Dragon Qwik To Back Startup

Dragon’s Den star and business mentor, Shaf Rasul has already stepped in to help a contestant from the online version of the show.

The company's product had already received the infamous ‘I’m out’ verdict from the judges and their business was on the brink of bankruptcy, when the Dragon stepped.

In his pitch to the Dragons, Giles Bury asked for £50,000 for 20 percent of the company to help with marketing his product, Qwikgoal.com to a wider audience. However, new Dragon, Shaf quickly pointed out to Giles that although he potentially had a great product, his business was insolvent and days from bankruptcy and what he really needed was a business mentor to help quickly turn his business around.

The star of the online version of the hit TV show is now mentoring Giles, who runs Qwikgoal.com – a website dedicted to selling portable football posts which can be erected anywhere.

Shaf commented: “When I met Giles, he had an insolvent business. After the show finished I agreed to be Giles’ business mentor and try and guide him out of his current situation and make his business solvent. Over my years in business, I have helped turn around a number of businesses and sold them for a profit and Giles’ business was one which was I saw as a classic example of this.

“It potentially had a great product but everything else in the business was wrong. The business had no route to market, it had eight year’s worth of inventory and was racking up costs left, right and centre. It had no money to continue to develop the other products Giles had been working on. In its current state, Giles would have had to call in the administrators within days. Giving Giles a wad of cash and leaving him to his own devices would still have resulted in the business going bankrupt in a number of days.

“My first step in helping Giles was turning his current inventory into cash. I introduced Giles to Ebuyer.com, one of the larget e-commerce stores in Europe. They tried out the product and were delighted with its potential. Giles was about to become bankrupt and they pulled out all the stops to help him.
 
“We have worked tirelessly since we met, thrashing out ideas and getting Giles’ business into the best shape of its life and as a result we are negotiating a licensing contract for a new product that Giles has developed. This contract is worth more than £1million. We have essentially turned Qwikgoal.com around in two weeks into a potentially multi-million pound business.”

Giles Bury, said: “During my pitch on Dragon’s Den, Shaf quickly worked out that my business was insolvent and it was only a matter of time before I was bankrupt. I was so keen to work with him because of his obvious business acumen that I even offered 90% of my business to him for the £50,000 investment. I was devastated when he said no. After my pitch and filming had stopped, Shaf approached me and said: ‘You’re in a mess aren’t you?’ He then gave me his number and said to me to call him on Monday and he would help me out.

“That was like a dream come true because I have lost count of the number of sleepless nights I’ve had since I launched the product. This is a fantastic opportunity to work with such a highly esteemed businessman.  I really didn’t know where else to turn before the opportunity to audition for Dragon’s Den arose.

“Shaf has already given me lots of excellent advice which seems very simple, but very effective. He quickly deduced that my forte was not that of running a business and all it entails, but lies in my creativitiy. He has helped me establish a new website and a viral campaign to promote my products. He then introduced me to a number of high profile retailers who all wanted to stock my product. I couldn’t believe it! In the end, I decided to opt for Ebuyer because they where so passionate about the product – once they saw a demonstration of it they bought all of my stock. I explained to Ebuyer that I couldn’t release the stock to them as I didn’t have the money to pay storage company so I couldn’t even sell the goods.

“Dave Wood, the Commercial Director of Ebuyer, came to my rescue and even paid me in advance so my business wouldn’t be insolvent. To say am delighted is a huge understatement. The best part of it is that Ebuyer are now negotiating a licensing deal to have a new product I am in the middle of developing. This is a new product which wil be part of the qwik goals range They can have the new product manufactured for a fraction of what I could have it manufactured for, thereby giving it mass market appeal.

“Once the licencing deal is concluded, this deal will mean that my company will immediately be valued at over £1million and Shaf has helped me to do that within two weeks. I was so grateful to Shaf that I offered to pay him but he refused to accept a single penny, even although he has been travelling all over the country on my behalf negotiating deals. He simply smiled at me and said ‘It’s all about doing the deal!’”

Link: qwikgoal.com.