Archive for the ‘Dragons Den Series II’ Category
We need video evidence / Rogue Developers /Getting to Market
The scenes at the end of the Leinster football final in Croke Park last Sunday were ugly. The shameful sight of Martin Sludden, the referee, being physically assaulted brings the GAA into disrepute. The so-called Louth fans who tried to physically assault him have done a huge disservice to themselves, their team and the sport.
There have been calls for the Gardai to use the video evidence from the TV pictures to identify and prosecute those who attacked the ref’.
But surely if video evidence is to be used should it not have been used earlier in the game to assist the referee in establishing whether Meath’s injury time goal was within the rules or not?
The GAA is rightly proud of its amateur status. It is in fact the most dearly cherished principle of the association. As the referees are also amateurs, volunteering their services, surely the GAA owes it to these brave, genuine, well-intentioned men to give them every possible assistance in doing their difficult job. We have all seen how well it works in rugby. Surely it now has to be introduced to the GAA.
I sometimes think there is a twisted logic in all of this. That somewhere in GAA Headquarters there are some highly-paid executives who are actually delighted with all this controversy and the acres of newsprint and endless hours of radio debates that are generated by it.
On the night of soccer’s World Cup final these highly paid GAA executives probably take great joy from knowing that in every pub in the country the topic of conversation was the events in Croke Park earlier that day and not Spain’s victory in South Africa.
But the GAA would have benefitted hugely from using video technology last Sunday. Just imagine the suspense of Martin Sludden going upstairs to consult with a fourth official, a video ref’ and then declaring, ‘no goal’.
Picture the scenes of uncontrolled joy as Louth wins their first Leinster in 53 years and all the positive media coverage that would have followed about lesser counties like Louth and Sligo breaking through to the upper ranks of the GAA. Meath would still be odds on favourites to reach an All Ireland quarter final.
Instead we refuse to use the technology. Amateurs who have trained so hard for so long are denied fair play, another core principle of the GAA. Meath gain what is, after all, an empty and sullied victory.
We witness a poor referee put in an impossible position being physically attacked. We see Louth supporters behaving appallingly. Most concerning is we see a steward being hit by a bottle thrown from the stand. The game we love is becoming like soccer.
The GAA must now introduce video assistance to referees. It is an open and shut case. An hour before the game in Drumcondra I saw a Louth supporters’ bus. They were all decked out in their red and white but amazingly in the front seat there were two passengers in the green and gold of Meath. That sight for me is reflective of the real GAA not the scenes at the end of the game.
Rogue Developers
Have you heard this term on news bulletins – “rogue developers”? Just lately it is being used with alarming frequency in reports to do with NAMA. We hear about loans from rogue developers being transferred to the National Assets Management Agency. I am concerned about this term and how it is coming into common usage in news reports.
Another term I hate to hear in the news is, “ the victim was known to the Gardai”. When I hear about some appalling murder I am initially concerned. Then I hear that phrase, “was known to the Gardai” and, to my shame, I stop being concerned.
I now surmise the murder victim was some criminal type who I assume was up to no good and, though I hate to admit it, I conclude; good riddance! That phrase, “known to the Gardai” conditions us not to be concerned or compassionate about the fellow citizen who has just brutally lost his or her life.
It is the same with “rogue developer”? It conditions us to think they were an evil lot and good riddance to them. I realise few people have sympathy for those property developers who have gone bust. But were they rogues is my question?
Sadly I have seen some friends lose their businesses in the last eighteen months. An architect’s firm which went into receivership. A coffee shop which has closed. A children’s party business where the phone just stopped ringing. And a recruitment consultancy which has gone to the wall.
Were they all rogues because they set up their business and gainfully employed themselves and others? I think not. To anyone who has lost a job, a business, or worst of all, their home, can we not show some compassion?
For an economy to survive and thrive we need people to set up businesses and to take risks. If their businesses fail we should ensure that once they have paid their debts to the best of their ability then we should encourage them to try again. Our country and its economy needs entrepreneurs and risk takers now more than ever.
