The Dragons’ Den is full of wealth, expertise and business knowhow.
But pretty much no one knew just how successful one of the rejected businesses would become.
During a 2008 episode of the BBC show, Rachel Watkyn entered the Den with her sustainable packaging business.
And at the time, it was labelled as ‘pathetic’, whilst most of us parrots at home probably would’ve agreed.
But how wrong were we after the Tiny Box Company went on to become a mega £10million-a-year business.
Though Duncan Bannatyne absolutely slated it: “I think it’s ridiculous that you’ve come along with what you call a business, that you describe as ethical and recyclable materials and you produce a box which my eight-year-old daughter Emily could make better at school, the ends don’t match up, the lines aren’t straight.
“It’s pathetic, it really is.”
Contestant Rachel Watkyn was left distraught by the comments (BBC)
Just because he wasn’t onboard doesn’t mean the other Dragons weren’t, as Watkyn and her business partner walked away with £60,000 worth of investments by Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis.
And she’s absolutely had the last laugh of it.
Fifteen years on from her Dragons’ Den experience, she told ITV Meridian: “They were brutal, they were absolutely brutal.
“On the show, I didn’t have any confidence. Off camera, I just knew that ‘Etsy’ was becoming more and more popular and ‘Not on the High Street.’
“There was a movement of a lot of start up companies and I knew that they would all need packing like I did.”
She was totally right; her company now makes over 1,500 products for nearly 200,000 customers.
Making £10 million a year, Watkyn finds it ‘hilarious’ that not everyone understands her business.
It seems Rachel had the last laugh (Instagram/@rachelwatkyn)
“It’s really funny when people come into the warehouse and don’t know why they’re here, or are coming for something else, they’ll say ‘what do you sell then?’ And we’ll say ‘boxes.’”
People ‘just don’t get it’ when she explains they sell ‘empty boxes’.
Watkyn added: “One of the dragons said that eco-friendly packaging would never be mainstream.
“But everything people buy comes in a bag or a box or some kind of packaging, and if we can help business switch from plastic or less environmentally friendly solutions to more environmentally friendly, then the job’s done.”
Despite the confusion and the slamming of the business being ‘pathetic’, Watkyn was actually awarded an OBE in 2024 for her work in sustainability, ethical business growth and exports.
Additional words by Jess Battison.
Dragons were recently left gobsmacked after one entrepreneur well and truly shut Steven Bartlett down during their pitch.
Dragon’s Den is known for courageous people stepping into the den where they really could have their entire business ripped apart by five or six experts in the field.
But rarely do we see entrepreneurs biting back, and this woman put new Dragon Steven Bartlett right in his place.
The entrepreneurial duo walked into the den to pitch their fitness recovery products, which consisted of massage guns, compression boots, cold water immersion ranges and much more.
Business partners Joe and Lottie were after £100,000 in return for a five percent stake in their company.
The pitch in its entirety went well, and the dragons seemed impressed – but Steven had some criticisms.
He said: “Honestly, I have seen all of this before. These massage guns, they send me this stuff all the time and it’s just piling up in my house.”
Well, this is when things got real.
BBC.
Lottie replied to the millionaire, saying: “With all due respect, you’re not our core customer to be honest with you.
“Our core customer isn’t getting sent free therabodys.
“They are people who love sport, they love running, they go to Parkrun, they sign up for 10k runs – we meet thousands and thousands of them.”
Mic drop.
The Diary of A CEO podcast host was left lost for words.
He later claimed he was ‘in love’ with the duo, but didn’t feel the same way about their business, and decided not to invest.
Despite this, they received four offers from different dragons, and opted to go into business with Gary Neville and Sara Davies, who were happy to work together.
BBC.
Gary offered a five percent stake for half of the money, and Sara offered all of the money for 10 percent, with a reduction down to five percent after a year if she made her money back.
But it was Lottie’s response to Steven that caused quite the stir on social media.
In response, one person on TikTok said: “When you have to remind rich people that normal people don’t receive PR.”
Another said: “The way he was absolutely seething, I love her,” and a third added: “His face at the end is too funny.”
People joked that he didn’t mention his brand Huel, with one saying: “Do they know Huel they’re talking to?”
Another added: “Wait until the Huel massage guns come out, it’ll be the best product he’s ever used.”
An entrepreneur who went onto Dragons’ Den in the hopes of securing funding for his dog poop scoop claimed he was ‘humiliated’ by the investors during his time on the show.
Back in 2017, John Nicholls appeared on the show to try and get £45,000 of funding for a 15 percent stake in HandiScoop, which he said was ‘the world’s best poop scoop’.
However, he claimed that when he stepped out of the room with no investment Dragons’ Den host Evan Davis said he thought ‘they were quite hard on you’, though John said he didn’t regret going on the show.
In an interview with The Sun, he said that when things went against you on the show ‘the Dragons hunt like a pack’ and you really feel like it’s ‘five of them versus one of you’.
In particular, he called out long-time Dragons’ Den investor Peter Jones, claiming that the businessman’s behaviour put him off during his pitch which he said didn’t go so well as he was ‘very nervous’.
BBC
“When you’re pitching he’s messing around with things and it’s almost like he’s trying to put you off, which can be quite intimidating,” John claimed of trying to pitch his poop scoop to Jones.
“He had his hands in his face, he rolled his eyes and while everyone else was taking notes he was playing with a sample.”
During the episode, Jones told him he was ‘trying to wing an investment’ while Touker Suleyman called him ‘uninvestable’.
In the end, John left Dragons’ Den with none of the investment money he’d been looking for, but has since gone on to enjoy success with his HandiScoop product racking up £1.74 million in sales and him shifting over 100,000 of the things.
