Innovators

Innovative advertising solutions, safe online storage, nutritional ready-meals for kids and life-saving kidney tests are all being championed by Irish businesses, writes Ciarán Brennan

Irishhandstamps.com

IRISHHANDSTAMPSis a new way of marketing through bars, nightclubs and all of Ireland's hotspots.

It is a very simple marketing medium that allows advertisers to get their message right on the skin of their target customers.

The brain child of directors Russell Altman and Karl McCarthy, IrishHandStamps Co Ltd is the first of its kind to hit Ireland. The idea for the service came about from a recent trip McCarthy took to Cairo.

"A drinks company had used the stamps to launch a new beer in a nightclub and hundreds of customers were ordering the beer that was stamped on their hand.

"It seems the perfect way to advertise numerous products and services and I thought, why not bring it to Ireland," he says.

IrishHandStamps swaps the standard stamps used by venues across Ireland with bespoke stamps that have advertising messages and logos. Both the venue and the advertiser brands will be clearly identifiable on each imprint on the patron.

IrishHandStamps has a nationwide network of bars and nightclubs across Ireland, including D-Two, Dandelion, XX1 and the Purdy Kitchen. "We have exclusive rights to use our hand stamps at a wide ranging number of venues," explains McCarthy. "This gives us access to hundreds of thousands of men and women. We have over 50 venues signed up to an exclusive contract. We have the ability to cover over 100,000 people in a weekend.

"The idea is very simple. The advertisers seem to like it, particularly as you can reach out to that target market that are not looking at television ads or reading advertisements, so they are a hard section of the population to get hold of. They would also have the largest disposable income as they are pre-mortgage and pre-kids," he says.

PUTPLACE.COM

THE PROLIFERATION of technological devices - from PCs to MP3 players, digital cameras to mobile phones - means most of our documents, photos, videos and audio files are scattered across all kinds of devices. Trying to organise and back-up all of this data is a veritable nightmare.

"Even a technological luddite is beginning to realise that everything they have in their life is going digital," explains Joe Drumgoole, chief executive officer of PutPlace.com.

"And guess what? A lot of that stuff is valuable because you have either paid for it or because you created it - photos of your kids, your wedding, videos you have taken. The household is a fairly hazardous place for digital content with threats of anything from coffee spills to young children to burglary, fire, theft or viruses."

That's where Drumgoole's business PutPlace comes in. It will provide you with an online backup service for all of your digital content, across all the devices in the home and recognises the fact that these devices are related to each other. PutPlace then creates the relationships between content in your home, the stuff in your backup and anything you have shared or published on the web.

If you ever want to find a file again, where it came from and where it went to is as important as what is inside it, says Drumgoole. Every digital copy came from somewhere originally and PutPlace finds that original and links all the copies back to it so that you can track every piece of content you own over its complete digital lifetime.

With estimates that we'll have more than a terabyte of data stored in our homes by 2010 - 10 times what is stored on an average PC today - PutPlace aims to put your fractured digital life back in order."You still have a copy in the home which is what you use on a daily basis, but you also keep a copy on the internet on our service. We automatically keep that content backed up with a piece of software for your home PC, automatically and silently."

The company recently raised around €1 million from investors and Enterprise Ireland.

"That round allowed us to expand the development team," explains Drumgoole. "We had to make sure we could scale the service for a very large number of users."

ARGUTUS MEDICAL

WHEN IRISH diagnostics firm Biotrin was sold to Italian drug firm DiaSorin last July, part of the deal involved Biotrin chief executive Dr Cormac Kilty spinning off part of the business into a new company - Argutus Medical.

This new company uses innovative biomarker technology developed by Kilty and his team at Biotrin to detect kidney damage earlier than existing tests.

Its range of kidney biomarkers can localize renal injury to exact sites, reveal its time course in great detail and offer new opportunities in the fields of drug development and clinical applications and research.

"We have developed tests particularly focused on kidney which provide much earlier detection of damage, particularly acute damage of the kidney, than present day tests," explains Kilty.

Traditional tests are insensitive and subject to interfering factors such as age, sex and diet, and in some cases the damage to the kidneys is very advanced before detection.

"You can have 60 per cent of your kidney function actually damaged before it is detected by the present test, whereas we pick it up linearly," says Kilty.

The biomarker technology can also be used for the early detection of ischemia-reperfusion induced acute renal damage that can sometimes result from coronary bypass surgery. At the moment, Argutus' primary sales have been to pharmaceutical companies who are assessing the toxicity of new drugs in animals. Nephrotoxicity is the second most common cause of drug withdrawal and many drugs are still failing late in development due to this.

"We can detect the damage earlier and we reduce the number of animals that are used. We can pick up potentially toxic drugs long before they get through the process to patients," explains Kilty.

The company's products are currently being used by many of the major pharmaceutical companies in trials.

Dr Kilty and a number of his management team are understood to be investing up to €3 million in Argutus Medical, with Enterprise Ireland also investing in the company.

BIA KID.IE

WHEN YVONNE Scully's three-year-old daughter turned into a fussy eater, as a working mother she was stressed trying to find good, healthy, nutritious food for her.

"I looked around for something that was healthy and convenient that I could buy for her, but I couldn't find anything in the market place," she says.

"I know that as a busy working mum myself, I do not always have the time or energy to prepare a good wholesome meal for my daughter. I just thought how great it would be if I could offer my child all the goodness of a home-cooked meal without having to cook from scratch myself."

So the policy advisor at Forfas and former investment banker decided to set up her own children's food company.

"I researched it for about six months and I gave up the day job in October 2003 when I decided there was definitely a market for it," she says.

Scully spent a year working with food technologist Wendy Roberts and nutritionist Paula Mee as well as market researchers before launching her range of children's meals in October 2004 under the Bia Kid banner. It becoming the first Irish children's food company.

Bia Kid meals are free from artificial colours, flavours and preservatives and are naturally low in sugar and salt. They included popular favourites such as shepherds pie and spaghetti bolognese.

The meals are made in Ireland from wholesome, fresh, premium quality ingredients including 100 per cent Irish meat, chicken and eggs.

The company's products are now sold through SuperValu, Centra, Superquinn, Dunnes Stores and Tesco outlets.

Bia Kid, which had turnover of around €700,000 last year is now planning to enter the UK and Northern Irish markets.

"We have trademarked the name 'Be a Kid' for the UK and Northern Irish markets and we have also trade marked 'Be a Family' for family-sized portions of our meals," explains Scully. "We are talking to Sainsbury's and are just raising funding to start research and development of four other ranges."