TWO former Dragons’ Den contestants have turned an initial £5,000 investment into a business with a turnover of more than £1million.
Mums Kelly Aspland, 44, and Laura Waters, 40, started their suncream business as a side hustle.
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They were handed £80,000 from Dragons Den’s panellists Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones after appearing on the show last month.
The pair, from Cwmbran, South Wales, started their company Solar Buddies in 2011 to help kids apply sun cream without help from adults.
The business has since turned over a jaw-dropping £1.2million.
Ms Aspland told Express: “There was nothing out there for the kids to be able to make this job easy and they always run away from you.
“It was just a bit of a moment where we thought, let’s have a little Google and see if there’s anything about and there wasn’t.
“So we thought, well, let’s have a little go at doing it ourselves.”
After bagging a £5,000 investment from a friend – Kelly and Laura set about designing the product with students from Cardiff Met University.
Solar Buddies, designed for use by children, launched its first product in 2015.
The pals struggled during COVID-19 lockdowns but recently found success after going viral on TikTok.
Ms Aspland said: “[TikTok] literally pushed out, it literally skyrocketed us over into the US. And we’re still riding that wave right now.”
The duo then took their product to Dragon’s Den on April 6, where two investors bought a 20 per cent stake in the company.
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