This season of Dragons’ Den has been fantastic for dog businesses. It’s great to see the Dragons getting excited over new dog products.
So far two business owners have stolen the show, taking away offers as high as £50,000 each to continue their dog-themed ventures.
Team Dogs has taken a look at the entrepreneurs:
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Dom Hogan, from Glasgow, is the owner of Opie’s Emporium. Named after her Crufts champion French bulldog, Opie, she managed to successfully impress the Dragons with her pitch. Touker Suleyman was especially keen to jump on board as he made Dom an offer of £50,000. Zara Davies, Peter Jones, Tej Lalvani and Deborah Meaden all stepped away from making an offer, despite being pleased with her.
As an all-natural, healthy pet product manufacturer and shop, the doggy treats made are all air dried from raw to maintain as much of the nutritional value as possible and be suitable for a RAW/BARF diet.
When pitching her products on the long-running BBC show, Dom said: "The company was started because I couldn't find any suitable treats on the market for dogs that weren't just full of rubbish fillers.
"In September 2019, unfortunately I lost the production side of my business due to a fire in my small manufacturing unit.
"Pretty tough setback, but thanks to my amazing customer base we relaunched and thankfully we have grown from strength to strength.”
She never set out to create a business and has no qualifications in dog nutrition, but now she is looking for a mentor to help support her and take the pet industry by storm.
Darren Louet-Feisser is an Irish inventor, who pitched his quirky pet products in the Den. Nobu Pet Limited sells innovative pet products such as a pet bed travel system, a hose dog brush, and his “potty mouth” pooper scooper displayed on the show.
Touker Suleyman once again saw the potential within the future of the pet industry and shook hands with Darren, offering him £50,000 to get the ball rolling.
As a former stand-up comedian, Darren joked about performing a lot of jokes about poop, but is now designing products to pick up doggy poop.
While on the show he spoke about his inspiration for the invention. He said: “I was sitting in the garden drinking a glass of wine in my dressing gown and my oldest kids were picking up snails with a broken tennis ball. I nearly fell off my chair.”
Both businesses will take the industry by storm in the hands of Touker, who is building up a portfolio of pet businesses.
