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5 Dragons’ Den companies to know this week: Pretty Mama, PipeSnug, Gasm Drinks and more
We also saw a pack of clay crayons and a business all about accessibility
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Your support makes all the difference.Tonight’s episode of Dragons’ Den didn’t have too much drama on the left-hand side of the screen, but we did get a look at a bunch of products trying to solve some real-world problems.
Maybe it wasn’t the most interesting consortium of businesses in the world, but the dragons gave the entrepreneurs a good grilling nonetheless and ended up backing two of the five businesses seen on screen.
This evening, we saw the fearsome five interrogate the founders of several start-ups, including a maternity clothing brand, a champagne cocktail drink company and an innovative start-up producing seals for wall pipes. We also saw the dragons colour in pretty pictures with clay crayons and think long and hard about digital accessibility.
For those of you who missed last week’s episode and want a quick run-down of the companies featured in the show, which included the return of a plucky pair of entrepreneurs who wooed the dragons with their squeezy glass bottle contraption and a delicious-looking Panther Milk cocktail drink, have a read of our episode 12 Dragons’ Den recap.
But if it’s weird pipe contraptions or maternity clothes for new mums, we’ve rounded up where you can buy each company’s products below and what kind of stuff they sell.
Read more:
Pretty Mama: Prettymama.co.uk
It was a deal from The Avengers, Peter Jones said, as he, along with Sara Davies, Steven Bartlett and Touker Suleyman invested their cash into Jenny and Alex McFadden’s fashionable easy-access maternity wear brand Pretty Mama.
Founded in 2018, Pretty Mama produces fashionable maternity wear for new mothers, and includes everything from oversized nursing hoodies (£45, Prettymama.co.uk), jumpers (from £40, Prettymama.co.uk) and T-shirts (£25, Prettymama.co.uk) to nursing bras and lingerie (£15, Prettymama.co.uk).
There’s a sustainable collection, which the company says has been designed, hand-cut and made within the UK, while the nursing jumpers are made using recycled material. The nursing lingerie is made using dead stock material, meaning there is limited stock of each item in this range.
Gasm Drinks: Gasmdrinks.co.uk
It was a tough old time in the den for Richard Davies and his cocktail drinks brand Gasm, which was called immature by Steven Bartlett and declared the “worst business proposition” since Sara Davies first joined Dragons’ Den, but product wise – all the dragons loved the champagne and fruit gin blend.
Gasm Drinks sell three different cocktail flavours in two different-sized bottles (75cl or 37.5cl) with 13.5 or 12.5 per cent alcohol in each. There’s sloeberry (from £22.50, Gasmdrinks.co.uk) – prosecco and spirit fused with sloe juice; plum gasm (from £22.50, Gasmdrinks.co.uk) – prosecco and spirit fused with plum juice; and razz gasm (from £22.50, Gasmdrinks.co.uk) – prosecco and spirit fused with raspberry juice.
Bambino Crayons: Bambinocrayons.com
It was the montage slot for Kat Brennan tonight as she got the dragons colouring in with a different kind of crayon, but it ultimately wasn’t to be for the crayon creator, who left the den without any investment.
Bambino Crayons make crayons out of clay instead of wax. Clay crayons are apparently better at blending colours together, with the company saying that its crayons produce a “much bolder, more vibrant end result”. The company sells a pack of 24 crayons (£7, Amazon.co.uk), a pack of 18 crayons (£4.50, Hobbycraft.co.uk) and a series of colouring books.
CityMaaS: Citymaas.io
While the London-based trio of Andrew and Rene Perkins and Luis Canto E Castro came in with a philanthropic and potentially gamechanging business aimed at assisting people with disabilities, their pitch wasn’t strong enough to convince any of the dragons to invest.
CityMaaS is a business-to-business proposition with three different products, developed to help make the online and offline worlds accessible for people with disabilities. AssistMe makes websites convenient with a whole host of content, style and navigation adjustments; Mobility Map helps people determine the accessibility features of buildings; and the Automatic Web Accessibility Reporting Engine (AWARE) helps businesses identify accessibility issues that can’t be fixed automatically.
PipeSnug: Pipesnug.co.uk
It’s apparently the first time Peter Jones has ever invested in something that he’s found really boring, but both him and Deborah Meaden thought the contraption from Chris Burdett and Alex Lever could be a real money-maker.
Aimed at builders and DIY fanatics, PipeSnug is an airtight all-in-one seal for pipes and boiler flues, used for sealing a hole where a pipe exits a wall. It complies with the new part L building regulations, which we (admittedly) are just as clueless about as Meaden herself. The PipeSnugs come in a range of different sizes to fit all sorts of pipes, with the product being sold at ScrewFix.
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Curious about the fresh chocolate company seen in episode 10or Fussy’s eco-friendly refillable deodorant in episode eight? Check out our previous Dragons’ Den company round-ups for all the gossip