A £20,000 loan obtained through Advantage West Midlands (AWM) funding means business is booming for an ex-British Army soldier who has developed a pocket-sized 'Esperanto in pictures' type guide.
Jim Wyatt's PocketComms - a visual equivalent of the international language - is set to dramatically reduce the need for slow and costly public sector translations in emergency situations.
The ex-Household Cavalryman has already sold it to 35 UK police forces. West Midlands Police have initially ordered 3,000 to hang on the belts of their beat officers to help them cope with language barriers in their multicultural communities where more than 40 languages are spoken. Their version has been shortlisted in this year's ACPO Excellence in Policing Awards.
The national Serious Organised Crime Agency and the UK Border Agency have also ordered it and it is being trialled in 15 police force areas abroad including Hong Kong, Holland and Germany.
And Jim, 43, from Coventry, is hoping to persuade the London 2012 Games organisers to consider them for the thousands of meeters and greeters who will be assigned to welcome and help Olympics visitors from all over the world in 2012.
Lo-tech PocketComms bucks the trend for up to the minute 'apps' for your smartphone because it doesn't need batteries or the internet to work.
The handy-sized, laminated array of around 1,000 pictures can be used by all manner of people with communication difficulties - be they language, hearing or speech problems. And it can survive water-dunking and desert dust. And it's cheap at under a tenner a time.
Illustrations of basic foods, drink and other day-to-day items and medical situations are bound together and kept in a special pouch or pocket which can be attached to, for example, a police issue belt.
Jim, who initially trained as a graphic designer, signed up when employment prospects for jobs with those skills were gloomy. He retired after five years in the Army, having lost the hearing in one ear while serving.
He has continued serving for the last 11 years as a reservist in the 15 (UK) Psychological Operations Group (essentially a miitary multi-media marketing agency). He is responsible for running a design and print facility aimed at communications in occasionally extreme circumstances. This work has taken him to Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, among others, and has led to him being described as the Army's only 'Combat Cartoonist'.
Jim secured a £20,000 loan through the Coventry and Warwickshire Reinvestment Trust (CWRT)which is funded jointly by AWM and the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund). That was to fulfil the West Midlands Police order last November and he and wife Kaye have not looked back since. They are now looking at developing versions for school nurses and local authority domestic violence coordinators. On a lighter note PocketComms have proved invaluable for gap year students on their travels.
The couple have had to expand into business premises in Earlsdon, Coventry, and now employ staff to help out at peak times.
Jim said: "It all started when I tried to communicate to a group of teenagers in Kabul. I took out my pen and notepad and started drawing. Soon I had a large crowd of curious onlookers asking questions to which I could draw a reply.
"I have found that wherever I have travelled around the world I have been able to get an idea across by drawing a picture. It just made sense to me to put a collection of these drawings together so that others could do so and the idea of PocketComms was born.
"Hi-tech apps are all very well and we may yet develop one for this. But my experience in Afghanistan and elsewhere is that smartphones don't take too kindly to sand. By reverting to basics we have come up with something that is cheap, easily adaptable and usable.
"Police PocketComms would have completely stalled if we hadn't got the funding we needed to make it happen."
Patrick Palmer, AWM Head of Access to Finance, said: "Some of this country's best inventions are based on simple ideas like this one. This is a great example of how pump-priming funding through the regional development agency can translate an idea into a business reality."