Student Enterprise @ Purple Door

Fatima Ba-Alawi is a newly graduated student with a degree in  Business Administration.  During her degree studies, she worked in a hospital as a health care assistant where she noticed improvements could be made with the conventional patient gowns in use on her wards.  As a result, she designed a new hospital gown, which promotes Dignity, Comfort and Safety, namely the 'DCS Patient Gown'.  In November 2004 she approached the Centre for Enterprise at the University for support with her idea.  Her first move was to enter the idea into the University's Enterprise Challenge competition.  She won £500 in the 'rising stars' category, which she used to fund an initial prototype and carry out some market research.  Armed with her prize, and encouraged by her success, she began attending the enterprise mentorig service, which offers students one-to-one coaching on making their ideas happen.  With the help of the mentoring service she developed her business plan and entered it into stage two of the competition.  This time she won first prize, a further £2000, which she used to fund a patent application, and register her company, DCS Designs Ltd.

Although Fatima was graduating that summer (July 2005) she was still eligible to put a bid together to the University's 'Student SEED Fund' and was successful in gaining an investment fund to kick-start her business.  As part of the package of support, the University offered her an office in the Centre for Enterprise and access to a virtual office telephone and mail service.  The investment has also enabled her to produce samples of the DCS gown and distribute them to hospitals for trial.  She planned to use the remainder of the money to cover the cost of manufacturing her first order.  DCS website www.dcsdesigns.co.uk was launched for customer feedback with comments as well as online orders.  She also worked closely with the local Enterprise Hub who helped her to secure her intellectual property by providing access to a patent attorney.

Whilst this was happening, Fatima also joined a university trip to the NCGE Rally at Reading.  Encouraged by her experience there, she applied to the Flying Start programme and was successful in gaining a place for the summer of 2005 Cambridge 'Flying Start' event.  The media exposure this created for Fatima resulted in her new hospital gown being featured in both the Mail on Sunday and in the Evening Standard as well as a number of local newspapers and radio.

Fatima is currently in the process of making more samples of the DCS gown, which will still be distributed to regional hospital trials.  She is also seeking to raise additional funds for the company in order to sustain the product testing and promotion phase of her company.

To date, two trials in large hospitals have now been successfully completed and five more hospitals have subsequently requested trial orders.  Fatima is currently in dialogue with NHS procurement groups.  Watch this space!

Fatima says "having had the support of the University to start my business has made all the difference.  It's much better to have a real business presence than to try to run this from my room at home!  The University has not just given me the start up funds, but it has also given me the confidence and support I needed to take my idea off the ground and make it happen."