AN INDEPENDENT home and garden store in Portishead is the one of the first in the country to stock tools designed by a North Somerset inventor.

Carey’s DIY has taken delivery of the Power8 Workshop, an eight-piece power tool set, which when combined with the case transforms into its bench-top equivalent.

The tool is one of many designed and produced by Chris Elsworthy, an engineer who lives in The Village Quarter, whose company CEL UK is based in Harbour Road.

Last year, the entrepreneur featured on the BBC TV programme Dragon’s Den where business tycoons Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones offered to invest �150,000 in his products.

The Power8 Workshop sells across the US and in China but Chris has yet to persuade the large UK DIY stores to stock them.

Chris said: “People call the warehouse to ask where they can purchase our products, but we don’t have a sales force in the UK and don’t have the products on many shelves in UK yet.”

Jon Johnston, who runs Carey’s Home and Garden in Portishead High Street, said he was delighted to be the first stockist of CEL tools in the region.

He said: “It’s always good to get new products on the shelves, but to have a unique product invented by someone who lives in our home town is fabulous.”