To discover our budding entrepreneurs, we challenged Year 8 pupils to enter the Dragons' Den with nothing more than a business plan, an advert and spreadsheets that would stand up to the scrutiny of Farleigh parents' greatest business brains. With just five hours’ teaching time with their mentors, the young enterprise pupils put their heads together - remotely - to create perfect products and stunning service industry ideas that blew their teachers away with their scope and professionalism. 

There were many excellent ideas, from gardening greats to online fashion fixes, but the three that made the final were truly exceptional. Beautherapy, Surge and CardCraft all had something different to offer and every group went above and beyond what was expected of them. Each group created a website to promote their product and many had anticipated selling in Winchester and Salisbury markets when lockdown would allow it.

To say the Dragons were impressed would be an understatement. Charlie Barlow, entrepreneur and CEO at Rockfirst Capital remarks, “In what was an extremely engaging morning with the Year 8 Dragons’ Den finalists, I was struck by the quite brilliant presentations given by all three of the finalists, and the thoughtful responses of the respective teams members during the challenging Q&A sessions. Farleigh really have done a phenomenal job to prepare the Year 8s for the adventures they have to come beyond the school. Huge congratulations to everyone.”

When all was said and done, Beautherapy were worthy winners. "I am always happy to invest in a team", said Nigel Ashfield, Managing Director of Time Investments. He added, "And, given a choice, I'd prefer an A-team with a B product and these girls are definitely the A-team!" 

Our congratulations to Beautherapy's winning trio: Fleur Weston, Chloë Dinan and Gigi Florin. Second place went to Archie Laird, Algy Royle, Ned Hoult, Jack Blosse-Lynch and George Betton of Surge, and third place to Rupert Balmain, Charlie Perry, Oliver Grace and Toby Hopton of CardCraft.

Many thanks to our outstanding Dragons who, truly, would not look out of place on the real Dragons’ Den! Charlie and Nigel, above, were joined by James Behrens, Managing Director of Iceni Property Asset Management, and Anna Lawson, Head of Marketing at Baxter International, the latter adding, "All credit to the Year 8 Dragons' Den finalists! I was astounded at how well they delivered their team pitch, all in different locations, through zoom and with a very short amount of preparation time. What a great initiative and it was a pleasure to be part of it." 

Adam Ralph