Posts Tagged ‘Investing’
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.
Any Marketing Geniuses out there?
Good morning what a fantastic Monday morning.
If you have just caught up with us recently, I blog twice a week. Thursday nights, 11:15pm, after Dragons’ Den is broadcast and Monday mornings. They are two definite updates but of course as you have seen I will also go in and update from time to time.
Looking for Great Marketing Ideas
There are now thousands of people following this blog. I am flattered especially by so many overseas friends from around the globe. This is a big resource and I want to use it.
So please check out www.TanOrganic.com and www.Hidbin.ie
I want your advice on how we should best market these two products. Gives us your views on both or which ever one takes your fancy.
Let me give you a bit of a steer. For Tanorganic, the 100% natural, organic, anti-aging, healthy, sunless tan-lotion I am looking to really grab the Irish public’s attention when it is launched mid to late May. I am thinking of billboards around the cities of Ireland and a large prize for the most beautiful tanned woman to appear actually live on the billboard and wave at people as they go by. Please don’t involve yourself if you think it is sexist or demeaning of women etc. It is a beauty product aimed at women and also it is a bit of summer fun. If you can’t get your head around that you are wasting your own and our time. Don’t restrict yourself. Let your imagination runawy with itself. Please submit your ideas for this one to info@tanorganic.com Now don’t restrict them to the billboard concept I just want you to know what I am thinking.
Hidbin, as you know is a synthetic screen hedging that neatly hides your ugly wheeliebins. “Making the unsightly unseen.” It costs €99 for a one bin unit and €179 for a two bin unit. Can you think of any guerrilla marketing tactics for this concept. Please send your best ideas to info@hidbin.ie
Our Last Show This Thursday
Thursday’s show is the last in the series and I genuinely believed they have saved the best to last. I am actually going to be out of the country with all the Dragons, well actually Sean can’t make it now. We are going on a late season ski trip to Zermatt. It is all down to Sarah’s great generosity. I am not the facebook type but I will ask Sarah for her permission to report from there and her wonderful chalet, www.chaletgrace.comI am told it is literally out of this world, so Bobby, Niall and myself are really looking forward to a few days ski-ing and crack with the hostess with the mostess.
Great Ideas and a number of Investments
The show on Thursday, and I will be blogging at 11:15pm directly after the show, features some really interesting pitches including an Irish developed, I-Phone App’ and you will also get to see just how bad Sean Gallagher is at hurling. If you are a Dragons’ Den regular and you followed last year’s first series I’d like to know why you think this was even better? I say it is better because the ratings are even higher. During the series the programme had a bigger audience than the main evening 9 o’clock news (Programme 6). That’s a large audience for 10:15pm and the viewers stay right until the end until well after 11pm.
Desperate Housewives twinned with Dragons’ Den
Also we are informed there was a very large number of female viewers. In fact the programme was “diaried” and “twinned”, we are told by the media buyers in the advertising agencies. That means about 125,000 women had two favourite shows per week, that they definitely would NOT miss. Desperate Housewives on Tuesday and Dragons’ Den on Thursday. Sean says he knows why, he claims it is his sex appeal. I argue his most endearing quality is his modesty. But if anything, I believe, it is down to the humour. Niall O’Farrell was just so funny at times this year. For example when he held up the Feel Good energy boost cocoa ball and said “It looks like something you’d find behind the couch,” I cracked up. Bobby can be so brilliant at giving fantastic advice to the point and succinctly and then the next minute he can crack a great joke. And all the audience research tells us women are fascinated by our Sarah. I feel privileged to be in such great talented company.
Eugenia Cooney Producer
Sadly not coming away on our little Dragons’ Den trip, though we did everything to twist their arms, are Larry Bass and Eugenia Cooney. Larry, the Executive Producer, is at the TV festival in Cannes this week. By the way that’s where he bumped into Mark Burnett in a lift in 2004 and that led to him acquiring the rights to both the Apprentice and Dragons’ Den. Both were invented by the genius of Burnett.
But the genius behind our Dragons’ Den is, Producer, Eugenia. She and hubby Ed’ are attending a family wedding this weekend and couldn’t join us. I would have dropped my family to go to Chalet Grace but Eugenia is a good Dundalk woman and they value family not like us south Louth, Drogheda types who eat their young, well that’s what they say about us in Dundalk.
600,000 Viewers
The success of the programme, and the almost 600,000 viewers a week is down to Eugenia who takes it from people applying to come on, vetting them, accepting a fraction to come to studio, recordings for weeks, editing down 120 hours to about 7 hours in total for the full eight shows of the series and she is across every item until the last credits roll this Thursday night.
We have been honoured to work with such a great leader.
I will talk to you on Thursday night.
Bye for now.
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.
What Actually Happened in the Den
Model Fainted in the middle of my Dragons’ Den Pitch
By Noelle O’Connor Creator, TanOrganic
From today’s Sunday Independent.
This is what actually happened when I was in the Den making my successful pitch for TanOrganic, a 100% natural, organic and anti-aging fake sun tan. I hold the record for having been before the Dragons for almost two and half hours. The truth is the beautiful model demonstrating how wonderful this tan looks on your body fainted.
It was January and there were heavy snows in Rathfarnham where the show is recorded. Poor Jessica was in her bikini freezing as we hung around waiting to go into the Den. Then she went into its searing heat under the TV lights. She stood as the bronzed goddess that she is. Whereas I could move around as I answered questions from the Dragons, poor Jessica had to be still and statuesque.
There was all the banter and Sean Gallagher joking he wanted to try applying the tan to her himself. But about an hour into the questions Jessica keeled over. I kid you not. Obviously the recording had to stop and time had to be allowed for her to recover. The Producers then decided that Sarah Newman would say thank you to Jessica and excuse her from the remainder of the pitch.
