Dragons slappie

Appearance on Dragon’s Den crashes Slappie website

A Birmingham businessman and budding watch entrepreneur appeared on Dragon’s Den last night which generated so much interest it crashed his brand’s website.

David Kendall went on to the BBC2 investment show with the aim of attracting £50,000 investment in return for 25% of his business, Slappie, which sells watches on slap bracelets with interchangeable watch heads for less than £20.

But within minutes of the show airing the brand’s website had crashed and it later posted to Facebook that despite preparatory work to ensure the website was ready for increased traffic following the broadcast it was unable to cope with the ‘insane’ numbers of hits generated.

Kendall, who purchased Slappie watches in 2015 for £75,000, told the Dragons that the business had turned over £105,000 in the past two years with a 65% margin.

Despite sales falling in 2014 to £45,000 from £63,000 the previous year, Kendall received two offers from Dragons Touker Suleyman and Nick Jenkins.

Suleyman, owner of fashion label Ghost and shirtmaker Hawes & Curtis, proposed investing £50,000 in return for 45% of the business, but would require Kendall to write-off the £107,000 he had already invested in the business.

Kendall instead accepted an offer for the same level of investment from rival Dragon Nick Jenkins, the founder of Moonpig.com, which included a clause to repay Kendall’s debt when profits reached £300,000.

James Buttery

Editor of WatchPro, the WatchPro Hot 100 and The Luxury Report.

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