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THEY made Dragons’ Den history after offering investors the lowest-ever price for a slice of their business on the hit TV show.
But it proved to be a winning gamble for Simon and Charlene Mitchell-Hood, who bagged all five Dragons for their kids’ book streaming service, Sooper Books, for a minuscule £1 each.
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They took 1 per cent equity each for the company, which was valued at £3.2million at the time after gaining popularity with schools during lockdown and attracting several impressive angel investors including Monzo founder Tom Blomfield and even Princess Beatrice.
Last week, Simon and Charlene’s pitch in the Den went viral due to achieving show firsts including the lowest offer and seeing the Dragons ‘talking to the wall’ all together for the very first time.
But the Sooper Books founders, Stratford-upon-Avon, West Mids, tell The Sun their route to the show was anything but simple – including a last-minute plan to change their proposal 48 hours before filming.
Charlene tells us: “It was around two days before and we felt something wasn’t right, we rang our contact at the BBC and basically put the idea in their head.
READ MORE ON DRAGONS’ DEN
“We thought, ‘Shall we go in and ask for no money to make it a bit different?’ because we didn’t need the money, we wanted the Dragons’ contacts.
“The producers came back and said, ‘We’re a money programme, you’ve got to ask for something but there’s nothing stopping you from asking for a pound’, so we were like ‘Let’s go for it’.
“We were warned, ‘There is a risk with this, it’s never been done before so we don’t know how the Dragons are going to react so it’s on your backs.
“It was a big risk really, they could have turned around and gone, ‘1 per cent equity is not enough for us, sorry’ or they could have taken it as a bit of a joke.”
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Their bid to win over the Dragons followed former investment banker Simon, 40, being “a little naughty” and applying for the show in secret without consulting his illustrator wife Charlene, 37.
“Both of us were just too scared to apply before, thinking ‘I’m not sure we can do this’ and then one day I thought let’s just send the application,” he tells us.
“I spent 20 minutes on it and forgot about it. It’s so hard to get on that I thought, ‘The chances of even getting a call back is very slim’.
“Three months later, I got a call back and I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, Charlene still doesn’t know about it.’”
When Simon told his wife, he recalled her face filling with “terror” mixed with “a sprinkle of excitement.
Charlene, who admits she was “too terrified to even think about appearing on the show” previously, said: “I secretly always wanted the opportunity to go on there.
“But there was definitely nervous energy in the room when he told me, with a buzz of exhilaration.”
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Sara Davies – £37million
‘Comedy of errors’
While their pitch appeared smooth in the Den, it was anything but that behind the scenes.
The Couple revealed they needed multiple retakes while filming pre-pitch interviews for mistakes including Charlene getting her age wrong and Simon “completely freezing” on camera.
But the most awkward moment for them was being asked to kiss on camera by producers and they “had to beg the team” to prevent them from broadcasting it.
Charlene recalls: “You film all the walk-ins and interview bits about an hour before you pitch. When we came out of the lift somebody shouting from the back, ‘Kiss! Kiss!’
“I was like, ‘That’s really not us, we’re not doing that’. They said ‘No, go on give it a try’ and we said ‘Ok, just for television.’”
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Eventually producers agreed to cut the scene and Simon recalled: “You can imagine it. Behind the camera you’ve got seven people looking at you and three massive cameras in your face. It was the most awkward thing.”
In a blog post, he admitted their attempts at filming “was a comedy of errors” and he was “surprised they managed to get anything remotely coherent out of it”.
‘Most nerve-wracking bit’
Surprisingly, the duo explains going into the Den wasn’t the most nerve-wracking part of the experience – instead it was pitching to producers around 10 minutes before they did it for real.
Charlene said: “I thought ‘Ok, fine. It’s going to be about one or two people’ but then about 15 people waltz into this room, all dressed in black with clipboards and were like ‘Right, ok, pitch.’
“It was the shakiest we’d done it… it was all quite fast, which makes you more nervous. They are on a time schedule, so you’re just thrown around a bit.”
Simon added: “They stand really close to you too… and have seen hundreds of thousands of pitches… so they know the difference between a good and a bad one.
“If they don’t react well you’ve got it in the back of your mind that it might be what is to come in the Den – but they didn’t give anything away.”
Spoiler edited out
The couple used rhyming couplets in their pitch and created a Dragons’ Den-based children’s story featuring a narrator impersonating David Attenborough.
They spent around 50 minutes in the Den yet viewers only saw about six minutes on TV and they say a few edits were made to build up tension.
Charlene says: “Touker Suleyman actually jumped in with an offer before all of the Dragons went to ‘talk to the wall’.
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“I think they obviously cut that because they wanted the anticipation of whether they would or wouldn’t invest.”
Simon added: “There was a huge amount of back and forth between the Dragons talking about what they wanted to do with the business, which they didn’t show either.
“In one clip, Sara Davies says ‘Finally, I’ve not managed to get a word in edgeways’ and that’s because they had been talking for about 20 to 25 minutes.
We couldn’t believe what was happening… We were introduced to someone with a connection to Princess Beatrice’s husband’s family
Simon
They described the experience as “like stepping into the TV” and admitted the moment when the Dragons went to ‘talk to the wall’ as “absolutely surreal”.
“There was no way we were imagining something like that was going to happen, so when it did it was just bizarre.
“We were just standing in the middle of the room looking at five empty chairs and we couldn’t hear what they were saying because it’s quite far away… They showed it for a few seconds but it lasted three or four minutes.”
In the end, they bagged all five Dragons – Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Sara Davies, Steven Bartlett and Touker.
Bright future
Simon and Charlene founded Sooper Books back in 2020 after writing children’s stories for their daughter Goldie, now three.
When the nation went into lockdown, schools started sharing a link to their site, which they claim propelled them to the top of Google and turned them into the No.1 bedtime story website in the world.
They went on to land a number of impressive angel investors including royalty.
Simon told us: “We couldn’t believe what was happening… We were introduced to someone with a connection to Princess Beatrice’s husband’s family and we had a meeting with them.
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“They loved it and wanted to get their family involved and that was the connection to Prince Beatrice and Eduardo [Mapelli Mozzi], who we have most contact with.”
Appearing on Dragons’ Den has only increased the company’s popularity.
On the night their episode aired, they claimed to have received 100 times the traffic on their website and say their email inbox has been “absolutely bursting”.
Clips of their pitch have since gone viral too – racking up millions of views on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram
Simon said: “Five days after airing, we hit one million views on the site, which is around a month’s worth of traffic.
“We also saw a peak of 27,000 concurrent users on the site during the episode, which is around 100 times higher than typical. It was incredible.”
It’s totally surreal, very heartwarming to get the reaction that we have and kind of unbelievable really
Simon
Their company has increased in value too – in September, the couple brought in “a few more investors”, which brought the valuation of Sooper Books to a whopping £5million.
They have met up with their Dragons’ Den investors and say there are “some really exciting things planned” that they will unveil later this year.
Simon added: “This year is going to be incredible… We’re hoping this is the real springboard for the business.”
Reflecting on their experience, the couple admits it “still feels a bit like a dream” and is “absolutely crazy”.
Simon added: “It’s totally surreal, very heartwarming to get the reaction that we have and kind of unbelievable really.
“If you asked if this could happen 12 months ago, we just wouldn’t have believed you. We’re excited to see what happens next.”
Find out more about Sooper Books here. Dragons’ Den airs at 9pm on Thursdays on BBC One and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
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