Posts Tagged ‘HenParty.ie’
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.
Mark O’Loughlin’s HidBin story
What is the ugliest and most unsightly thing in your home?
You and your family use it every day and it’s a necessary evil that we all suffer.
Imagine making it disappear but it’s still there when needed.
The offending article is of course your wheelie bin and my new product, the hidbin, does exactly what the name suggests. See it on www.hidbin.ie ……From Unsightly to Unseen!
I brought my new invention onto the Dragon’s Den this week and explained how it banishes the blight of your wheelie bins. It went down amazingly well and I walked out a happy man with my investment.
My name is Mark O’Loughlin and the hidbin, as pictured here, camouflages a garden eyesore turning it into a nice, neat, natural looking hedge. It’s simply a synthetic hedge on a steel frame, complete with lid and doors and for only €99.95 (incl vat) you too can turn the unsightly into the unseen!
For those who didn’t catch the Dragon’s Den this week (I’m acutely aware that it clashed with both ‘Lost’ and the Masters Golf), I marched up the stairs, removed the black cloth revealing an early prototype of the hidbin.
Then I turned to face the Dragons and nearly had a heart attack. It’s a daunting challenge but my firm passion and belief in the hidbin solution carried me through the next 45 minutes or so of intense questioning.
Memorised 2 minute pitch over, there followed an unnerving and rather long silence which I wish someone had warned me about. Richard Curran’s voiceover summarised things nicely, ‘it’s a simple aesthetically sound solution to an everyday problem’. Once the questions started I was away in a hack.
Clearly all the Dragons were enthusiastic. Niall O’Farrell, a bit of a design guru himself, said ‘it’s great and is definitely gonna work. ’ His constructive criticism has since contributed to perfecting the new and improved hidbin design. Even Sarah Newman exclaimed it was a pretty neat idea. She bowed out, however, on the grounds that some people can’t even afford their bin charges these days. My polite retort, sadly edited out, was that since the property crash the focus of people’s spending is very much on home improvement. Besides, with 27 million homes in the UK alone, the potential export market for hidbin is huge. 7 million of these are terraced houses, (we have 300,000 in Ireland) many of whom are forced to keep their bins out front by necessity. The hidbin gives all of us the convenience of keeping our bins out of sight and in whatever location suits best.
Nowadays most of us are lumbered with 2 or even 3 large wheelie bins. One hidbin unit comfortably covers a standard 240litre bin – 2 units together hides up to 3 bins as illustrated {on the right}.
Bobby Kerr loved the idea too but was worried I wouldn’t dedicate sufficient time and energy to the promotion of hidbin given my other successful business. Balderdash ! My retort, also not aired, was to point out that I certainly wasn’t the only person in that room with more than one business and it did not seem to have hampered their success. For the record, I also run SanctuarySynthetics.ie, – Ireland’s specialists in supplying and installing artificial child and pet friendly garden grass for the domestic and childcare market.
It was a rollercoaster experience. At one point I thought that they’d all want a stake. As Richard Curran said ‘there was a lot of love in the room for the big man from Kildare’. In the end I was delighted to team up with Gavin Duffy and am honoured to have such a respected mentor on board to help launch and establish the hidbin as a household brand.
Now for the blatant plug – we appreciate that this is a product people will want to see, touch and feel. Thus we are exhibiting at the Spring Ideal Home & Garden Show in the RDS next weekend where the hidbin will be displayed in a garden context. Along side will be 2 other successful Dragon’s Den entrepreneurs, Noelle O Connor with Tanorganics ( remember the girl in the bikini that Sarah Newman sent away halfway through the pitch ) and Herbie Porsche with his toilet pipe cover ( the guy wanted ‘money for Herbie’ ) – the Dragon’s Den dream team! You can also come to investigate and buy your very own hidbin at Bloom in the Phoenix Park on the June Bank Holiday weekend.
