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BAPTISM OF FIRE
Sara Davies made a mint from her craftwork business, now she puts her money where her mouth is with the biggest investment in a new series of Dragons’ Den
There’s a new tycoon in the Dragons’ Den – and crafty Sara Davies is already giving the others a run for their money
Given the eclectic ideas the Dragons’ Den team have been presented with over the years, the one floated by
Peter Jones when we meet doesn’t sound that bad. ‘I’ve got an idea for a chocolate teapot that has stainless steel inside – so you can actually have your cup of tea and then eat the outside of it,’ he says. ‘ I’d like £ 10,000, please, for a 50 per cent stake.’
He’s joking, of course, although it may be reassuring for all those budding entrepreneurs nervously waiting to make their pitch to know that, in between filming, the Dragons sometimes propose silly ideas to each other to remind themselves how it feels to be in the hopefuls’ shoes. ‘We do sometimes mess around – we get up and pitch to the other Dragons for fun,’ says Peter. ‘When you get it from that perspective it’s daunting. So we do know how they feel.’
Peter knows, arguably, more than any other. At 53, he’s the show’s longeststanding Dragon, there from the very first series 14 years ago and still in one of the five hotseats as the show returns for its 17th series this month. Yet despite his ‘elder statesman’ status he retains a boyish enthusiasm for the show. ‘I still absolutely love it,’ he confides. ‘The minute I sit in that seat I think, “I’m back!” Cut me in half and I’ve got a mini dragon in there. I love the fact you never know what or who is coming through when the lift doors open.’
Nor, of course, do the audience. Part of the show’s ongoing appeal is the sheer variety of ideas, and emerging this year alongside the would-be entrepreneurs is a supporting cast of horses, dogs, babies and even dancing bears, mixed in with the likes of toilet brushes and tanning products.
There are also a couple of firsts (which we can’t reveal at this stage), not to mention some hitherto unseen tears. ‘We had tears in the Den – and not from the person pitching for investment,’ says Peter. ‘I think that’s a first.’ Tantalisingly he won’t say which of his colleagues is the one to shed them, though it’s hard to imagine
the redoubtable Deborah Meaden – now in her 15th series – sobbing into her crisp business suits, nor her fellow returners, fashion retail magnate Touker Suleyman, 65, and 45-yearold vitamins tycoon Tej Lalvani.
Could they have come, then, from newcomer Sara Davies, at 35 the youngest- ever Dragon in the Den? The Co Durham-born founder of craft supplies company Crafter’s Companion replaces the short-lived Jenny Campbell, who made a fortune from automatic cash machines but built up a reputation on the show for not putting her money where her mouth was investment-wise. It’s a criticism Sara is unlikely to attract: viewers will see her invest over half a million pounds in this, her first outing, including the show’s single biggest investment this series with a £150,000 stake.
It’s one way of saying, ‘ I’ve arrived’, and it seems her new peers agreed. ‘We walked out of the Den after filming, Deborah put her arm on my shoulder and said, “We’ve got
ourselves a Dragon”,’ Sara recalls now. ‘I looked at her and said, “You’ll rue the day you taught me all this clever stuff about how to win a pitch, just you watch me.”’ It’s typical of the banter that characterises relationships in the Den, with all the team insisting they leave tensions firmly inside when the cameras stop rolling. ‘We all get on – until we’re in the Den and then everyone’s like your worst enemy,’ laughs Tej. ‘Deborah can get quite heated in the Den, and when I first started I did worry, “If I do this, how is it going to be afterwards?” But it’s fine. Outside the Den we completely forget about it and we’re friends.’
‘We go out every night during filming, we have dinner together,’ says Touker. ‘But when we’re in the Den it’s everyone for themself. We’ve got our own money to invest and our own views.’
The intensity in the Den is all too real, agrees Peter. ‘Sometimes I could be disagreeing with Deborah or Touker and it’s pretty heated, and then when we’re walking off set we realise we’re going out for dinner at 7 o’clock. You do think, “OK, do I apologise? No, actually I won’t apologise, because they were wrong.” And it’s almost as if we’ve got this sort of unspoken rule now, that what goes on in the Den stays in the Den.’
This year certainly does seem to be marked by a genuine camaraderie, but that’s not always been the case, acknowledges Peter, who – while sadly declining to name names – admits that some Dragons got on better than others. ‘Not everyone went out to dinner shall we say,’ he says tactfully.
