Backyard genius: Waiting for the right time

Bruce MacKinnon’s pole-climbing system may still achieve a commercial breakthrough. Picture / Greg Bowker

If this were a movie, Bruce MacKinnon would be the hard-luck hero and the theme music would be "I get knocked down, but I get up again". There'd be a happy ending, maybe somewhere exotic, like Spain.

But it would start in Te Awamutu, at the Power Board, where MacKinnon began "trying to figure ways to do things better. I don't really like that word, inventor. For me, the definition of an invention is something totally new and things like that are few and far between. Mostly, they're variations on a theme."

His first idea was a new solution to the problem of deactivating live lines. In 1981, that took four hours, until MacKinnon came up with a line breaker allowing "one man to cut a line in 15 minutes".

Industry mergers eventually stymied it but "we managed to sell about 15 sets at $1000 each. I did a brochure, my first foray into marketing. The biggest stumbling block for innovators is marketing. It's easy to make a product. The hard part is selling the damn thing."

Like the warning beacon he worked on after an aircraft struck cables in Tory Channel. Teaming up "with a guy who was a whizz-kid with electronics" the duo "made a beacon that clamps on to a wire with current transformers taking power by induction".

When they found an Australian company on the same track, co-operation seemed logical. Alas, "it ended in tears. Haggles over fees and things."

So MacKinnon tried hands-free fishing rod bags for anglers. "I put ads in a fishing magazine and sold quite a few but not enough to cover the cost of the ads. But I'm still positive about it."

Then, the big one. Visiting the United States, MacKinnon discovered that most US power poles were steel and climbing them involved complex and expensive equipment.

He came up with a step and locking wedge system called sureFOOT. In 1998, he took a sample he'd forged himself to the US and showed it to executives of pole company IUSI. "Their jaws hit the floor. They were saying, 'I wish that was my idea'."

Orders were placed, a manufacturer found and 25,000 sets delivered ... "three weeks before September 11. The economy stopped." Sales dropped by 60 per cent.

"I keep wondering if there's a gremlin on my shoulder in terms of timing," says MacKinnon ruefully.

Let's have that happy ending. An American fibreglass pole maker is considering a fibreglass sureFOOT. And the steel version may also reign in Spain.

Back here, he's been collaborating with farmer Charlie Morrison to develop The Retriever, an energy-saving cowshed heat exchanger. We may have a sequel.