THE October winner of the Barclays Business Personality Award is Chris Skelton, of Bluedelta Design based in Melbourn. Bluedelta Design is a designer and manufacturer of innovative electronics for the home and professional entertainment market. It is a f

THE October winner of the Barclays Business Personality Award is Chris Skelton, of Bluedelta Design based in Melbourn.

Bluedelta Design is a designer and manufacturer of innovative electronics for the home and professional entertainment market.

It is a family-run company, owned by Chris and Melissa Skelton.

The philosophy that underpins Bluedelta designs combines high-tech with ease of use and value for money providing deceptively simple solutions for common problems such as "How do I record automatically from my digital satellite to my VCR or DVDR?" and "How do I connect everything up to my television which only has one Scart?"

Bluedelta's award-winning products provide the "glue".

Its work ranges from making entertainment equipment work together seamlessly around the home to large-scale AV distribution in pubs, superstores and airports.

A chance meeting at Barclays Bank in Royston proved to be the turning point for Bluedelta.

Chris and Melissa were invited to a networking evening by Andy Webb, the branch's local business manager.

Michael Veasey, the chief executive of Stevenage Business Initiative, was speaking at the event and gave a general presentation on the variety of advice and support provided by its business advisers.

Chris took the opportunity to pull Michael aside to explain the business and its need to finance ongoing research and development in order to maintain its key product range's position in the market.

SBI explained the different sources and levels of funding that were available at the time, and between them they decided to approach the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) for a grant for research and development to help fund the market assessment and initial development of a new product range.

"From our first discussion with Michael in May, we had our application filed, approved and the money in the bank by September. We could not have achieved this without the knowledge and support of SBI," said Chris.

Mr Webb said: "They've worked hard to get the business flying and it's good to see a successful local business obtain funding from EEDA.