Posts Tagged ‘Pitching’
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
Programme 3
That was a good show tonight. It is really interesting for me to see the show now, as parts of it were recorded back in November. It is always very interesting to see that some items get as much as 10 minutes air time, while others only get 30 seconds. I was very disappointed tonight to see James Powell’s device for holding and placing a door as you hang was only touched upon. It was a most beautifully engineered prototype. I believe he deserved to be featured more extensively, but it’s not my decision, it’s up to the producer.
Going on Dragons’ Den for Publicity
First up tonight were Priscilla and James with their web site portal for voice over artists. It is great to see a presentation maximising the medium of television. Priscilla knew that by wearing a pink wig and a big 1950s style pink skirt she was going to be heavily featured by the producers. They also pitched the price low ensuring they would get offers. Then they declined the offers but left The Den with the bonus of 10 minutes free advertising on a top rating programme. Genius! Well done guys. I don’t mind this happening. In fact I believe it is an intelligent use of the programme.
The Cake Shop
I am still trying to figure out what Niall meant when he said that thing about the cake shop. There’s a prize for anyone who can explain it to us!
Second Stage Development
It is tough starting a business but second stage development is often tougher. Mike Fernandez has a very successful business selling 60,000 samosas a week from his take away, but his plan to expand that business wasn’t well thought through. His Sami-Snax are great. Hopefully he will have learned from his experience in the Den, and will come up with the correct strategy for his second stage development.
I’d have preferred a Nama Lama!
Some business ideas are just past their use-by-date and this is one of them. If Carol Kemp wants to continue her Celtic Tiger memorabilia business in Killarney, that’s ok. It will continue to trade modestly successfully. Tourists can be sold anything. Look at the junk you have bought on your own holidays. But the Tiger idea will never work as a main stream business.
“I’ve a great idea for a fireplace.”
There are more patents on fires and stoves than most other household items. It is probably because we all sit staring at the fire and as we do we get ideas. There was very little original in Terence Doherty’s idea called Draftguard.
Golf is so Boring
Golf is excruciatingly boring! On Dragons’ Den we have seen quite a few boring ideas and quite a few completely mad ones, and these are the ones that make the show. But, believe it or not, there is actually quite a good golf related idea coming up later in the series. Watch out for it.
Kev Valve – Brilliant!
Kevin Hester proves to anyone coming in to the Den that, even if your presentation is poor, if you have a really good idea you will get an investment. I hope Kevin doesn’t mind me saying this, but I remember him very clearly the day he was in the Den. I have rarely seen someone so nervous and uncomfortable in their presentation. But he stuck with it, got through it, and made us believe that his valve to help us resolve air locks in our boilers is ingenious. Brilliant idea Kevin and I hope it makes you a fortune.
Next Blog Monday morning the 15th.
Finally Eamonn Treacy’s experience of how he succeeded in the Den
Are you one of the thousands of people who climb into your wheelie bin to compress the bags of rubbish inside? Or maybe you use one of the children to jump up and down in the bin so you can get those last two or three refuse sacks into it. When a friend of mine fell out of his bin and broke an ankle, I started thinking about my Bin Trasher. At my light engineering business in Bunclody, County Wexford, I came up with a prototype and have since successfully patented the idea. Then last October I did a mad thing. I applied to go on Dragons’ Den.
On that day, in the Den, after we all shook hands on my deal, I sensed there was great banter amongst all the crew about the fact that Sarah had made her first investment on the programme. What I sensed was, despite her tough as nails TV persona, she was good fun and joined in the slagging about her eventually making an investment.
It was all jolly after the deal had been struck but that wasn’t how I felt when I went up those stairs. It is very hard to explain it unless you have been there. I had featured on an enterprise slot last year on the Late Late Show. Pat Kenny was an absolute gent. But when I got to the top of the stairs and entered the Den, it felt like I was facing a firing squad.
When you face those Dragons you are so nervous you could forget your own name. Before I went in I had written off Sarah, accepting she will probably bow out early on. When she seemed to be genuinely interested in my product I began to feel really confident and I started to believe I was going to do well.
But if the Den is treacherous, it is worth it. I sense there is a much bigger reaction to the Bin Trasher this time than there was when we were on the Late Late. Admittedly I was heavily featured on Dragons’ Den whereas I only got a couple of minutes on the Late Late. During the programme last Thursday night we sold 160 Bin Trashers before my web site, BinTrasher.ie froze because there was so much traffic. So Friday was spent sorting out that glitch. Also that day I got a security check call from PayPal wanting to know why was this account suddenly so busy?
All this confirms our strategy is the correct one. Since the show was recorded, I have got great assistance from both Sarah and Bobby and they are of the view, and I agree with them, that we will keep this as a web product rather than going into the shops. If we went into shops they would want a margin and it would almost double the cost. By keeping it as a web based product I can keep it at just €49.95. Isn’t the web a fantastic development? Here I am making my Bin Trashers in Bunclody and over the web I get paid for them before they leave the yard. There’s a lot of talk about the Recession and how difficult it is to get paid. With the right idea and with the help of Dragons’ Den I am enjoying a very different experience.
The above article was written by Eamonn Treacy and was published by the Sunday Independent , 7 March 2010.
One of the Best ever Den Presentations
The show kicked off with Dee’s Vegan Burgers. If you want to learn how to make a good investor presentation, watch this pitch again. This was first class. A great Entrepreneur with all the necessary qualifications and experience. A grafter, she had gone out and market tested the product and got her vegan burgers into shops and Dunnes Stores.
Just a tip. Being in Dunnes is fantastic because they have 1.8 million customers in their stores every week, but it doesn’t always impress an investor. Dunnes EPOS system means you supply on a sale or return basis. I am always more impressed by a food product if it has a good distribution deal with prompt payment terms.
Dee was one of the best ever presentations in the Den. I put her up there with Kate Hyde of Henparty.ie, Tim Conway of Surfseeds and of course Donal O’Connor and Michael O’Donnell of pedigreecattle.ie. Hard to say which was the best overall, but Dee was certainly up there. I wish her all the very best in her venture.