A entrepreneur has opened up about the sweet gesture Sara Davies extends to all the businesses she invests in on the show.
Speaking exclusively to Hayley Hanigan of Tiny Explorers, who recently appeared on the show and secured £50K investment from Sara and Touker Suleyman, revealed the crafting mogul hosts an annual retreat for all her companies.
The mum of four, whose baby equipment rental firm was a hit with Sara and Touker who each invested £25,000 for a combined 20% equity stake in the company, said: “One of the best things that’s come out of it is, we went to a retreat with Sara and her other businesses that she’s invested in from the Den along the years.
“She does it every year, and it’s three days in a stately home in Darlington. It was just fantastic. We just learned so much and created some really good friendships from from doing it.
“So I would say, so far, like, that’s the best thing (about working with her). It’s a lovely community to be part of,” she said.
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Dragons’ Den Sara Davies hosts an annual retreat for all her companies (Image: BBC)
Although Hayley’s Dragons’ Den episode aired on February 13, the show is shot months in advance so she has actually been in contact with Sara and Touker for some time now.
However she confessed that the fomalities of the deal after you secure investment on the show is a long process so she hasn’t actually started working with them properly yet.
“The due diligence part before you even get to the Manchester studios, is intense. I mean, it’s, honestly like another full time job. It’s so hard but absolutely worth it (for) the end result. Bbut it’s you underestimate how difficult that’s going to be.
“And then obviously you do the filming. That’s the easy, that’s the fun bit. And then after that you obviously go through another stage of due diligence,” she explained.
“So that’s kind of where we’re at at the moment – just kind of getting all our balls in the court. It’s where you negotiate, if you want to change a percentage or something might have changed. So…we haven’t actually signed officially our percentage yet.
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Hayley Hanigan’s company Tiny Explorers received investment from Sara Davies and Touker Suleyman (Image: Sara Davies Instagram)
“We very much regularly speak to the investment directors for both sides (Sara and Touker), which is really helpful – especially Sara’s side. And obviously we’ve had a lot of exposure to Sara given the retreat and stuff like that. But in terms of them working with us officially,at the moment, we’re not there because we haven’t signed yet.”
Explaining why the process takes so long Hayley said: “We filmed at the end of June, but then they don’t start really looking into contract signing until September time, because of the filming is still going on in the background.
“And I think Sara tries to take time off over the summer holidays as she’s got two young boys. (Then) one of them always takes the lead. So Sara took the lead on the investment so there’s just one contract rather than two, which helps out as well.
“So things have just been so, so busy we’re just kind of catching up.
When everything is finally in order Hayley plans to use the investment to support her plans to increase marketing efforts and scale her operations with a new office and warehouse space, and improve her customer experience through automated processes.