Last week, Dacorum Borough Council’s Maylands Business Centre hosted the first ever Dacorum’s Den, with great success.
The Dragons’ Den style panel assessed 12 pitches from small (50 employees or less), locally based businesses hoping to gain a grant of £1,000 to help them start a new business, expand into a new market or test a new product. The companies pitching ranged from specialist food producers to sports clubs and carpenters.
The panel of four ‘Dragons’, comprising Mike Penning MP, Chris Taylor from Dacorum Borough Council, Andy Cook from FFEI and Maree Atkinson from FSB, decided to award grants to eight companies.
Chris Taylor, Group Manager for Strategic Planning and Regeneration said, “I was really impressed by the proposals I saw. The variety of companies that are operating in Dacorum have already put this borough on the map as a place to locate business. We opened Maylands Business Centre last year as a way of supporting new and start-up businesses to become established. In running the Dacorum’s Den initiative we’ve taken that support for start-ups a step further and sent out a clear message that if you have a great idea for a new business or if you want to expand your existing business, then Dacorum is the place to do it.”
The successful companies were:
• Lush Pups
• Deli-ghtful Foods
• Baby Moments
• Aid4Disabled
• Quest Joinery
• Hemel Stags Rugby Club
• Grim Reaper Foods
• Industrial Floorcare Machines
They will be presented with their grants at Maylands Business Centre’s first anniversary lunch on 14 September.
