They’re back, but…

Those of you who are telly addicts like I am will have spotted that Dragon’s Den is back (yaaay!) with a new dragon who seems actually to listen to what’s being said to him. Odd idea, it’ll never last.

The most interesting point of the programme, though, for me, is what gets left unsaid or more likely on the cutting room floor. This week new dragon James Caan gave a guy an investment for a gold plating business, which he wanted to franchise out.

What I found odd was that the man in question didn’t own the intellectual property behind his offering. He’d bought a plating machine and walked around gold plating things. He also had no substantial brand name just yet.

He certainly seemed a switched-on, nice guy. But if someone’s being asked to hand over £10,000, which every franchise will have to do, they might at least be expected to ask whether they couldn’t just go and buy the same equipment and offer the same service locally with a drastically reduced overhead.

My guess is that there’s something we didn’t see in the programme. And an incomplete view of the pitching process, given the nature of the programme, is a bit of a flaw.

Guy Clapperton is a freelance journalist who specialises in small business issues and has written for the likes of The Guardian, the FT and the Daily Mirror. Guy has written about finance and franchising for SmallBizPod. http://www.guyclapperton.co.uk