TISDALE — Last May Tisdale residents Scott and Kristie Homstol pitched their business, Little Town Apparel, to the Dragons’ Den, but had to be silent about the results until now.
Walking into the den, the couple asked for $225,000 in exchange for 15 per cent of the company.
While the two asked for money, capital wasn’t their real focus. They wanted the Dragons’ connections.
“Just the connections that they have,” Scott said. “It’s not so much the capital that we were looking for, it was more some connections, some expertise and some exposure.”
One of the Dragons, Vincenzo Guzzo, offered the couple $125,000 for marketing services and $100,000 in cash, a total of the $225,000 they asked for, but also requested 25 per cent of the company.
Despite it being a 10 per cent increase over what the couple had wanted, they accepted.
“It’s what often happens, you ask and they make a counter. This was their counter,” Scott said. “Usually they do that. We watched the show a lot.”
The couple asked for less than they were willing to part with, and a deal was struck that worked in their favour.
While the two were happy with the result, it wasn’t a surprise to them that a Dragon wanted to be part of their business.
“I wasn’t really surprised, because everyone is confident in their own business but just the consistent positive response that we’ve seen in so many communities across Canada, the numbers kind of spoke for themselves, and everyone everywhere seemed excited about it,” Scott said. “So I kind of figured that was sort of proof we had a good concept – so I kind of thought the Dragons would think so as well.”
Little Town Apparel sells unique T-shirts with slogans relating to small towns. Each location has a different slogan, some of them official slogans, like the shirts found in Tisdale, or non-official slogans like “Naicam is where they make them” for the Town of Naicam.
The couple usually chooses the slogans based on researching the community and speaking to the residents.
Scott believes the success of the business comes from small town pride.
“Hometown pride runs deep in the smaller communities, for sure,” Scott said. “[Small town residents] like to support other small towns and other small businesses, so I think a lot of the success is because of that.”
The couple had to keep the results of the meeting a secret until the Dragon’s Den released the clip, which came out as a web exclusive pitch on Feb. 20.
Little Town Apparel can be found in about 150 communities across the country from British Columbia to Nova Scotia.
“It was definitely a challenge to not talk too much about it, especially with our friends,” Scott said. “But we just kind of went about things, business as usual. We have a pretty busy life, with three kids and everything else we have on the go. We lived out life as we have been living up to that point.”
The money could not be used until everything was finalized.
“We worked a little with Vincenzo. We’ve had some discussions. Now we’re ready to move toward what we said on the show, with more marketing efforts and using some of the funds to boost our brand a little and get our name out a little bit more.”
Scott doesn’t have an end goal at the moment for how far he wants the business to go.
“We’re just kind of trying to do the best job we can and go at a rate that’s manageable. Not too quickly. We don’t really have a limit with how far. I guess we’ll see how things continue to go in Canada. Then maybe we expand beyond that if it comes to that.”
Right now he said the business is doing well.
“We’re launching into trade show season here where we often pick up a lot of our new accounts and we’re just coming off of a busy third quarter, so it’s in a good spot, for sure.”