Still, for Sara, the concept of ‘what goes on in the Den stays in the Den’ took a while to grasp. ‘On the first day of filming I was really polite – I didn’t want to interrupt or speak over people, and the producers took me to one side and said, “Hey, you’re never going to get a look-in here, just go for it,”’ she says.
Sara was just 20 when the first series came out and recalls watching it at university with her fellow management studies friends. They had always told her she would make an ‘awesome Dragon’ one day – a
‘They had to throw Deborah Meaden and me out of the bar’
sentiment echoed 14 years down the line by a businessman friend. ‘He said, “I think you’d be great. Why don’t you ring them?” I told him there was no way I could do that – so he texted me the next day and told me he’d called Dragons’ Den and they wanted to speak to me.’
It marks another highlight in the steady rise of Sara, the daughter of entrepreneurs who describes being a saleswoman as ‘in her bones’. Her parents ran everything from double-glazing to transport companies before finally settling on a painting and decorating supply business. By the age of 20 she had set up craft supplies company Crafter’s Companion from her university bedroom, graduating with both a first- class honours degree and a business turning over half a million pounds. ‘By the time I graduated my business was bigger than the family business they’d had for 25 years,’ she recalls.
That turnover has since increased to £34 million, a phenomenal success that has latterly brought Sara an MBE, presented by Prince William .‘ I had a ginormous bump because it was three days before I gave birth. I waddled up to him in 4in heels, and he leant over and said, “That looks like it’s coming soon,”’ she laughs.
Her fellow Dragons acknowledge that her cheerful, say-itlike-it-is Northern directness has brought a fresh injection of energy to the show, while Sara admits to striking up a particular bond with 60-year-old Deborah, which started with their companionable hour in the make-up chair in the mornings and culminated in some raucous nights on the town post-filming. ‘We’ve had plenty of knees- ups,’ says Sara. ‘Just last night, they had to throw us out of the bar. I tried to go home but Deborah said to me, “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s only 11 o’clock – come on, let’s have another bottle of wine.” The others all went to bed.’
Deborah is something of an elder stateswoman of the show who’s had plenty of time to notice changing social and business mores. ‘I think that becoming an entrepreneur feels much more accessible now. I have very young people telling me how much they enjoy the show,’ she reflects. ‘People have got so many more ways to start up a business now, such as social media, or they can just set up a platform online and sell.’
How that translates into the Den is a broader range of business ideas, according to Touker, who calls the show ‘the best little black book in the country’. ‘When I first came on the show the pitches mostly seemed to be about snacks and drinks, but now there’s a change in terms of different types of businesses,’ he says.
Self- professed ‘details man’ Tej, meanwhile – now in his third season – believes ‘entrepreneurs are the new rock stars’, and that the latest crop all want the Dragons to give more for less. ‘The size of investment being asked for by entrepreneurs is greater these days,’ he reflects. ‘Before, typically, it was £15,000, £25,000 – now you’re getting entrepreneurs coming in asking for £100,000, even £200,000.’
All of them agree that the real lure of the show, for them, is what Touker calls ‘ the big one’. ‘As Dragons, we know that seven out of ten businesses we invest in tick along – but we’re looking for that one that will pay for everything and more,’ he says. ‘Peter’s had it, Deborah’s had it, and I’ve got a few in the pipeline .’ Peter, of course, backed Levi Roots in 2007, whose Reggae Reggae sauce business is now worth millions, while Deborah’s seen her investments in quick- drying towels and children’s bubble bath soar.
Peter agrees with Touker. ‘As soon as those lift doors open, it can be life-changing for the person coming in, but it can also be life- changing for a Dragon because you get into a new product. I want to find the next Levi Roots.’ In fact, it seems he thinks he has. ‘There’s one investment this year who I think is going to be world-famous.’
Of course, Dragons’ Den being what it is, Deborah doesn’t agree. ‘Would it surprise you to say I think I’ve bagged the biggest one this time?’ she laughs. ‘I will say that Peter’s actually got a very good one – he’s got one I wanted, and it’s not often that happens, and it was a very, very good one, but I personally think that this time I’ve got one of the strongest sets of investments.’
And with that the sparring starts again – although only, of course, until they walk off the set.
‘I was told I wouldn’t get a look-in if I was polite’
Dragons’ Den returns later this month on BBC2.