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JAMMY DODGER
I was on Dragons’ Den – this is what happens after you accept an offer & why deal doesn’t always mean you work together
WHEN Rachel Kettlewell accepted an exciting offer on Dragons’ Den, she thought all her dreams had come true.
But all was not as it seemed on TV, as the £40,000 deal she made with Tej Lalvani for her jam start-up, , never materialised.
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Despite this, Rachel’s low-sugar jam business is on track to make £5million by 2025, and is now stocked in 155 Waitrose stores across the country.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, North Yorkshire-based Rachel - who was on Dragons’ Den in July 2021 - reveals what really happens after you’ve left the den with an offer.
“You have a chat after the show,” she explains. “And you look at what working together is going to be like.
“And I think it was a mutual decision to not move forward. What we'd agreed versus what I wanted and what he wanted wasn't right.”
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The dragon offered her the big money sum in return for a 35 per cent stake in the business, or 30 per cent if he got his money back quickly.
Rachel continues: “What I really wanted at the time was mentorship and support, and the time and expertise to help me grow the business.
"I knew it was a good idea and a good product, but there were an awful lot of things that I didn't know.
“But Tej was so busy - he actually left the show because he said he was too busy.”
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Despite the fact she and the former dragon don’t officially work together, Rachel insists she’s still in regular contact with Tej and his millionaire co-stars.
She says: “There are still times where I send an email and ask a question about things that come up and I will get a response. It's still amicable.
“Sara Davies put Fearne & Rosie on her Instagram recently, so they are still in my world and I can still ask them for help.
“It's just that the deal that we agreed on that day wasn't the right thing for the business.”
20 hours notice
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Former teacher Rachel says you go through a very thorough process when you apply for Dragons' Den, including a due diligence meeting carried out by the BBC.
“It is really militant because the BBC is a publicly funded company,” she says.
“Everything that you could possibly say in the den, you need to provide evidence for.
"They don't know what questions you will be asked so you've got to have enough evidence behind you to prove every statement you make is true.”
After the initial round of meetings with the BBC, Rachel was only told she was going to be on Dragons’ Den 20 hours before filming.
She recalls: “They rang me on the Monday morning at about 10 o'clock and said, ‘Could you come and film tomorrow? You need to be at the studios by 6am.’
“So I didn't have the time to worry or be nervous.
“And I think that was a bonus. I think if I'd have had weeks and months to prepare, I probably would have been a lot more scared than I was.”
Two hour grilling
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Rachel was being grilled by Tej, Sara, Deborah Meaden, Peter Jones and Touker Suleyman in the den for two hours.
“It’s a long time to talk,” she says. “And then that gets cut down to 15 minutes, so it's nerve-wracking to not know which part of your two hours will play out”.
Rachel was teaching in schools before she applied for Dragons' Den and Fearne & Rosie, named after her two daughters, was simply an idea rather than a business.
She says: “I knew that it was a good idea, but I didn't know all the things I needed to know to run a business. The only thing I knew that you do is, you apply for Dragons' Den.
“That sounds really silly now but I didn't have any industry experience. I didn't have a network of people within food or who knew how to grow a business.
"I was looking at these amazing businesses like Ella's Kitchen and Pip & Nut, seeing they were doing what I wanted to do with jams, knowing how much sugar there was in jam, and it didn't make any sense to me that there wasn't a healthier product out there.
“I think it’s testament to the product that we had really positive feedback from all the dragons.”
Now, a year and a half on since her episode aired, Rachel says she still gets people coming to Fearne & Rosie having seen the business on the show, and its future looks sweet.
She adds: “We've got 400 per cent growth year on year, and our plan is that we'll hit £5million revenue in the next three years.
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“We've also been working with Children In Need and hoping that, over the course of the partnership, we'll be able to raise £500,000 for charity.
“We want to build a business that gives back.”
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