Destination Dolan

[Mich the Tester]

Mmmmmm Carbon...

mmmmm

Dolan Forza Track Bike

[MarillionFan]

No I've managed to find a way to get companies to pay me largish sums of money to tell them everything is fine and nothing has gone wrong. (It also records and sends alerts when things go wrong but that doesn't sound so good).

Animal House - All Is Well! - YouTube

[eek]

Well if you managed to convert lickspittle into petrol then you're going to be rich.

No I've managed to find a way to get companies to pay me largish sums of money to tell them everything is fine and nothing has gone wrong. (It also records and sends alerts when things go wrong but that doesn't sound so good).

[MarillionFan]

don't need it

Well if you managed to convert lickspittle into petrol then you're going to be rich.

[eek]

So, anyone's Plan B worthy of an investment?



Source

don't need it

[Moscow Mule]

Very disappointing; I came in here looking for bike porn.

Track Bikes

Mmmmmm Carbon...

[MarillionFan]

Isn't Simon Dolan that mop topped bloke from the Monkees?

[Mich the Tester]

Very disappointing; I came in here looking for bike porn.

Track Bikes

[Clippy]

So, anyone's Plan B worthy of an investment?

Bouncing back from bankruptcy

It can be devastating to fail at a first business venture. But Rachel Lowe, a contender on the first series of Dragon's Den, found the confidence to recover and start again

When you hit rock bottom as an entrepreneur, things can look very bleak. The challenge is to get back up again, when your self-belief has been shattered and there is nothing left in the bank but debt. For Rachel Lowe, a contender on the very first series of Dragon's Den, rock bottom was a very dark place.

Her story begins nine years ago when she hatched her initial business idea. A student at Portsmouth University, she had taken a part-time job as an evening cab driver. Driving around Portsmouth she devised a board game that would take players on a journey through the city's streets in a taxi. It was the resulting product, Destination Portsmouth and its more mainstream companion Destination London, that Lowe took to the Dragons.

Despite a humiliating grilling (the programme was new and she was unprepared) and having left empty-handed, the game took off and was overwhelmingly successful. Even before appearing in the Den she had secured two rounds of funding through a university Enterprise Challenge run by the Portsmouth Centre for Enterprise. Lowe's backers liked her idea because the game doubled as a souvenir for tourists. Even before she appeared on TV she had a prototype product, was in talks with toy retailer Hamley's and, through sponsorship from local businesses, had managed to get a first run of the games into production.

Hamley's followed through and, that Christmas, the London version of the game was the retailer's best-selling item. On a roll, Lowe expanded to 21 different versions of the game, and secured a licensing agreement with Disney for a Pixar CGI edition, Destination Animation.

But in 2008 her luck changed. A promising film tie-up with another partner was suddenly thrown up in the air when the release date was rescheduled, missing the all-important Christmas slot. With everything riding on this, Lowe turned to her bank but it was the height of the recession and they refused to bridge the funding gap. Overnight, Lowe's business began to spiral. The company went into administration and Lowe was declared bankrupt. Her house was repossessed and the stress made her seriously ill. Her situation felt desperate. "At my lowest point I believed my career was over and my reputation irreversibly damaged," she says.

It was a second TV appearance that helped her turn a corner. "BBC's Panorama covered my story" Lowe explains. "After that was screened I received a lot of support and I was contacted by Simon Dolan, an angel investor known for spotting ideas via Twitter. He came to see me."

During their meeting, Lowe told Dolan about a second brand she had wanted to get off the ground, but which had been neglected as a project during the fallout from the Destination fiasco. He liked the idea, liked the spark he found in Lowe, and decided to invest. He has been her business partner ever since.

The new venture, She Who Dares, is a statement brand – a line of gifts (fragrance, jewellery and accessories) which stand for something - the idea being that they are given to a woman as a sign of recognition for something special they have achieved or done. Lowe has spent the past two years developing the proposition and the first product, the fragrance Eminence (meaning to honour and acknowledge), is due to launch any day now - in time for Christmas.

Dolan also helped rescue the Destination brand which is now being sold under the banner of the new company. This year Lowe secured a deal for a special Olympics-themed Destination London 2012 version of the game, as well as with Warner Bros for a product linked to the last Harry Potter film (this quickly sold out). She is also promoting a travel edition of the original product.

For the She Who Dares gift range, Lowe is already talking to a major chemist chain as well as a number of other stores; she says some 400 retailers have been looking at the product following its promotion at recent trade shows. So things are looking up.

In 2009, although she nearly didn't accept it because of her still-raw business failure, Lowe was awarded an MBE by the Queen for services to business. It was probably this that sparked the idea for the new business. Lowe was put forward for the award for all of the time she had given back to local schools and colleges – giving talks about her experiences of getting a company off the ground and growing a business.

The timing of the award was unfortunate however. "I didn't feel I could accept it," she says. "It was my Dad who persuaded me: he reminded me what had had happened wasn't down to anything I had done, and it's true – the products had been very successful.

"The way the award made me feel really helped lift my spirits, and restored my self-worth. That the Olympic Games and Warner Brothers – and the likes of Debenhams and Harrods – were still happy to work with me as a person was a further boost. I realised I could still hold my head up high."

So what advice would she pass on to other entrepreneurs whose prospects currently seem grim? "Giving up completely is where you'd be failing," she concludes, with feeling. "It's easier said than done to shake off the emotional legacy and you need to be realistic about the situation, but try to keep the faith. If anyone had said two years ago that I'd be in the position I'm in today, I wouldn't have believed it. So try to ride the wave and don't expect recovery to come overnight. Also, keep sight of what's most important in life. My lowest point was trying so desperately to save the company that I didn't have as much time for my children as I make now. That was extremely hard – thankfully we've come through it now."

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