Getting to Market
Getting a new product market is always exciting and challenging. The next time you are in a shop look at all the products on the shelves and just think about all the development work that has gone into each product. That’s what I love about doing Dragons’ Den.
It is not the TV part of the show that excites me. It is what happens after I have made an investment on the show. I love mentoring the guys to bring their products to market.
Back in March, Noelle O’Connor, came into the Den with her idea for a 100% natural tan, called TanOrganic. I invested and we have since brought it to market successfully. It is in all pharmacies now nationwide and enjoys strong sales.
But we had huge teething problems with this product or more correctly its packaging. The product comes in a bottle with an old fashioned cork because it is 100% natural. We thought having it in a bottle with a cork made it look different.
But we had not counted on another difference. In warm weather a very small number of corks are likely to pop. Now that is ok with champagne but the last thing you want popping is a tanning lotion.
So we have had to change the packaging and the cork is now replaced by a screw cap and the problem is solved. But poor Noelle hasn’t slept since the 17th of June when we first realised we had a cork-popping problem.
What has amazed me is the goodwill of pharmacies and consumers alike to this product.
It seems in the current recession there is great support for people like Noelle O’Connor who have had the tenacity to invent a new product and bring it to market in the worst recession ever.
This week she is meeting Boots who want to stock TanOrganic in their 2,700 stores throughout the UK.
Even in a recession we need to realise there are new business opportunities out there for those who have the vision and the dedication to see it through. Noelle is a real entrepreneur. She is employing 21 people. With a company with great export potential she is playing her part in trying to help our country find the path to recovery.
Ireland has a Little Secret
Apologies I haven’t updated my blog until now. In truth once the Dragons’ Den series finished on air I needed to take a break, not a vacation, a break from all the Dragons’ Den work to give sometime to my other businesses. Having said that I am still quite busy giving talks to companies, Chambers of Commerce, Business Associations and so on.
One such event was the Kilcock Business Association. There was a huge turnout in the GAA Club. Picture the scene, a massive hall, a type of indoor basketball arena and trestle tables of ten sitting down. Inside the hall they had cleverly erected the gauze line you see in a marquee so with the very large crowd and the cavernous feel of a basketball arena modified by the marquee lining I started my talk.
When I was finished, as always, I was happy to meet the long queue of people who wanted just a couple of minutes to say hello and ask a bit of advice about their own business. I always love meeting people and many flatter me, wanting a photograph or ask me to sign something for them.
I met Grace O’Sullivan in the queue. She looked like any other young, enthusiastic, business woman. She told me about her business. This was a very different business. I had noticed her business cards on all the tables in the hall earlier. She has an online company offering adult toys. I was amazed. Here we were in a GAA hall in Kilcock and Grace was advertising adult toys. Kilcock though it is on Dublin city’s doorstep, is still one of those old villages and despite its rapid growth in recent years, is still quaintly rural.
I thought to myself, wow how Ireland has changed. As I drove home I smiled to myself thinking about turning the clock back 25 years and what might have been the reaction to Grace’s business cards and flyers in 1985 or even go back to 1975. She would have been castigated from the pulpit. For me it is just another sign of how our society has evolved. I was so intrigued by Grace’s story that I asked her to write a few words for the blog telling the story of how she got into this business and here it is.
I started my research and phone calls to sell Equestrian Goods online. However, it seemed that the wholesalers are not too interested in making money as I could not get them to agree to a minimum order lower than £500 (€580, not including shipping!). I was totally disheartened, but still determined.
In early January I was searching for wholesalers online and somehow (I doubt it was divine intervention), I happened across a very good and flexible wholesaler of adult goods. After a little pang of conscience I started to research the industry and in less than a week I was selling adult toys online.
