SHANNON entrepreneur Noel Marshall will be on BBC One’s Dragons’ Den this evening (Thursday, April 22), making a pitch for investment.
In advance of the programme he couldn’t take the mystery out of the show by revealing whether he had been successful or not, but even appearing on the popular show should be a huge boost to his business, Backballer. “The publicity it should bring in terms of the UK market, that’d be worth £50,000 to £100,000. You’re talking about prime time BBC1, 8pm.”
Noel developed Backballer after seeing a potential improvement to the conventional foamroller, which is used in treating sports injuries. Essentially, he saw the merit in mounting the roller onto a frame for stability, he developed a prototype and went from there to developing the Backballer company.
Thursday night’s programme was filmed at Granada Studios in Manchester, and speaking about his appearance came to pass, Noel says, “I got onto them and they deemed us worthy to be on it, I was over there in September last year. I had an interview done before that in London, that was probably around last May. So that was the craic.”
Going into the Den is an undeniably daunting experience, with extremely successful and intelligent business people looking to pick holes into a business that is a huge part of most participants’ lives, and Noel acknowledges that he was quite nervous. “I was a bit to be honest, I was nervous enough, but I wasn’t too bad once I got into it.”
It would be hard to meet another person as enthusiastic about his business as Noel is. “Oh yeah, they are great yokes, I think everybody should have one, oh yeah.”
He is pleased with how well it has progressed up until now. “It’s good, we did €1.2 million in sales last year and this year is shaping up to be something similar as well.”
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.