James Leckey: inventing solutions to make children happier

Firefly and Leckey weld engineering with compassion for disabled people

Business man James Leckey in the workshop of his factory in Lisburn which makes medical equipment and aids for disabled children. Photograph: Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press

Fri Oct 14 2016 - 06:00

It all started with a chance training run down a Belfast street more than 34 years ago. James Leckey had been out training with a group of friends for a marathon when they came up with the idea of doing it to raise some money for a charity.

"We were running down Annadale Avenue in Belfast and, as we passed different places, we kept shouting out suggestions like what about this one, or this one. Then we passed Mencap [a local charity which helps people with learning disabilities] and that was just it. None of us had any connection with Mencap but it stuck," Leckey recalls.

“A few weeks later I called into the Mencap shop to hand over the money we had raised – around £350 – and when I was there, I saw some of these chairs that children were sitting on. And I just looked at them and thought ‘I could do better than that’.

Leckey had a workshop in his parents’ shed. “I had been working for my family’s florist business at the time and had developed these boards to put the flowers on when we were transporting them so they did not fall over in the back of the van – I sold a lot of them to InterFlora, in fact I sold all of them. But I had the workshop and that’s where I started working on my first chair,” he says.

Big decision

It was a decision which not only changed his life but set him on the path to being able to positively change thousands of children’s lives for the better.

Today his innovations – from the Squiggles Seating System to the Squiggles Stander and the Mygo – help children, their families and clinicians, and carers do the kind of everyday things together that most people simply take for granted.

One of Firefly’s most popular products is the Upsee Kit that was designed by an Israeli mother who sought out Leckey to manufacturer it.

The kit is essentially a walking harness that enables children with neuromuscular disorders to stand and walk with an adult’s support. One of the families who use it describe it as “having a dream come through – one that you never thought would be possible”.

Making dreams come true is a universe away from where Leckey first started his career as a civil engineer in a drawing office in Belfast.

He quickly realised he was too far away “from the smell of petrol” to be truly interested in his surroundings. Like many in the North, Leckey has suffered from the occasional, obsessional period of rally car racing and touring motorbikes – only, in his case, the bikes are still on his “bucket list”.

Building blocks

At an early age, his passion for bikes was matched only by an enthusiasm for taking things apart and rebuilding them which, according to Leckey, “was really just the next step on from Lego”.

One of his first projects at the age of 12 was to strip down a Honda 40 motorcycle that he had bought for a song, with the help of his 16-year-old cousin, because it was not working.

Leckey took great joy in figuring out that there was a problem with the carburettor, chiefly a clogged jet, which he furiously cleaned out and then got the Honda back on the road.

After his short spell in civil engineering, he changed direction and, thanks to an uncle, got an apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer at Mackies, the legendary textile machinery manufacturer in west Belfast, which once employed 6,000 people and exported its products as far afield as eastern India.

“I learned a lot about metal in Mackies,” Leckey says looking back. “When you joined as an apprentice, the first thing you had to do was stand at a bench for three weeks, filing metal into a 3¼-inch cube. Mackies gave me a great understanding about the flexibility of a material, of the properties of metal and materials. Even today, I just have to look at a metal or tap it to know what it is made of and I know what it can do,” he adds.

The other valuable lesson he learned as a young, enthusiastic and slightly impatient apprenticeship was the wisdom of “the three Ts”.

Children’s lives

“Things Take Time. It’s a phrase I use myself now, only I am the one telling other people that. I am still very impatient because there is still so much that I want to do.

“I am incredibly proud of the people that work here and what we have achieved but I have got a lot more back than I have ever given. Every child is an individual and what I want to do is help improve the qualities of their lives. I love what I do but for me it is all about the kids because you can see what it means for them to be able to join in.

“When you see how you can help improve the quality of life for a child, when you can help them realise their own ambitions, you don’t ever want to stop,” Leckey says.

Eight months ago, he announced a £3.2 million investment project for the Leckey side of his business to yet again expand the product line and grow export sales. The investment is expected to create a further 50 jobs at the company and Leckey says that, at the age of 58 – and even with a “bad shoulder” – he is still planning “world domination from Lisburn”.

“We ship all over the world. Leckey is a global brand but I am very ambitious and we have a clear vision for 2020. We’ve big plans and it is not just about the products – it is goes beyond that. I can’t say too much about it but 2018 is going to be a big year for us – that much I can tell you.”

His enthusiasm for what he does appears to radiate from him. On a walk through his Lisburn facility, he calls out non-stop greetings to his team, all of whom he knows very well. Many of them have been with him virtually from the beginning and he is keen to acknowledge their role in making Leckey and Firefly what they are today.

Faith in North

“We’re bringing manufacturing home in a sense, because we source local suppliers wherever possible. We don’t want a 40ft container coming here from across the world. We want a supply chain that is in Northern Ireland and Ireland because that will also help to create jobs outside of Leckey and that is important to me too,” he says.

“Consistent, persistent, insistent – it is all about creating solutions,” he proclaims as he speed walks from one part of the factory floor to another to take a look at a new automated production line being installed.

Although it is a business and it has to make a profit to survive flourish, to him and his team this is obviously a whole lot more. On one of the factory walls there is a huge billboard with a massive sign that proclaims “Make a Difference”. Underneath it is signed by every person who works for Leckey or Firefly – a separate division set up to specialise in selling affordable products directly and not through a distributor.

It is a constant reminder, according to Leckey, of what they are about and it also helps him never to dismiss what is at stake – not just for his team or his customers – because over the course of 30 odd years there have been moments when not everything has gone to plan as he wanted. Leckey still remembers having to pick up those pieces all on his own – particularly when it was touch and go for the business in its very early days.

“In 1986, I decided I would move out of my parent’s garden shed and rent workspace in Kilwee Business Park in Belfast. Just one year later, I couldn’t afford to pay the rent. I had no money and I was just working and working, and then I heard about the Naidex exhibition at Alexandra Palace in London that was on and I headed over there with three seats and three standing frames and that was it. In the space of five weeks and long before the internet to spread the word, it all took off from there.”

That is now but a distant memory but Leckey is still as immersed in the business as he was when it was just him in his parents’ garden shed.

Family trait

He acknowledges that this dedication to what he is passionate about is a trait he gets from his family. His dad, in particular, he says worked “long hours, seven days a week”. And perhaps some of his grit is from his grandmother who came up on the train from Longford to make Belfast her home.

Over the last three decades, he has met some incredibly inspirational children and says there are some experiences he would never want to forget – from the child who told him that she was so happy she could finally “see outside her bedroom window” to the little boy who could walk and hold hands with his brother for the first time.

It is because of these experiences that he says one of his next projects is going to be of a decidedly more “altruistic” nature.

"Over the next few years, I want to set up the Leckey Foundation so that we can help children with special needs on a worldwide basis on a not-for-profit basis – we want to look at places like third-world countries where we can help make a difference. Our profits are reinvested back into research and development for the future – and the Leckey Foundation will be part of that future."