| The company sells a range of products, which can be used by people who have completed a short testing and tagging course for example through the Master Builders Association or TAFE.
The story of easytest started four years ago with a prototype.
Now, the company has progressed to making its first sales with the help of a $64,000 Commercialising Emerging Technologies (COMET) grant from AusIndustry.
COMET focuses on helping emerging companies become commercial ready.
And as part of the COMET grant, a private sector business adviser works with the company to identify priorities and work out a tailored plan.
Using his experience as a business coach, Rob sat down with his adviser to make sure that the grant really worked for him.
The grant paid for market research, a business plan, intellectual property and further work on the prototype.
Importantly, the business adviser also introduced Rob to some valuable leads into new markets and investment opportunities.
"It's great to have someone to listen to, someone who I can bounce ideas off.
"He's an independent voice and a sounding board."
One of Rob's electrician friends came up with the idea and built the first prototype.
"He could see that people weren't testing their electrical equipment as often as they should."
Rob said an Australian Standard ruled that electrical equipment needed to be tested and tagged regularly.
"Some electrical equipment needs to be tested every three months, so we wanted to make it cheap and easy to comply.
"There's a matrix of risk, so the higher the risk of damage to the appliance, the more often it needs to be tested and tagged.
"So as you'd expect, electrical equipment that's transported, thrown in the back of utes and subject to dust and moisture needs to be tested more often," Rob said.
The company has worked with occupational health and safety experts, Workcover and electricians, taking on board their suggestions and refining the products.
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