Chris Barnardo

Chris Barnardo, 63, started out as a designer, leaving school after his A Levels. By 1989 he was the Creative Director of his own London-based design company, Designer’s Inc. In his early thirties he sold his company to an advertising agency and went back to college, gaining a first class degree in Biomedical Science and Engineering at Queen Mary College. In 1994 he went to work at Cambridge Consultants where he became a named inventor on over 25 patents, before securing £4M in venture capital funding going to start a company to commercialise his invention of a thick-film, flexible electroluminescent display. In 2001 he and his team designed and created the Kameleon Universal Remote Control.

In 2005 Chris launched the popular single parents’ website Dadcando.com. In 2008 he designed and created Plop Trumps.

In 2009 Chris founded The Wand Company with Richard Blakesley and the following year, he and Richard went on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den where, their magic wand pitch attracted [then] record investment offers from all the Dragons. The Wand Company has since successfully launched functioning collectibles for a range of licensed Sc-fi gadgets from Doctor Who, Star Trek, Pokémon, Bethesda Game Studios and Amazon Studios.

Chris is the author of three books, Advances in the Art of Being, Dadcando and Dragonolia and co-author of the materials journal paper: Fourier transform infrared analysis of poly(ester-urethanes) at low temperature in-situ by using a newly constructed liquid nitrogen cooled sample stage. Chris is happily married and lives in Essex.