Over two hours of grilling from the Dragons is tough but TanOrganic is a world beater. I hope that doesn’t come across as arrogant but I have created a fake tan that will appeal to women because it has zero chemicals and it will certainly appeal to their men because there is no awful smell.
Fake tan is probably the greatest contraceptive on the market. That burnt biscuit smell is horrible. But women never stop to think why do fake tans have that smell for about three hours after it has been applied? Here’s the shocking news. The smell is the chemicals reacting with your skin. Putting chemicals on your skin to change its colour is not good for you. Admittedly it is better than damaging your skin on an UV sun bed. Irish women are the biggest users of fake tan per capita in the world. So putting all those chemicals on your body is aging and damaging your skin.
It has taken me years to come up with the solution, a natural fake tan. Yes I know that’s a classic oxymoron but that is what I have created, a natural fake tan. Here’s the secret. The breakthrough was an organic extract of sugar beet that naturally tans your skin over a period of seven hours.
But that breakthrough alone wasn’t enough. It took another couple of years and a fortune of money to get the world’s leading cosmetic research lab’ based in the US to develop my formula. My two businesses, a chain of salons called Ealu and my cosmetic distribution business Skinlogic were flying in the boom so I just kept spending money looking for the breakthrough.
But as soon as we got the 100% natural, organic tan working we realised we had to add a natural colouring agent so women could see it going on as they applied it. Eventually Caramel was the breakthrough.
The next big hurdle was the packaging. Women keep the same container of fake tan in their bathrooms often for over a year. All fake tans up to now come in plastic containers but a 100% natural, organic tan lotion would be contaminated if it was in plastic for more than fourteen weeks. It now had to be in an in-earth container such as a glass bottle. It also had to have a 100% natural cork stopper with a natural wooden top.
When I eventually showed the prototype to industry experts they loved the glass bottle and cork stopper because it stood out spectacularly from the competitors. But as soon as I did that “Paris” was calling. One of the Cosmetic majors was interested in buying my formula outright. The Celtic Tiger was roaring and foolishly I thought I didn’t need their money. But I also wanted to do it for myself. Women will understand what I mean. I am not saying I am a Coco Chanel or an Yves St. Laurent but they must have had to make the same decision as I did early in their careers.
Then the economy crashed. All my salons are still open and trading surprisingly well but nothing like they were during the boom. But worse I couldn’t raise finance anywhere to launch the product. I am not the showbiz type but I had no choice but to try Dragons’ Den. Watching the programme last year I was intrigued by one of the Dragons, Gavin Duffy. He seemed to be always on the lookout for mass market products. I planned to get him on board. But I never, ever planned to give away 45% of TanOrganic. However on Thursday night, Gavin Duffy clearly wanted TanOrganic as well. So when he made the offer I said yes.
All I can say is, since that day in the Den I have since been convinced it has been one of my best business decisions ever. I thought I was thinking big but I have met my match in Gavin. Also he has great contacts in the Cosmetics Industry so doors at the highest level have been opened for me. After that the product sells itself.
The product is going to have a major launch in May when it will go on sale in all pharmacies nationwide. But straight away it is available in all salons as a spray on. You can get all the information about it on TanOrganic.com. We will also be sampling it at the Spring Ideal Homes Expo in the RDS in mid April. So ladies, it is here at last, a world first, a 100% natural, organic sunless tan lotion and it was developed in Ireland. So I know we all think our little country is going down the toilet but I still believe Ireland can take on the world.
Marketing and how much money do you need to push sales?
What do you want to do with the money I’d Invest?
Every week on Dragons’ Den people ask for an amount of money and they are always asked by the Dragons what are they going to do with it? Inevitably it falls into two big chunks, stock and marketing. So they will say, for example, they want €100,000 and they will say €50,000 of this is for marketing. For launching a national product €50,000 won’t get you very far, but the big bonus of the Den is that you get a national TV launch and priceless publicity for you and your product.
On last Thursday’s show we had Peter in the Den with his paint brush holder. I found it very revealing that he found out after the launch of the product that he didn’t have enough money from sales to market it.
Here’s the secret formula
You need to have a product which you can make for about one-tenth of what you will sell it for wholesale.
So with every idea you look for two things – is this product going to achieve a premium consumer price, and can it be manufactured for very little? A good example of this is a board game. They sell for somewhere between €29 and €34, but in mass production they can be made for less than one euro!
Animatazz
In the first series I invested in Animatazz, the global rights to which we have now sold to Drumond Park. This UK company will manufacture it for about a €1 and will pay us - Michael Connolly, the inventor and I, the investor - a royalty of just under a euro. It will be sold to Argos at perhaps €10. On every kit they will add a further €3 for advertising and marketing.
So each kit will cost Drummond Park about €5. They will sell it to Argos for €10 and Argos will sell it in their catalogue for €16. The figures are very rough, and of course we should be talking sterling, but I am just trying to give you an idea of the numbers. If Argos places an order of 40,000 units, then Drumond Park will spend €120,000 on marketing. That’s how it works.
I want to know what is the cheapest price to manufacture
When people come into the Den, I often ignore what they say about marketing because they usually haven’t a clue. I tend to ask what is the very lowest price their product can be manufactured at? Then I ask what is the top price a consumer might pay for it? (You will read later on that Eamonn Treacy and Bin Trasher will only be sold off their web site, because if the product went into Dunnes Stores or Woodies it could be too expensibe by the time the retailer got its margin)
Watch out for cosmetics.
They are a marketing persons dream. The stuff that goes in the bottle is very cheap. It might cost as little as €1, but could sell in a shop for €30 or €40. So on a product like that you have plenty of room to earn the money to spend on marketing. Watch out. If a product like that comes into the Den in this series I will be very interested.