SecretsIreland.com has become a fun and enjoyable business to run. Adult toys are as individual as the people that I sell them too. The range has to be vast and there are some toys out there that I didn’t even know existed. There is nothing more fun that selling the toys that I sell, I also get the pleasure of telling people what I do and their reactions are hilarious… men blush very easily.
Even though I set up everything very quickly, I did and still am taking baby steps to build the company. For some people getting a business started, particularly online, it can be very frightening but if you work with good developers, SEO advisors and suppliers then you will find it easier. Do your research before setting up and see if you can avoid high rental costs with a retail or storage premises first. Also, don’t forge your plan may have to be change to suit the business environment be flexible and willing to change, take advice and listen to the mad ideas that friends may have. You may also go from Wellies to Whips like I did.
Thanks to Bang Ecommerce for setting up a Free Ecommerce site for me, Ring John for their SEO support and Mark Loud for his general website advice. Grace.
Another Success
As you know, I am always interested to hear from all those who entered the Den, especially if it is a success story. One such company is Runawaybrideandgroom.com.
Here is a very exciting update from Zara & Rosemarie who featured on Series II Dragons’ Den recently. Fantastic!
….In response to your last blog commenting on the cost of marketing I agree but I also feel that entrepreneurs who do not have the privilege of a dragon should not give up, as marketing can be about spending cash or otherwise you need to get creative….which is what we have had to do.
As you know we left the Den with no investment after filming in January. Our business of Weddings and Honeymoon services had been planned, but not yet launched and in hindsight we made the fatal mistake of over valuing the company.
Since January however we managed to launch the business, generate sales and establish our brand Runawaybrideandgroom.com internationally on a limited budget. The Den was like a brilliant free consultancy service we could never afford and after we fluffed it we went home and re-adjusted our business plan. We knocked on doors of every business person we knew and did a road show of presentations. Two weeks later we secured Euros40K for 20% of the business after some negotiation from Ciaran Rooney, Director of 1st Ireland Insurance.
We were Euros60K short of what we wanted but lucky to get anything in the climate. Our marketing plan to launch Runawaybrideandgroom.com was based around the PR of the offer of “The Ultimate Job In Ireland”. Six months travel around the world for 2 people plus 20K in their pocket! By our own admission a pure copycat of the Queensland Tourist Board’s Best Job campaign. However, our budget was limited and the travel bill alone would be around Euros100K so we had to get creative! We decided we needed credibility and proper advertising otherwise people would think the campaign was a scam. So we approached The Irish Times and agreed a media deal with them. They would associate themselves with the competition and we would get Euros250,000 worth of free advertising. We also agreed 6 months worth of editorial in their GO Magazine to report on trips – this was the critical link to enticing other travel sponsors (we could guarantee logos, branding and photos in what is widely regarded as the best Irish Travel Supplement).
That done we contacted 100s of airlines, hotels, ground operators and eventually selected and secured sponsorship for the entire 6 month trip to luxury destinations around the world. The finale trip is sponsored by Queensland Tourism which we think is very apt given we stole their idea in the first place! In return the selected sponsors will get editorial coverage in the Irish Times, on Ireland.com and many eyeballs on our own site and through blogs.
The first ad went out in the Irish times end of Feb and the response to the competition was very poor in the beginning. We had no budget for online advertising although in desperation we paid Euros320 for facebook ads. We sent out press releases to everyone around the world we could think of and to all our friends. We’ve all travelled a lot and I am involved in travel so that was a lot of people. After week three the viral marketing effect started to happen. In the end we received over 30,000 applications for our Ultimate Job in Ireland from over 98 different countries.
The Job was the lead story on CNN Travel, Fox News, Yahoo, The China Daily News to mention just a couple. My colleague Rosemarie spoke on 123 radio stations in 9 different countries. We tracked the job being talked about on over 40 TV stations around the world…all this generated over 500,000 links to our new site and 8.5 million visits in less than 3 months as well as lots of enquiries for weddings and honeymoons along the way of course. We were inundated by producers wanting to either follow the couple or make reality TV about the concept…in the end we signed a deal with the Wolper Organization in LA who have in turn signed Warner Bro’s. Oprah Winfrey’s producer also contacted us! Phenomenal and nope we did not plan that bit or the extent of global exposure.
