AN unlikely friendship between two men, 60 years apart, sparked the idea for a unique nostalgia product which has got the backing of two judges from BBC2's Dragons' Den.
Richard Ernest, 35, met 98-year-old Sydney Swash when he was his neighbour in Tetbury and over a period of several months drove him to and from a care home to see his terminally ill wife.
When she sadly passed away, the pair became close friends, going to the cinema together and to the local pub. Richard, who now lives in Stroud, had been going through a tough time himself after losing his job and splitting up with his girlfriend, so they became inseparable.
The trips with@ Sydney, who is now in a care home himself, became the inspiration behind Richard's innovative product, Reminiscence Pods, or RemPods for short.
The pop-up reminiscence rooms transform care spaces into a therapeutic and calming environment. Designed in clever, retro themes, they are filled with authentic furniture and memorabilia from a bygone era and have become a charming feature in more than 40 NHS Trusts, care homes, day centres and care charities since the company was founded in 2009.
"I was going through a really bad stage, had lost my job and didn't know what I was going to do, whether I was going to stay in Tetbury or move back to London," said Richard, who lost his previous publishing business because of the Northern Rock crisis.
"I didn't have any friends in Tetbury, it had just been my girlfriend at the time, so I was getting really low.
"Then one day there was a knock on the door and a little old man was there. He asked me to give him a lift to the bus stop to Minchinhampton, to see his wife, who was in a care home there. He was my neighbour but I'd never really met him before."
After a few lifts, a trust developed between them and Sydney invited Richard in to meet his wife.
"I'd never been in a care home before, I'd never witnessed dementia, never heard of it before, and everything just stemmed from that," said Richard.
"I used to wait in reception and have a cup of tea and had people come up to me thinking I was their son or husband.
"They were back in the Fifties and Sixties, in a different world and I got into dementia research from there.
"Sydney was always talking about the Fifties and the war too."
According to The Alzheimer's Society there are approximately 800,000 people in the UK living with dementia.
Richard's idea, RemPods, offers several comforting settings for sufferers to relax in, including a 1950s pop-up pod, pub, cinema, dance hall and vintage store.
He is due to deliver a pop-up pub pod to Gloucestershire County Council in the next couple of weeks, which will be used as a backdrop to make older men feel more comfortable talking about health issues.
Desperate to expand and struggling to get support from the bank, Richard braved a grilling on Dragons' Den to seek a cash injection for his company so RemPods could be rolled out across even more care homes around the country.
Entrepreneurs Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden were won over by his pitch and stumped up £100,000 between them, as seen on the show on Sunday.
"It was the most stressful thing I've ever done," said Richard. "You have to wait from six in the morning until 4pm which is quite a long wait with it all building up inside you.
"But once you've got through that stage and start doing the pitch you kind of get into it."
Three of the dragons, Duncan Bannatyne, Kelly Hoppen and Piers Linney weren't interested in the concept at all, but Deborah quizzed Richard and together with Peter offered the substantial investment which he is going to use to employ drivers to take the RemPods and set them up in locations all over the country.
The trio have also agreed to donate some of the company's profits to charity.
"I always wanted to give something back," said Richard. "It's a commercial business but if it made a lot of money we all came to an agreement that we would give a percentage of the profits back to a charity such as The Alzheimer's Society."
The entrepreneur can't believe how much his life has turned around since meeting Sydney, whom he still tries to visit as often as he can.
He met his fiancee, Lucy, while teaching drama to children with autism at Ruskin Mill in Nailsworth. The couple have two children, Oscar, two, and six-month old Isabella, as well as Lucy's two older sons, Luke, 11 and Finlay, eight. The couple are getting married in a few weeks' time.
"I was volunteering and working in care. It was a struggle and we didn't have a lot of money. It seems crazy but we were having our first baby and I thought 'how are we going to survive?'
"I had a dream and this dream told me everything about what it was I was going to do and RemPods.
"I've never had anything like that before, and am not really religious, but I just had to do it. I got a credit card, which was a big risk and put £3,000 into the business and have never looked back."
Visit www.rempods.co.uk
