About Us
I'm Melissa Edmunds, a married mother of two approaching my 50s (although I like to think I don’t look it). Over the last few years my life has changed significantly. Before becoming an award winning inventor I was working for the police as a business development officer. The idea behind SafeSip came to me after having my second child. He was a bit clumsy and regularly spilt his drinks and I wanted to find something that could save my carpets, furniture and sanity from the regular clean up.
After looking around I discovered the market for drinks covers was rather limited. Obviously if you have very young children there are plenty of sippy cups around but nothing really aimed at older children – toddlers and beyond. As time went on I realised there were other people who would benefit from a drinks cover. My dad was taken into hospital and had to lay at a certain angle. He was given mugs with straws in but without covers this led to a few spills drinking in the hospital bed! Another of my relatives was struck with a muscle wasting illness and I was shocked by the offerings available to adults, in situations where they cannot hold cups/mugs steady – most of them seemed to me little more than the sippy cups used by toddlers.
All of this set me off on the design path of SafeSip. I wanted to design something that could be used by many different people in lots of different situations. Something that can help a parent out at home and prevent child spillages but that could also be used by teenagers/adults and give them more dignity than using a beaker.
In the past two years I have been honoured to win:
2013 –Silver Innovator Prize at the Bi-annual European Women Inventor and Innovators Network
2014 – SafeSip won the Platinum Award for British Invention (consumer category)
2014 - British Female Inventor of the Year 2014.
After several different designs and prototypes we have now launched the second version of the SafeSip. It is amazing to see my invention now being used by so many people in so many places for so many different reasons. The covers are available in several colours and stretch over most cups and glasses, and even cans. They have come out even better than I had hoped. We have had many emails from people saying how having a SafeSip has helped them and in my opinion if it helps someone then all the effort and sleepless nights have been totally worth it.