John Smith, on The Bum Box

When ideas man John Smith hit on a useful invention that was environmentally friendly and market savvy, he put his fledgling business in the box seat.  

 Anyone who has ever tried to get comfortable sitting on a picnic rug will quickly grasp the concept of the Bum Box, John Smith’s cardboard wonder. It’s a simple, portable device that opens up to provide a seat and a backrest, giving support to the sitter. The wonder is not so much the invention itself but why no one thought of it before. “The genius is in its simplicity,” says Smith. “There’s no instructions, there’s no tabs or slots to follow. All you have to do is push the corners in and plonk it down. People don’t want to spend ten minutes putting something together.”

As the founder of Box Clever, the business behind the Bum Box, Smith is no stranger to inventing things. His manufacturing background came from his previous business in the UK, making highly specific canvas products, from awnings for boats to set elements for BBC productions. “Each order we got had to be designed and manufactured to customer specifications,” he says. “I’d been doing that for 20 years before I came to Australia, so it was in my blood to look at things and design things and solve problems.”

Having immigrated to Australia a decade ago, Smith says he had plenty of other ideas—“literally thousands”—before the Bum Box, but none of them left the ground. “One was an energy-saving device. We were trailblazing it and nobody believed it would work. It was too complicated and the sales process took too long, quite the opposite to the Bum Box, which is not technical at all.”

The path to the Bum Box’s creation is one populated by friends and family. Smith’s friend Nick Leywood owns cardboard manufacturing company Specialised Packaging Services. Having helped out at Leywood’s factory, Smith says he constantly thought about making things out of cardboard. “Cardboard, because it’s biodegradable and environmentally friendly, is gradually replacing plastic. Cardboard is the new plastic,” he quips.

Smith also spent time with a friend, owner of Clonnies Restaurant at Clontarf on Sydney’s northern beaches. Sitting on a deck chair overlooking the beach, he’d watch mothers and their babies fidgeting on picnic rugs. Then one day his wife Carol came home with a canvas chair and the pieces came together. “At my manufacturing company, I could have made it out of canvas, but I started thinking about cardboard. Once I’d hit on the idea, I ran it by some people I knew in marketing and then ran it by my friend Nick in cardboard and the reaction was really positive. So I said ‘I’m going to do it and I’m going to commit money to it’.”