Posts Tagged ‘Presentation’
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.
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.
Try, Try and Try Again
Colm of Curtain Cosy infamy came back to the Den with his Roof Chute idea. The Curtain Cosy featured last year. It was a shelf for propping up your curtain so the heat from your radiator isn’t blocked by the hanging curtain. It looked awful and got pasted in the Den. The Roof Chute didn’t get a great reception either. But I really admire this guy and his tenacity, and he may very well hit on a lucrative idea. Keep trying Colm and I hope you return to the Den.
A White Witch and a Stitch & Bitch
Ruth Ruane of White Witch just got her valuation wrong and so her presentation never got going. Also beware of forecasting sales growth of more than 20% per annum. Ruth said she was going to grow from €27,000 revenue to €250,000 – just not credible and so the Dragons backed out.
Sherry Nugent was brilliant. It is a pity there was only a small clip of her on tonight’s show. She did a really good presentation. She was in command of her facts and figures and publishes a really high quality magazine for quilters. It all appeared far too niche for us Dragons, but I learned something. In the US where women gather to quilt the term is a “stitch and bitch”. So they gather for a good old gossip but also create a beautiful quilt. For all the guys who prop up the bars of Ireland moaning about everything, isn’t that a good idea? Why not be productive and make something while you are having a whinge.
Chocolography
Sandra Stanley had a great presence about her and did a super job presenting Print Delicious, a business that can print your logo or photograph onto chocolate. I suspected she was from the hospitality sector with her easy, confident manner and I was right, she is a publican. Great business. Will do well for her but is not an investment I believe you would get a big return on.
Marketing Costs Were Depleting Profits.
Peter Cummings and his Paint Brush Holder were shown the door very quickly by the Dragons but not before he said something very important. He had already tried selling his product but it hadn’t worked out, because he said the cost of marketing the product was eating into his margin. In my next blog, which will be up on Monday morning, I am going to talk about this. Getting a product into shops is hard work, but getting it picked up from the shelves and brought to the till is the real challenge and that is all about marketing.
The main thing is to manufacture it for very little and have a very large margin on it. Then, and only then, can you afford to market it.
One Week Closer to the Recovery…
Good Morning, the start of another week and a week closer to the recovery that will emerge in our economy. None of us are sure will it even get worse before it gets better but the inevitability of the economic cycle means we will recover. When? No one actually knows, the only definite thing is we get closer to it every day. For most businesses the goal for the rest of this year is to stay in the game, hold your breath and tread water.
In advance of Programme 2 this Thursday at 10:15pm on RTE 1 here are some tips about pitching a business idea.
How to Pitch
This is the question I am most asked by people with business ideas or an invention. What is the best way to pitch or present it?
In fact this is how I came to the whole world of venture capital. I used to coach people who were about to make pitches. Enterprise Ireland asked to about ten years back to do workshops for their HPSUs, that’s, High Potential Start Ups. When the dotcom boom came along I found myself working with a lot of nerds with high tech’ ideas. It was Hi Tech but a low, low standard of presentation. Rather than just coach them I then started to invest a little for a slice of action in the better ones and I had an almost 100% success rate. Then people started coming looking for me.
The Dos and Don’ts of a Good Investor Presentation
There are key elements to a successful pitch and for the life of me I can never understand how people leave them out. It happens all the time in the Den also.
What is the ROI?
Don’t be fixated with explaining your idea or proposition. Your emphasis should be on the ROI, the return on investment. It is not that you are looking for €100,000 that is important but rather what the potential investor will make, say, €600,000 from the investment in the next 3 or 5 years.
Here’s the golden rule. If you want an investor to put money in you have got to tell them when, how and how much they will get back. It is referred to in venture capital as the EXIT. Sadly you will see in this second series of Dragons’ Den hardly any of those pitching in the Den offered a clear and credible exit strategy. BIG MISTAKE
So your pitch should consist of, best in this order;
- Idea/Concept
- Route to market
- EXIT & ROI
- Solid Sales Forecast.
Avoid Chinese Glove Syndrome
Finally in dos and don’ts let me address the other frequent mistake, the absence of a Solid Sales Forecast. If there is one thing I hate in a pitch it is, what we call in venture capital, “Chinese Glove Syndrome”.
In the 80s Michael Jackson popularised wearing just one glove. So let’s sell a single glove to everyone in China. That’s more than a billion gloves and we will make one euro on every glove and we will be billionaires.
It is absolute madness but that’s what people always do. And their stupid accountants put this in business plans. Last week Herbie Porsche, what a name, had the idea for a Toilet Pipe Cover. Now he didn’t even have a business plan but he had an ingenious idea. But people get carried away. Imagine if Herbie had gone on with the following poppycock the style of which you hear in almost every pitch these days. “There are 220 million toilets in the UK of which 55% have a soil pipe going into the floor and if we capture only 5% of that market selling our Toilet Pipe Cover to each of them at a profit of £3 sterling, means we will end up with profits of £363m or a cool Four Hundred Million Euro.” Absolutely bonkers but that is the type of thinking people bring to forecasts.
Give an Investor your Solid Sales Forecast
The alternative and what investors want to hear is Solid Sales Forecasts. We have spoken to X retailer and they said they could sell 7,000 units this year. If that can be backed up with an order or a letter giving even half of a commitment it will impress and is so much better than the Chinese Glove approach.
Talk to you next immediately after Thursday Night’s Show
My next Blog Update is Thursday at 11:15pm when I will give you the inside story on the pitches that appear on Thursday night. I can tell you it is a great show and watch out, Sarah may be about to make an investment or does one of the other Dragons swipe it out from under her nose?
Also below is the article Herbie had in Yesterday’s Sunday Independent.