Our winning couple will be chosen on the 9th May and with finalists from all around the world we knew that tea and scones at the local church hall would not be an appropriate venue. We were able to enlist the support and generous sponsorship for a full weekend of activity and games thanks to several top hotels and restaurants in Kinsale culminating at the fabulous Ballincurra house for a gala dinner with champagne sponsored by Bollinger. We have organised press and some international TV crews will be over thanks to Tourism Ireland so Kinsale will benefit enormously with the exposure of being marketed as a fantastic wedding destination.
From here the business has two challenges. The first is we need to see returns on our campaign and our service of weddings and honeymoons is simply not global enough…its too Irish consumer focussed. So we have brought a new partner and investor on board to further commercialise our site and create a portal with expanded services that are suitable for a global market. The other challenge is we need to continue the momentum of driving traffic to the site so we have launched the search for the successive Ultimate Couple and given our experience to date now have several ideas to commercialise this campaign and generate some cash from it next time round.
Meanwhile I have personally realised that I cannot focus on two businesses well so I’ve decided to retain my shareholding in Runawaybrideandgroom.com and return all my efforts to Zara’s Planet and my horse riding holidays which are my personal passion. Overall it’s been a brilliant experience and Dragons’ Den was the best thing we ever did, as had we not, we would still be three girls talking about an idea but not actually getting it off the ground with a proper marketing plan which is all about execution!
Keep blogging…I pick one or two of your ideas every month and implement them! As soon as I make my first million I will be sure to let you know!
The Entrepreneur Show
What a weekend, last Friday and Saturday and the Entrepreneur show. As a first time event it was a real success and congratulations to entrepreneur, Darren O’Toole who created and executed the show.
The exhibitors I spoke to were all quite pleased with the show but I thought there were far too many talks going on. It has to decide for the future is it a conference or an exhibition?
Too Many Talks
For those of you who didn’t get to the show it was in the main Hall 8 of Simmonscourt, so it was a very large exhibition space, larger than the Ideal Homes the previous weekend. On top of that you had four very large arenas for speakers like myself and my fellow Dragons and some Dragons from the BBC.
Why four arenas? It meant the crowd was being divided by five all the time, i.e. the four arenas and the exhibition hall. It would have been so much better to have just one arena or theatre with half hour talks. But as in business you have got to start somewhere and this was a brilliant start. I look forward to Darren and his team doing it next year.
New Ideas
At the show, everywhere I went, people came up to me with business ideas. I was only too delighted to stop and chat. We have enjoyed a great season of Dragons’ Den on TV and the Irish public have been so supportive so I, and my fellow Dragons, were keen to give a little back. I actually did see a few ideas with real potential. A anti burglar device for sliding patio doors, a gift wrap alternative and a new twist on a scissors.
But coming up with a prototype for a good idea is so long away from an actual successful product. Through the Dragons’ Den people have seen that I am a marketing person who can take a product from an idea to mass market and fast. Becuase it is on TV I actually pay to do that. I invest in the company.
But I assure you the real investment is my time. To bring the Toilet Pipe Cover, the HidBin or TanOrganic to mass market success requires a huge time commitment.
I am very fortunate that the very large Corporations will pay large fees to retain me to advise them on their strategy and launch of new products or brand extensions. But this leaves me with hardly anytime to look at ideas other than those I have invested in on Dragons’ Den.
The Cost of Going to Market
What I am saying is if somebody came up to me with a brilliant idea I can tell you to get it to a ploace where people are aware of it and are looking to buy it in a shop takes at least €250,000 on marketing. And with marketing you need the very best advisors so as little of that spend is wasted.
