TV Dragon backs Welsh dad’s ideas
ACARDIFF dad who left his job was a teacher after his daughter was seriously injured in an accident has won a £50,000 investment for his business after appearing on Dragons Den.
Dragon Peter Jones said he immediately saw the potential of Craig Hill’s business when he appeared on the hit BBC show last night.
He agreed a deal to invest £50,000 for a 30% stake in the business.
Craig, from Whitchurch, made his career change after his daughter Eirian, two at the time, fell back into an open fire.
Her dad put out the flames but not before significant burning to her back and legs, requiring months of intensive care and skin grafts.
After the accident Craig struggled to deal with the emotional impact of the tragedy and found himself sinking into depression as he tried to juggle his work and home life.
Ultimately he decided to give up teaching and took on some decking jobs for friends during the summer.
Jobs flowed in through recommendations and referrals, so he then trained and qualified as a carpenter and created a business called Landscapes for Learning .
Craig now makes an affordable range of outdoor learning equipment aimed at cash-strapped primary schools, nurseries and day care centres.
The products include mud kitchens, balance beams, sandpits and scales.
Impressed with what he saw, Peter Jones said: “Getting children outside to continue their learning is vital and is rightly being emphasised in the curriculum. The benefits are unparalleled.
“Children are better engaged and inspired, concentrate for longer, develop their fine motor skills and enjoy the many physical and emotional rewards of sensory, exploratory outdoor play.
“I know my own children would have loved Craig’s products when they were younger and I recognised that, as well as his passion and determination, immediately.
“I want to help Craig make this type of learning accessible for everyone because, ultimately, if our children benefit, so do we all.”
A delighted Craig said: “I needed [a way] to support my family that also helped improve my mental health. I found working with my hands, creating something from nothing, to be extremely therapeutic. When I qualified as a carpenter it felt like a new beginning and soon everything started to fall in place.”
He intends to spend the investment on stock and developing a unique “build at home” version of the popular mud kitchen for parents.
Craig says: “Aimed entirely at children, even the assembling of the mud kitchen is founded in education and will be a learning opportunity in itself.
“The product arrives with an illustrated instruction manual for kids and dedicated tools including a tape measure, screw driver and spirit level
“Among other things, children will master simple mathematics as they complete the build, for example following instructions that are numbered sequentially, learning about units of length, angles, clockwise/anticlockwise and more.”
He is also looking forward to getting help from the well-known Dragon.
Craig said: “I hope that, with Peter’s help, I’ll avoid some of the pitfalls that many new businesses succumb to – standing on the shoulders of giants, as it were.
“I’m ambitious and I want to succeed but I believe capitalism can have a heart, too. Landscapes for Learning will never be about simply flogging products.”