Last week in this column Kate Carmody of Beal Organic Cheese made a very cogent argument about Ireland inc and how we should maximise our resources, whether they be the natural grassland of the Golden Vale or our innate passion, innovation and ingenuity to create value added products which we can trade and export. Well done to both RTE and the Sunday Independent for giving the hidbin and other great ideas the invaluable oxygen of publicity, particularly given all time low national morale.
Finally, a sincere thanks to all my family and friends for their support and belief in my enterprise. Demand since the show has been hugely gratifying. By the way, the hidbin doesn’t just cunningly disguise your bins, a less obvious use can be seen by searching for hidbin on YouTube!
For more information call us on 045 579100 or visit www.hidbin.ie
Update on Toilet Pipe Cover & TanOrganic
Herbie Porsce
Herbie, my very best friend is in contact everyday and cheers me up no end. These days it is all good news. He is really excited about having his distributors in place, North & South and he and Maire and his local team in his much loved Ardara are packing morning, noon and night in the workshop beside their home.
Noelle O’Connor
Noelle is the genius creator of TanOrganic and, even though it may be commercially sensitive information, I am also conscious of the thousands of you who are loyally and regularly following this blog, so I am going to reveal my inner most thoughts on TanOrganic.
The question that needs answering is, “As a Dragon why have you not ensured the product was in the shops to coincide with its appearnce on TV?”The Toilet Pipe cover goes around your sewer pipe at the back of your loo. TanOrganic goes on your skin so I make no apology for further clinical trials to prove the efficacy of this breakthrough product.
TAKKER
I had the same problem with Takker last year. The retail chains were screaming for it but we went through further testing in the UK and did a redesign tweek before we launched and have never looked back. Remember you only get one shot at a national retail launch.
109,000 Unique Visitors to www.TanOrganic.com
There is unprecedented demand for TanOrganic and in just 12 hours after its appearance on TV and the following morning on Ryan Tubridy 109,000 people made enquiries about where could they get the 100% natural, organic, tanning lotion. But we have to make sure it is with the right distributor, it is packaged properly and most important launched successfully. So, sorry, we are not going to rush it.
ANIMATAZZ – Lessons Learned
Last year we had equally strong demand for Animatazz which is now going on to be an international success. Watch this space and we will be telling you about its launch in Harrods in London. But I leaned a lesson last year. We should have put more advertising behind this toy animation kit. (Michael Connolly, its inventor, assures me he does not believe this that we were after all the number 1 selling craft toy in Ireland last Xmas and after all, he says, we successfully sold the international rights of it to one of the Toy Majors.)
Advertising
So this time Noelle and I may spend up to €250,000 this Summer promoting this product. I believe if we get to Xmas having had “off the richter scale” sales in an awful Irish recession that has hit retail harder than most, then the International market will break down our doors.
Trials & Sampling
However TanOranic is available in all the top beauty Salons at the moment. There are three salons close by to me who are offering it as a spray and I am in touch with them daily to get feedback. It is my own way of researching and test marketing. One little issue. There is a lot of alcohol in nearly all tanning lotions which makes it a little easier to apply as a spray. But alcohol on your skin could NOT be good for it so TanOrganic is a little thicker in its application so we are addressing its viscosity, i.e. its liquidity currently.
It Doesn’t Smell
The major feedback is a lot of people saying it doesn’t smell but actually it does a little but compared to that awful burnt biscuit smell caused by the synthetic chemicals in all its competitors the reports are it doesn’t smell. TanOrganic is like you, 100% natural so of course it is going to be kinder to your skin and because it is natural it wears off naturally not in blotches which is another big plus.
Late May TanOrganic Launches
TanOrganic will launch in Pharmacies in late May. I simply love Dragons’ Den. It is so exciting to be involved in such a revolutionary, breakthrough product, and Noelle, Catherine, Joe and her team are a delight to work with. We all believe we are at the start of something really big.
Do You Like Noelle’s Product More Than Herbie’s?
