Dragons Den Press Release

Dan Farrimond

So we entered the Dragons Den. Taking the roles of Duncan Bannatyne et al were the course leader, a couple of third year illustration students, Johnathan Hitchen and a representative from local design group Burn Everything. A daunting line-up indeed, granted only one, Hitch, had prior knowledge of the brief and was most suited to pass comment - we had to impress them. However, with only 30 minutes rehearsal time it was more of a case of hoping that things went right than confidence.

That said, the presentation went well with no hitches almost exactly as planned. There was one small issue with the order of the slides but we covered for that well. Our presentation, probably the shortest of the pitches was to the point and relatively efficient... so we thought.

Whilst not exactly being trashed by the Dragons, we were made to feel inadequate and that we, as a design team, sucked, quite frankly. The idea turned out to be the major positive point though our presentation was 'all over the place'. In other words, we hadn't exactly nailed the point of the presentation: we needed to present one idea rather than all the ones we came up with. Bah. The Burn Everything representative gave us 2 for presentation and 2 for the idea: not exactly flattering, and slightly harsh, in my opinion. But then, how many clients have I worked for?

The team will take away much from the pitch: lack of direction was our downfall. The lessons have been learned. Whether we will act on them in the future is yet to be seen.