Being a one-man band in the beginning with little money but understanding parents, I set up a development shop in their back garden. It was the summer of 2011, so the weather was nice and the plan was to have products ready by autumn. However, summer turned to autumn, the weather got cold and the products weren’t ready.

Having started in the garden, I had moved up in the world to acquire a state-of-the-art plastic marque from Homebase which was to serve me well until winter.

Winter came and beset with problems and with falling moral, I was having a tea break with my Dad in the kitchen. He fatefully said as we looked out of the window: “That tent has done ok for what it cost”. As if queued in a film, the tent promptly lifted in the wind and resettled itself in the neighbour’s garden.

And so saw the end of the plastic marque to which dad’s answer was that we invest in a log cabin at the end of the garden.

For a few years, the log cabin provided a useful home for the ‘R&D headquarters of Adam Christopher Design’. After a year, it was clear the sculptures I had developed weren’t going to bring sufficient return to continue the business, so I diversified into flowerpots which turned out to be much better.

However, making the transition from producing pots myself to hiring someone and getting premises was hard. The volume simply wasn’t there at that time.

There was an extra strain on me as well of having my girlfriend living 1000 miles away in Denmark and in 2016 the draw was too much. We had managed 5 years long distance, and it was time to say enough is enough and go be with her. The business, while showing signs of promise, was not working well enough to justify more time apart, so I packed it in and moved back to Denmark to find work and be with Marie.

I moved into her student flat, which was a 30 square metre bedsit, and looked for design work, but it wasn’t very forthcoming and the enquiries for my work continued to come in.

It pained me to turn the orders away simply because I couldn’t do everything myself, so with one repeat customer I responded and said I couldn’t fulfil the order, explained why and told them I might consider it if they ordered a container full.

To my surprise, they considered it and so I said I would investigate. This led to the beginning of the relationship I have with the family-run studio in Portugal. I was lucky enough to make contact with a chap, about my age, whose father owned a concrete factory. As a qualified architect he was interested in creating a concrete design studio, so the fit was perfect and he had already seen and admired my work.

18 months after leaving the UK, we released the first line of my planters and from then on, I have been working on future lines which should hit the site in 2020. They will expand on the designs that I have as well as bring new and interest forms to the brand, hopefully offering more useable planters that still offer a distinctive shape