The poop scoop basically allows you to pick up your pet’s droppings and deposit them in a bag without having to put your hands onto the faeces themselves.
John also claimed that there were two exchanges between himself and Jones which apparently didn’t make it into the episode.
Instagram/@handiscoop
“He had a bit of a go at me. When I was struggling to remember something, I said ‘I’m sorry but I’m dyslexic’ and he said, ‘So am I’, John claimed of one of the interactions.
“Then he had another go and started criticising me. I was explaining how useful my device would be if you had to pick up sloppy poo.” he also claimed.
“I asked him how he would scoop it up with a normal bag, which can be messy and not pick it all up, and he shouted, ‘I’d just leave it’.
“I was surprised by his response, he was very aggressive. You don’t think that’s going to happen when you go to pitch.
“It made me realise he would be the last person in the world I would want to be in business with.”
Fortunately for John, he’s joined the ranks of entrepreneurs who walked away from Dragons’ Den empty-handed and still made a success of it.
While some business pitches get those Dragons in that big empty room all excited and trying to outsell each other, others have them all shaking their fire-breathing heads.
Ok, well, obviously they don’t breathe fire but sometimes there words are so savage they might as well be.
But although the investors on Dragons’ Den might be the top dogs with plenty of experience behind them, they’re not always right.
From one business being slammed as ‘pathetic’ but going on to make millions a year, to this one which was told it ‘won’t make any money’ and yet ending up worth £7 0million.
Back in 2007, Shaun Pulfrey left the Den with no investments after his prototype awkwardly broke in his hand.
James Caan branded the whole thing a ‘waste of time’.
And yet you’ll be surprised to know that Pulfrey is the guy behind the very well known Tangle Teezer brand.
Yep, you know, those brushes that every other girl and your mum seems to use. Even celebrities love them.
BBC
But during the Dragons’ Den pitch, an unimpressed Deborah Meaden told the bloke the ‘horse brush’ wouldn’t be a success with Peter Jones calling it a ‘hair-brained’ pitch.
Duncan Bannatyne was also convinced the brushes ‘won’t make any money’.
Pulfrey had gone into the den hoping for a Dragon to take 15 percent of the business for £80,000 but left without it.
He’d already funnelled £98,000 of his savings and even re-mortgaged his London flat to fund Tangle Teezer
But as anyone whose ever been shopping for a hairbrush will know, it clearly worked out in the end.
BBC
It’s an absolute global sensation with celebrities like Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss and even the Princess of Wales being known to use a Tangle Teezer.
In the first year of the business, 35,000 of the items were sold by Boots and in 2016, the business was valued at a mega £200 million.
Proving the Dragons completely wrong, Pulfrey went on to sell the majority of his shares for a huge £70 million in 2021.
He told The Times: “I’m incredibly excited for the future and the new opportunities it will present for our iconic and much-loved brand, including continuing to bring even more new product innovation, which is the heartbeat of the brand.”
With the likes of Cara Delevinge, Salma Hayek and Kim Kardashian also known to use a Tangle Teezer, the business could be one of Dragons’ Den’s most successful ever rejects. Now that’s a title to have.
Peter Jones was so awestruck by a product on the latest episode of Dragons’ Den that he broke protocol to make sure everyone knew about it.
We’ll cut right to the chase, you’ve probably eaten chocolate and crisps as part of the same meal at some point in your life.
You might even have melted down some chocolate and drizzled it onto crisps, such is your decadence in the world of snacks.
However, one canny inventor decided to make it official by releasing a product called Bar of Crisps, which as you can probably guess is a chocolate bar with crisps in it.
You can get it in cheese and onion, salt and vinegar or ready salted flavours, and naturally snack creator Maria did the sensible thing and took her product on Dragons’ Den, where it got a lot of appreciation from Peter Jones.
The early sign that Jones was going to like it was there, as Maria said she’d ‘been eating crisps and chocolate my whole life and people always thought I was weird’ which prompted the investor to shake his head.
BBC
When it came time for a taste test Jones loved it so much that he did what you’re not supposed to do on a TV set, walk off and start interacting with the crew.
However, he thought so much of Bar of Crisps that he started offering it around to the Dragons’ Den crew.
Not everybody was a fan as fellow Dragon Steven Bartlett scrunched his face up and said he didn’t ‘get it’, prompting Jones to tell his colleague: “You are so boring.”
Sadly, despite his apparent enthusiasm Peter Jones didn’t invest in Bar of Crisps and indeed none of the other Dragons did either.
Even though he thought it was ‘b****y brilliant’, Jones said he thought Maria’s product was too ‘niche’ for him to invest in.
While he’d love to buy some for himself it wasn’t something he’d want to invest in, though perhaps Maria can get closer to her funding goal with the interest from the people watching the show.
BBC
Plenty of Dragon’s Den viewers took to social media to say they’d absolutely love to have a Bar of Crisps, and plenty of inventors who go on the show soon find themselves inundated with orders even if they don’t get the investment they were looking for.
Show viewers said chocolate and crisps together were a ‘beautiful creation’ and a ‘fantasy made reality’, so perhaps this will be one of those businesses that winds up being hugely successful despite attracting no investment.
Dragon’s Den isn’t the only place that Bag of Crisps made an appearance, as the snack was also featured on Channel 4’s Aldi’s Next Big Thing.
The snack was described as ‘ingenious’ on the show but ultimately didn’t get picked to be the new product on supermarket shelves, instead going for a Yorkshire pudding flavoured beer and a luxury chocolate box.