Look what I am saying is, a good idea is only the very start. Imagine where TanOrganic would be now if Noelle O’Connor had not been brave enough to go on Dragons’ Den. I still believe Noelle is such a trooper that she would have got the product to market but it wouldn’t be the household name it is going to be by the end of 2010.
All the creativity that goes into inventing something is fantastic but you need to spend more time thinking about how are we going to get people to buy this product?
It all begins and ends with Marketing and Sales.
Finally – Best Speakers
Doug Richards who resigned from the BBC version of Dragons’ Den after two seasons to go off and manage one of the world’s big venture capital funds was at the show and was a great contributer. He is an expert in Technology but was alos great fun.
The speaker that impressed me most was Ian McDonald of weedle. Ian was one of the team behind Perlico and he has taken the money he made from its sale to Vodafone to now have a go at a skills version of Linkedin.
I didn’t get to hear it myself as I was speaking in the various arenas all day but Rachel Elnaugh’s talk was considered by many to very inspiring.
Keep it touch with my blog, next Blog Friday.
Great Weekend at Ideal Homes Show
There is nothing like putting your product in front of customers to find out its true potential. And this was the weekend. A first, the Spring Ideal Homes Show, was staged at the RDS by my good friend, Sean Lemass. Everyone was surprised by the huge turnout. I estimate over 50,000 people attended.
Great that consumers are back looking to shop.
There were still a lot of tyre kickers but the fact that consumers were out looking to shop has to be an encouraging sign for retailers.
As you know I was supposed to be away with my fellow Dragons on the slopes for late ski-ing in Zermatt but we got “volcanoed”. So I was at the show on Saturday. (I couldn’t be there Sunday as I had two nephews playing in the 85th Leinster Rugby Towns Cup Final. They play for Boyne who retained the title in a close fought battle against a gallant Tullamore with my nepew, Bevan Duffy, scoring the winning try with an intercept.)
“The Dream Team”
The Dragons’ Den Dream Team, that’s what they called themselves, of Noelle O’Connor, TanOrganic, Mark O’Loughlin of HidBin and Herbie Porsche of Toilet Pipe Cover were all there on one stand which created a big impact in the hall. It was by far the busiest stand at the show from what I could see.
A Few Learning Points.
Having said that, as people are following this blog to get some marketing and sales insights I would have a few criticisms of the stand. There was no video. People don’t walk straight up to a stand. They stay outside what we call the “grab-zone”. They observe you first from about 20 feet. That’s why you need 50″ screens showing them your product and announcing a special show offer and anything for “FREE”. Your stand has cost you thousands but using video you have quadrupled the square meterage. The video shouldn’t depend on audio but must have clear legible graphics spelling out your offer and invite. (Also some shows don’t allow audio.)
I can’t believe that my three colleagues who have been on Dragons’ Den did not have one bit of footage from the show playing on their stand. Now as it turns out they were busy enough anyway but there is great room for improvement.
Herbie needs to brush up on his sales technique, Mark missed an opportunity and Noelle underestimated the demand.
My good friend Herbie’s sales technique needs brushing up. On a few occasions I heard him say to a potential customer, “yes check it out on line”. That is sending a customer away. Even if somebody says my toilet goes into the wall not the floor, you do two things. “MayI have your name and address so we can tell you when the wall mounting is available?” And then ask them, “Surely you have a friend who’d you love to buy this for them it is only a fiver here at the show?” At another trade event I attended with Herbie a man told us he never, ever orders at such shows but only when he goes home. But I managed to get on his wavelength and he placed a large order there and then. Selling is about turning objections into opportunities and closing the sale.
The HidBin not having before and after footage on a 50″ screen – well what can I say? Missed opportunity.
Noelle running out of product on the last day of the show. Yes that is great news and proves the demand for TanOrganic but it also means we lost sales opportunities.
Am I just a whinging old you know what. No I hope not. I always like to encourage but I just like things to be done to their maximum potential.
Next Blog; Friday Morning.