With three Dragons making their debut in the den, Nick Jenkins, Touker Suleyman and Sarah Willingham were tested with tears, blind valuations and over enthusiasm, all in the first show.
Dragons Den favourite Deborah Meaden and Moonpig.com owner Nick Jenkins were the first to invest, putting their name to a home steam cleaner, whilst ignoring the secondary product of a juicer. The alliance was formed to combine Nick’s social media skills to get the business and brand to become a household name, and Deborah’s business knowhow and experience. The budding entrepreneur declined an offer of £100,000 for 30 per cent of his business, in favour of less cash, but double the Dragons.
The Dragons showed their teeth as is customary for the hit BBC2 show, especially Sarah Willingham, who slated a property investment company’s pitch as offensive, when asked for a £1million investment for a 5 per cent stake. Filling the shoes of the infamous dragons before them proved no problem, as the crowdfunded business was given a dressing down.
Having only made one investment out of 3 business proposals, the owner of ‘Fit Britches’ failed to land an investment after forgetting her numbers in her pitch. However, Sarah’s interest in health and wellbeing was catered for in the last proposal, with a piece of yoga equipment being offered to the dragons for £50,000 and a 50 per cent stake in the business. Following on from the tears of the business owners struggle and a grilling from all the Dragons, the french yoga instructor struck a deal with Peter Jones and Touker Suleyman.
The new Dragons seemed to have settled in nicely on the revamped investors panel. Join them next Sunday at 8pm, where you can expect to see a group of dancers attempt to sway the Dragons into investing.
