Dragons Dens: Duncan Bannatyne Invests In Razzamataz Theatre School
Denise Hutton entered the Dragons Den tonight along with 4 children from her theatre school, who proceeded to perform the school jingle.
Denise currently owns 4 Razzamataz theatre schools and has franchised out 6 other branches. Denise was asking the Dragons for £50,000 in exchange for 25% of her business.
The Dragons were impressed by Denise’s pitch but were unsure of what she needed the £50,000 for. She first claimed she could use it to lend to potential franchisees, then changed her mind and said she could use it for marketing.
This seemed to scare off Deborah Meaden, Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones, and Richard Farleigh jumped ship because he thought that Razzamataz faced too big a competitor in Stagecoach.
However Duncan Bannantyne waited until the last final moment to reveal that he had in fact invested in Stagecoach and had sold his investment on for quite a large profit. He shockingly failed to haggle with Denise and offered her the full £50,000 for 25% of the business.
Duncan closed the show by saying:
“How could I haggle? It’ll be a fantastic little business”.
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November 13th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Just saw Duncan Bannatyne on Dragons Den. Two people were pitching for money for a music festival and were well experienced in the student market. They had already run their festival this year and on close questioning it transpired that their festival and most others are run on the basis of free labour. People are officially volunteers and receive a ticket for the festival. Duncan voiced his concerns about this way of doing things and pointed out that there is a minimum wage. I was impressed.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
The Duncan Suprise. One of my favourite episodes from the series. Seriously didnt think that Duncan of all the Dragons was going to offer her the money, man is full of suprises, and was the best finishing line “fantastic little business”. Apparently on the show this year (follow up), the business is doing rather well.