DRAGON SLAYERS

“It felt like an out-of-body experience,” says Trib Gosain (International Business and Marketing 2020) reflecting on his recent appearance on BBC TV show Dragon’s Den.

Alongside fellow entrepreneur Reid Jacoby, former Spark scholar Trib pitched their idea for an upmarket umbrella to the show’s line up of well-known potential investors. “We were there for about two-and-a-half hours and all the filming is done in one take. They just continue to roll the cameras.

“We'd done investment pitches before but when the dragons are there in front of you, it is quite different. We were confident and wanted to keep it light but it was still a very intense experience.”

Trib and Reid were pitching their product, a modern take on the traditional umbrella. It can withstand winds up to 30mph and folds into a rigid watertight case. “Everyone uses an umbrella and they’ve not really changed in the past couple of decades,” says Trib. “There’s a lack of great brands and no real innovation.”

The strength of their Gilley Umbrella, alongside its handy case, are major steps forward: “So many people leave an umbrella out to dry somewhere and then forget to pick it back up again. They then have to buy another one but don’t want to spend much in case they lose it once more. Our umbrella breaks that vicious cycle.”

In their first year of trading, the friends hit sales of £150,000, catching the eye of scouts from the TV show. And they impressed the multi-millionaire dragons too, securing an offer of £50,000 from Peter Jones who told them: “You’ve invented something really clever.”

It was an offer they felt able to reject: “Before filming began, we didn’t speculate about who we'd like to get on board, but we knew what deals we were prepared to accept,” says Trib. “Peter Jones wanted a 20 per cent share of the business and we felt that was too much.”

The University had long since recognised Trib's entrepreneurial flair and determination, says Kairen Skelley, Head of Business Start-up at Spark: “We were all extremely impressed by the ambition to re-imagine and elevate a humble, everyday product into a contemporary aspirational brand.”

As well as the scholarship, their design and business skills were rewarded with a £5,000 first prize in Spark’s prestigious Sir Peter Thompson Enterprise Award – money which helped the pair to refine their product still further.

But Trib said that the support from the University wasn’t just about the money. He explained how the team at Spark linked him up with alumni James Butterfield (Management (Industrial) 2011) from Chilly’s Bottles and Alexander Solomou (Management (Industrial) 2013) who co-founded LADbible.

“Making those connections is really important.”