Entrepreneur Forgets to Mention His Strongest Selling Point | Dragons' Den

[Music] hello my name is ian helmore and i'm here today to ask for a minimum investment of 145 000 pounds for a 10 share of my company i work in the water treatment industry and have for 18 years dealing with the prevention of legionnaires disease legionnaires disease is a potentially fatal respiratory disease and can be contracted from showers and taps it was while i was working in a hospital that legionella bacteria was detected on one shower and because of this they took all 50 showers offline i didn't think it was acceptable so i went away i invented and patented and trademark what i call stair spray stair spray is a shower which incorporate the patented technology to ensure that the shower head remains free from waterborne bacteria and it will also treat the incoming supply water as it comes into through and out of the unit the technology is using is using ultraviolet light bringing it into the showerhead itself the target markets are hospitals hotels care homes gyms leisure centres schools and universities in fact anywhere where showers are fitted and where the facility has a um duty of care to its clients uh thank you for listening to me and i'll try to answer any questions you have are you saying that if legionella infected water comes to the shower your unit will prevent the original water coming out the shower yes okay but that's not the problem is it i mean you still have legionella in the tank i have 65 health clubs in hotels and we stop it in the tank and if if your machine is stopping it coming out the shower head and it's still in the tank isn't it still connect the taps yes it could be yeah so you're gonna have to put one of these in every single tap on every shower head in every outlet of water if possible but it's a bloody expensive legionnaires disease is a respiratory disease and it's and it's contracted from inhaling infected water in a vapor form so with taps you're a very very minimal risk of contracting legionnaires disease showers are the main market for this you know i've got to put you up in that because if it's in the taps you're on a bath there's vape in the bath if you put water in the kettle ball the kettle there's vapor to kill i'll tell you where i am i'm out where are you at the moment is this actually in production you know the investment which is to get us to a production-ready state i have granted patents in the uk australia new zealand and south africa and i'm pending in europe us canada japan and hong kong okay and what about what what is the actual patent for for the whole unit it's for showers taps um sorry yeah but what does the patent cover it's not you haven't patterned in a shower no no the technology yes how costly is that compared to standard shower heads retailing at 250 wholesaling at 175 compared to just a standard they vary in price from between 60 to 120 pounds there's about a 50 pound premium attached to each one of your shower heads yes okay give me some numbers um initial figures i think we can sell uh we've got seven and a half thousand units in the first year giving us a 1.3 million uk only and what sort of margin do you make on that what sort of margin do you make on that uh on the gross um 77 and on the net 56 you said you've got 77 gross margin you are about based on your figures about 50 more than the standard shower systems in the uk wholesale my immediate thought is why not just for argument's sake do a matching price system reduce your price by 50 percent make 27 margin and then go and spend the rest of your life on a beach somewhere because if your product does what it says on the tin and it's clearly a no-brainer for somebody to buy a standard shower system or yours because the price is different and yet yours saves lives why do you not just reduce your margin down to 27 and take the whole market or is that why you're here you haven't worked that out and i should invest quickly possibly but um we're still into how uh just rubbish i'm just get back getting you back to this can you ask do me why have you not thought about it no what's the nearest product that that is doing or what's the closest current product it's it's is a unit that has a um a filter in it and the filter doesn't kill bacteria obviously there's a whole heap of floors it doesn't kill the bacteria holds it back and these these sell for 59 pounds 90 each and they say they're selling a million and a half of these have a look at them these are 59 pounds each and they last 31 days and then they're just disposed of and what's that sorry so where who uses these uh hospitals and they're in there now using them now hospital that um i've worked at they use them see that's really funny i'd have mentioned that quite early on because i think it's quite important that there's one and a half million of these device devices out there that's taken some severe amount of questioning to get probably your most your strongest selling point because actually you suddenly in one fell swoop got my attention ian left it late in his pitch to reveal vital information the true size of the market for his product will the dragons be able to overlook the nervous entrepreneur's errors and focus on the potential of steri-spray ian i like it your valuation is crazy you have no turnover whatsoever at the moment not unusual you're an inventor and you have got a patent and that's got a big value i know what to do with it this is good so i am going to make you an offer it's going to be nowhere near at your ten percent but i will offer you a hundred and forty five thousand pound for forty percent of the business no i would like to see what anyone else's interest was i think we're passing we want you to give an answer to deborah well answers i'd like to hear if any other investors are um so i think thank you for your offer thank you for your offer i really appreciate that and i would i'd like to see if any other dragons are interested as well ian i think deborah's made you a very fair offer and i'm certainly not in a position to want to compete with that because i think it's a very generous offer so i think i'm going to declare myself out thank you ian i really like it i i would probably be interested at a similar sort of level to deborah but i'm going to back out of it on the basis i think you have got a very fair offer there so i'm going to say i'm out okay thank you james khan and peter jones are refusing to go head-to-head with deborah meaden now all eyes turn to theo perfetus [Music] that just leaves me i do like it i think it's got a potential i think you're miles away from actually having a finished product you need a lot of work to do still what sort of percentage would you accept um that's difficult really would you go up to 40 if there was two dragons um it would certainly be more attractive with with two dragons involvement purely because of um both i've got double the business acumen i can't see myself under cut endeavor no so you're in danger then i'm losing me now yeah i see you saying if deborah was interested in a shared investment i think we could do something along the lines of that 40 percent you've left me with a right old dilemma i'm sitting here thinking i know exactly what to do with that i know where to take it i've said that to you i'm a lot more enthusiastic about it than you are and i'm beginning to feel like well yeah no i am i don't want to drag somebody kicking and screaming i mean do you want to do something with it or not so can you tell me now why i mean to be honest i still love to invest can you tell me now why i should a bizarre twist in the negotiations deborah meaden is annoyed at ian's apparent lack of enthusiasm and is ready to ditch the deal the investment now rests on ian's next words [Music] it's my passion to get this product to market i've i've struggled for four years getting to this stage it's kind of taken over you know i'm a hard worker you know we'll get this product to market [Music] it's a last-ditch attempt from the entrepreneur to claw back the deal but has he left it too late well i i'm going to trust you and believe you on that but i'm going to need to see the action afterwards 100 yes then you've got a deal excellent hold on good well i'll say we'll put that behind us here and we'll focus on the forward ian's done it after a tense session the inventor has finally secured the 145 000 pounds he needed and the business acumen of two very experienced multi-millionaires well done well done congratulations well done i'll put it down to nerves you

Channel: undefined

Views: 135,800

Rating: 4.835206 out of 5

Keywords: dragons den, dragons den uk, evan davis, deborah meaden, peter jones, touker suleyman, tej lalvani, business pitching, entrepreneur, game show, shark tank, dragons, den, best, bits, new, worst, pitches, funniest, most, shocking, ideas, products, businesses, dragons den funny, dragons den season 16, dragons den best pitch, peter jones dragons den, medicine (field of study), disease (cause of death), pathology (medical specialty), nursing (field of study), nursing school (organization)

Id: IbDGTRfRUVw

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020