very much outside of your comfort zone on the better because it’s far too easy to go well I know how to do that so I’ll spend my time on that and actually that’s not where you should be spending your time.
Neale 20:23
You always want to do the things that you enjoy, that you’re good at and yeah.
Matt 20:26
Yeah. But also, if you can, for any of these sorts of projects, try and find some other good financial backer, because crowdfunding is brilliant. But unless you get a really viral hit success, you’re probably going to have to be pitching it at a level where you can get interest, but it might not be the full amount that you need.
Neale 20:53
in the end was it and you wrap things up and on the website you sold the rights and stuff was it was it just not profitable is it taking too much time what was the what was the final nail in the coffin
Matt 21:03
The COVID was the nail in the coffin, basically, because I launched the second generation of PacPixels with the PacPixels 4K and the PacPixels Go, which we crowdfunded for, and there were two issues with that. One, I hadn’t realised that hidden away in the DisplayPort specifications was a tiny little change, which meant that the approach I’d taken with the original PacPixels could not be replicated in the new ones. And that was problematic because, unfortunately, only about 50% of laptop manufacturers strictly enforced the change in the specification. Right, okay. And unfortunately, every laptop that we were testing on were in the ones where it hadn’t been implemented. And so I’d gone well down a development path and then found a dead end. But also then COVID hit just a design where I really could have been doing with going over to China and sitting down with engineers over there to sort out that.
Neale 22:08
COVID would certainly make that trip down.
Matt 22:11
Yes. And that then led to some dead ends with suppliers and fundamentally the money ran out. At a time where, unfortunately, trying to go out and rustle up more finance than everything else was just a nightmare. And so I’d already been working with a company that I’d identified was infringing my patent. Okay. And so we’d already set up a licensing deal for them. And so I approached them and said, would you be interested in actually buying? Yeah. And so that’s the path.
Neale 22:50
Say goodbye very yeah
Matt 22:53
yeah but still what an achievement incredibly proud of what I achieved and you know while it’s it’s sad to say goodbye it equally was quite a weight off the shoulders I can imagine okay yeah
Neale 23:09
move on to the next yeah yeah yeah i mean you’re incredibly proud of it and you still have people contact you now so obviously a great product that people still love and what you know what’s the phrase a better tool loved and lost than so i’ve never loved at all um out of those people who still uh remain in contact and any pack pixel customer you ever had what’s the wackiest most remote bizarre place that people have used it
Matt 23:32
in terms of you know I’ve got I’ve got some sort of nice hilltop mountain top photos that people have sent through but I can also remember I was really pleased I selected DHL as a supply chain because I remember when I was looking around at the time for who to go with I happened to be seeing a thing about North Korea and there was a wide shot of a square in Pyongyang and I suddenly saw a DHL van driving along the back and I was like okay well if they’re in North Korea they couldn’t they can get pretty much anywhere and I remember doing a that’s a great advertise absolutely
Neale 24:12
DHL is going to sponsor the podcast so we can get in touch.
Matt 24:16
But I remember doing an address label for somewhere in rural Thailand it was I think in what sort of Vietnam it might have been and You know and you think in that I looked it up on the map And it’s just some tiny dot remote a village and sure enough shipped off. Yeah, but arrived fine Wow So yeah, it’s in some far-flung places
Neale 24:37
So, apart from Kickstarter, was there any other route to markets that you have, because any other sort of advertising channels, because that’s quite a remote location. It must have had quite a wide reach, was that with Kickstarter? That was with Kickstarter.
Matt 24:49
Kickstarter. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I moved on to Shopify after the Kickstarter, which was brilliant platform. Yeah, really recommend that
Neale 24:57
Was that with Shopify, like your own website, or do Shopify, was that on a multi-platform? No, it was my own website. Right, okay. And you’re still using that.
Matt 25:05
sort of reach us incredible yeah but also I did put it on Amazon in the UK and that was a nice
Neale 25:13
Okay, so PacPixels then made the move to local politics. What was the, why the move? I mean, it’s quite a drastic change. Software engineer, kickstart business owner and now local politics.
Matt 25:25
Well, I still do IT consultancy work as well, but not dissimilar time to the PacPixels launch, I got involved with my local residence association to combat some inappropriate housing development in the local area. And by joining that I ended up being the spokesperson who spoke at the National Inspector’s Review of all of this, where I was successful in throwing some big spanners in the works. And it was off the back of that that the local independent group saw me speaking and came and spoke to me and said, have you ever thought about standing as a councillor for your ward? And I thought about it and thought, well, actually, all the stuff I’m doing with the local residence association, I really enjoy. So, yeah, why not? Let’s do that. And so in 2018, there was a by-election where I did all right. I got about 90 percent of the vote. So, yes, I got elected at a similar time to where the power balance shifted in the local authority so that the independent group actually took over control. And I then joined the Cabinet back in 2019 to be the executive lead member for growth, regeneration and local planning, which is what I’ve been doing there since and been rather successful in bidding for funds from the government in the various sort of towns for levelling up fund. All of those funds have been the most successful council in the UK. I’ve led the bids that have secured over £140 million for regeneration projects across Ashfield District. Congratulations.
Neale 27:10
Thank you. Very good. Well, Matt, I think that’s brilliant. Thank you for your time. And thank you for joining us on the podcast. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Cheers.