 | John's deep passion has always been inventing and developing products particularly those that involve play.
The path, though, for 4tec has been a long, interesting and sometimes difficult one.
4tec started life in 1975 when John was 18, when he built a prototype with glass & metal. Despite loving the game, he had neither the resources nor skills so early in life to progress it at that time and 4tec got sent to the attic and forgotten about, not to be seen again for another 23 years.
In 1979 John went on to co-found a business with his father manufacturing refuse collection trucks for Ireland and the UK until he sold the business in 1995.
John then established a product development company, called Owenbridge Ltd, and brought many products from concept to market over the following 7 years until he joined an established Refuse collection company in Ireland as Operations Director.
In 2006 John moved to head up a start-up household waste collection service in Dublin for Panda. a lesser known business at that time and over the following years helped grow that business to be the largest in Ireland.
Throughout this time, 4tec never went away. In 1998 it came down from the attic. And 3 years later John went about hand making and selling 10,000 games in Ireland and even managed to get the game featured on Ireland's most watched TV show. Manufacturing this way simply wasn’t sustainable though. 4tec needed to be injection moulded, which required tooling, an expensive undertaking.
John has always held the dream of selling 4tec worldwide. 4tec is 43 years in the making and the only pieces left to be tooled are the shelves. If Kickstarter backers can help make this happen, then 4tec will be ready to be sold worldwide. |
