Dragons’ Den pitch branded ‘pathetic’ by Duncan Bannatyne now turning over £10m

In May 2008, Rachel Watkyn after which enterprise accomplice, Robin Banks, delivered what former Dragon Duncan Bannatyne described as a “pathetic” thought. Fast-forward to now, and Ms Watkyn is popping over round £10million a 12 months together with her sustainable packaging enterprise, the Tiny Box Company, and has no plans on stopping right here.

Ms Watkyn was initially set to launch a Fairtrade jewelry enterprise when her sister instructed that she would wish moral, environmentally pleasant packaging.

This proved to be a a lot larger drawback than first thought, and after scouring the markets, Ms Watkyn found it was nearly not possible to purchase “off the shelf” eco-friendly jewelry containers, in small portions, with low lead instances.

After months of analysis and out of “frustration”, Ms Watkyn arrange the enterprise from scratch at her dad or mum’s home. She informed Express.co.uk: “It was desperation. There was no inspiration, it was desperation, we couldn’t get any boxes.”

Ms Watkyn launched the Tiny Box Company in 2007 to assist not solely the Fairtrade enterprise she had began but additionally to assist all the opposite fledgling companies that have been in the identical state of affairs of not with the ability to discover a sustainable packaging resolution. Unbeknownst to her, she’d quickly obtain a name from the BBC.

Ms Watkyn stated: “I didn’t know what was happening because my business partner at the time had applied [for Dragon’s Den] and hadn’t told me about it. He hadn’t told me because he wanted to go back into broadcasting and didn’t want to let me down.

She added: “He knew that I wouldn’t [have done] it if I knew about it.”

After an intense interrogation session with the Dragons, Ms Watkyn walked away with a £60,000 funding from Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis for 40 % of the enterprise – not that Ms Watkyn actually wanted it.

She stated: “I never went to get investment and to be honest, we kind of didn’t need it. In my first year, I’d done £64,000 of revenue. By the time the investment came in and went through, we were doing fine without it.

“So I never did it for the money anyway, I did it for the exposure. When they sort of threw the insults at me, I didn’t take it personally.”

But it wasn’t totally clean working from the off. Ms Watkyn defined that whereas she was making gross sales each month, she nonetheless needed to reside hand to mouth earlier than the enterprise actually took off. She stated: “I just lived like an absolute pauper. I was taking out £300 a month and I had absolutely nothing. I was maxed out on all my credit cards and everything. But I was determined that everything was going to go back in for growth.”

The Tiny Box Company hit a £1million turnover in 2013, its first “major” milestone and this has solely been “going up”.

Ms Watkyn stated the corporate reached 100,000 prospects in 2016 and now, it’s turning over round £10million a 12 months.

Ms Watkyn stated: “Watch this space. We are going to buck the trend and we’re heading for a growth spurt. We’ve spent this year restructuring after COVID to get a much firmer platform in place.

“One of the things without a doubt that’s been the most exciting for me, success-wise, is seeing youngsters come in and seeing them have the freedom to develop into whatever they want to be. That’s success.”

She added: “I think I’m a typical entrepreneur, in that I’m never satisfied.

“There’s always this driving ambition to achieve more, to be more, and to do more.

“And that’s why I said, ‘Watch this space’ because one of my next ambitions is to go back to what my roots were, of micro-funding in third-world countries to give women better opportunities there.”