Shopping: Dragons breathe their ‘magic’ fire

Aug 23 2010 By Emma McKinney

NEIL Westwood was bored of his hospital management job and sick of lugging around heavy flip charts giving staff presentations.

Now, five years on, Neil, 37, and his wife Laura, 31, of Worcester, have turned an acorn of an idea into a global business boasting an annual turnover of more than a million pounds – with a bit of help from TV show Dragon’s Den.

“I knew I wanted to start my own business then one day, when I was carrying yet another heavy flip chart to a meeting it suddenly dawned on me there must be a way of making it lighter,” explains Neil, who orginally hails from Kingswinford in the Black Country.

Neil set to work creating the Magic Whiteboard – a lightweight flip chart on a roll that can be torn off to any size and simply stuck on any wall or surface, peeled off and re-used time and time again.

The day their daughter Ella, now four, was born gave the couple double reason to celebrate as it was also the day they registered the company – Magic Whiteboard Limited.

Laura spent her maternity leave from work as a commissioner at Worcestershire County Council juggling changing nappies with running the business – pushing Ella to the Post Office, with orders of Magic Whiteboards in the basket under the pram.

Meanwhile, Neil carried on his day job, using his time off to try and flog his product at trade shows.

Before long, the couple were making an annual turnover of £45,000 but they wanted to fly even higher and decided to have a stab at applying to appear on TV show Dragon’s Den, which sees budding entrepreneurs pitching their innovations to business moguls in the hope they will invest in them.

Within weeks of their application, the couple scored success, being invited on to the show in April 2008.

“It was an incredibly nerve-racking experience,” explains Laura, originally from Rednal, Birmingham. “We were in a green room for what felt like an eternity. You weren’t allowed to have your phone on and if you wanted to go to the toilet, one of the show’s researchers had to go with you.”

When their turn finally arrived, the couple were left down-hearted when dragon Peter Jones immediately dismissed their idea. However, it didn’t take long for dragons James Caan, Duncan Bannatyne, Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden to all make offers to invest in the business.