That’s a fair question considering I have just one paragraph on Herbie’s Toilet Pipe Cover and a lot more about Noelle’s TanOrganic. But here’s what is special about Herbie’s brilliant idea. We make it for a few cent and sell it for a few Euro and that is always the favourite product on any investor. But I am excited and proud of all my Dargons’ Den Investments. Check out Kate Hyde and the continuing explosive success of www.henpartyuk.co.uk never mind her original www.henparty.ie And of course I just love the great grafters Donall and Michael of www.Pedigreecattle.ie and their success.
Also remember the series is not over so I may have one or two more investments still to come. I would say watch out for this Thursday night when four of the Dragons invest in a great idea and another Dragon plunges into a hedge fund.
NEXT BLOG THURSDAY AFTER THE SHOW
My next blog, as always will be up at 11:15pm as the credits roll at the end of Thursday night’s show and also I will be on line for a chat at www.allaboutbusiness.ie from 11:30pm for about half an hour if you have any questions.
A performance that may have been powered by Zanex
I shouldn’t reveal this, but I have it on good authority that Patrick and Anthony who presented Boatel, may not have passed a doping test had one been carried out on them, after their appearance in the Den. You remember, this was a floating boathouse. On the day, I believe, as the time approached for them to go into the Den, they became very nervous. Another lady who had been in the Den met them and told them it was more daunting than she had ever expected it to be.
As I have said before, it is the sheer size of the Den that throws so many presenters. It looks so much smaller on TV. When someone walks down to the back of the Den to think about the offer they are a full 50 meters from the Dragons. With the editing you don’t get to see this. Back to the Boatel boys, who were getting very jittery, so the lady suggested to them that they take a few of her Zanex. She claims the boys ate them like smarties before they went into the Den and I must say they did appear to be very calm.
Catherine deserved more airtime
Catherine Doherty was brilliant. The teacher from Donegal was super with her resource package for teaching Irish in Primary school. This was something I seriously considered investing in and I was genuinely concerned for her that she had so much money tied up in stock.
As all the guys I have invested in on the programme over these two years will attest to, one of my golden rules is I don’t invest in stock until we have secured orders. The first job of any company is to win customers. When you have orders, and money ready to come in, then you go and order stock, not the other way round.
Petzone
Melanie McGuirk was so committed to her idea Petzone.ie. But I could not for the life of me see a return on an investment here. But, her determination means she will stick with it and it will be successful on a modest scale. That is the problem or the attraction if the internet. People can set up a web business for little money and there are very little overheads apart from their time. But only a tiny fraction of websites make big money. When they do they are really something special. www.henparty.ie continues to generate big revenues in on line sales and advertising.
Check out www.allaboutbusiness.ie
Don’t forget to check out www.allaboutbusiness.ie for behind the scenes footage of Dragons’ Den. This Bank of Ireland web site is very worthwhile for anyone setting up a business.
Keep your comments coming and I will talk to you again on Monday with updates on Herbie Porsche’s Toilet Pipe Cover and Noelle O’Connor’s TanOrganic.
Between Recording & Broadcast
When speaking at conferences, the question I am often asked is what happens after the promoter(s) have left the Den? When does Due Diligence take place?
TanOrganic, which featured last Thursday night, was recorded the first week in January. As soon as I have made an investment I am in contact with the promoter straight away. They are often surprised to get a phone call from me at about 6am the next morning as I drive to Rathfarnham from my County Meath home. Within ten days I will have organised a strategy workshop aimed at establishing the best way to achieve the product’s full market potential.
This will be attended by all my other DD investments. There is a lot to be learned from meeting people like Donall O’Connor, Michael O’Donnell, Kate Hyde, Michael Connolly and Damien McGrane, my investments from Series One. They have some great advice and insights to offer as they have all been through the DD experience, successfully bringing their products to market.
At this stage we do NOT have any footage from the Den so I have to tell the assembled experts how the pitch was made and how strong I think it will come across on television. So, for example, I told the group on the day we were focusing on Herbie (of Toilet Pipe Cover fame) that he would be the star of the series and it has turned out like that. Not only is his product brilliant but everyone loves Herbie.