Making gate hanging easy
Patrick Roskam is back at Fieldays for third time, and he’s now ready to sell his product.
The Year 10 Matamata College student Patrick Roskam is back for the third time at Fieldays, ready to sell his award-winning product, a gate hanging device known as the Gudgeon Pro 5 in 1.
Roskam, 14, believes his invention should be a standard tool in the back of the fencing trailer.
“It’s such a time saver, speeds up the process, and saves you a lot of money in the long run,” the young entrepreneur says.
Roskam won the Innovation Den Best Pitch Award for the last two years and last year won the Fieldays Young Innovator of the Year Award.
Born and bred on a farm Roskam feels his upbringing has helped him to learn to be a problem solver. “Because in farms if something goes wrong in the weekends, we have to try and fix it ourselves and not get people to come out.”
The idea for the Gudgeon Pro 5 started off as a school science project. Roskam’s family bought a new farm and they had to redo all the gates. His father wanted all the gates straight and accurate and Roskam thought there must be an easier way.
To expand the market Roskam has been travelling with the support of his family throughout New Zealand. “We’ve been going around these trade shows, Northland, Central District, and South Island Fieldays. At the South Island Fieldays I won the best tool for the Innovation Award.”
The product started off as a wooden batten then with feedback from fieldays in 2013 and a local aluminium welder the product became an adjustable system to fit different sized gates. Roskam said “we went to Alpac in Hamilton and we worked with different tool makers. We came up with a design and it was very technical. There are 14 different parts of my tool that make up the final product.”
The product is currently being sold online on the website at www.gudgeonpro.co.nz for $260 plus GST. Despite the success of the product the biggest challenge for Roskam was people saying that the design was so easy. “It’s not. It took six months with the adjustable design. Some people think it’s made overseas. That’s been the hard thing trying to convince people it is New Zealand made. It is a quality tool not cheap.”
Roskam’s advice for other inventors at this year’s Fieldays is simple. “Make it look professional. Always be there and have a smile on your face, say hello to everyone, be passionate about your product.”
