A married couple who run a wedding pet chaperone business are expecting their "busiest year to date" – despite failing to win investment on BBC TV show Dragons' Den.
Forty eight-year-old Adrian Cartlich and his wife Emma, aged 38, appeared on the show – accompanied by Rufus the cockapoo – earlier this month to showcase Precious Pets Weddings.
The pair, who live in Stoke-on-Trent, launched the business a couple of years ago on their back of their other company, pet care service provider Precious Pets Micro ID.
Precious Pets Weddings offers to plan and co-ordinate a bespoke wedding package to allow pets to be part of their owner's big day.
The package can include anything from a straight forward pet-sitting service to more quirky services such as making the dog a ring-bearer, best man or even a bridesmaid.
At the start of the month, Adrian and Emma appeared on the BBC show to pitch their new concept – Precious Pets Wedding Wheels – which offers a fully decorated wedding car for dogs.
But they were quickly told ‘I don’t’ by the four-strong panel of investors who said the business was "not scalable or investable."
Despite the rejection, Adrian and Emma are continuing to develop the business ahead of what they expect to be their "busiest year to date" in 2022.
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Emma said: "Even though we didn’t get investment we had some great feedback and brilliant advice from the dragons, and it was an amazing experience.
"We feel very proud and honoured to have been given the opportunity to pitch our business and our unique concept in front of millions of people."
Over the last 18 months, Adrian and Emma have been building up their wedding pet chaperone services despite the pandemic, and have successfully been able to accommodate all of the bride and grooms who were forced to postpone their weddings due to Covid-19.
The pair also won numerous industry awards and formed new partnerships with more wedding venues across Staffordshire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire and North Wales.
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Emma added: "We believe that 2022 is going to be the busiest year to date for Precious Pets Weddings and the wedding industry.
"As it is just still the two of us, we cannot keep up with the demand and we will definitely be looking to recruit chaperone assistants in the near future.
"We are looking forward to a bright future and cannot wait to expand even further – and chaperone lots of beautiful dogs to their fur parents' weddings."