A County Durham entrepreneur who left the Dragons’ Den empty handed is set to bottle at least £2.4m in investment for his non-alcoholic beer company.
Former Durham University student Mark Wong braved the den last month in an attempt to secure £50,000 to help grow his mood-enhancing, booze free brew company Impossibrew.
Despite leaving without getting a TV Dragon on board, sales of the firm’s lager beer and hazy pale went through the roof. Within two hours of the BBC One show’s screening, Impossibrew had made 45-times its highest ever day sales, and more than £1m was expressed in interest for a potential crowdfund.
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Within five days, sales of the firm’s beers exceeded last year’s entire revenue, and was also double the sales forecasted for 2022.
Now Mr Wong – who launched the business from his Durham University bedroom after being told he had to quit drinking for health reasons – is set to launch a crowdfund campaign in March, with more than £2.4m already pledged by hundreds of people keen to invest.
He said: “I’m humbled by how many people decided to take a punt online and get some of our beers.
“It’s been a crazy whirlwind of a few days. The reception has been overwhelmingly positive and in some ways I don’t think we would have got such positive responses if we had got investment.
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“The sales and the investor inbounds have been crazy.
“We had a page on our website where we said you could express an interest in investing - it’s similar to a crowdfund sign up – and within five days of the show going out we had 682 investors and the number totals up to £2.4m.
“People are pledging anything from £10 to £50, to someone going upwards of £250,000 and I can’t believe it to be honest.
“The plan is to launch a crowdfunding campaign within the next month. By March we will opening up, allowing people signed up to come in, and even if 40% or 50% of the amount pledged it would still be way beyond the investment we wanted anyway.
“The main thing to do with the money is to grow the team, and that will also give us the money to go into trade channels and that will also give us the capacity to fulfil those demands.
“We’re also in talks with a US distributor. We’ve had a few distributors from different countries getting in touch and we’re quite close to signing a deal for distribution in the US, so that would really fuel that.”
Impossibrew drinks are contracted out to Allendale Brewery in Northumberland, giving the firm the ability to grow quicker by not spending money on building its own brewery. However, the firm is considering building its own brewery.
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Mr Wong said: “It’s something we’re definitely considering. Depending on the demand, perhaps we will brew in multiple places or if that gets too much we’ll look at building our own kit.
“At the moment we’re almost at our maximum capacity already, in terms of the engagement with Allendale, so we’ll see where we go from there.”
The company is staffed by consultants, outsourcing functions such as social media marketing and website management, alongside two contracted brewers. Some of the team is based in London and Mr Wong plans to use some of the investment money to take on staff on a full-time basis.
He joins growing number of business from the North East to have appeared on Dragons’ Den, some of which have got to know each other through the show as they have complementary businesses.
Gateshead powdered superfoods company Rheal, which was called SuperU ahead of a recent rebrand, went on the previous series and secured initial investment, only to end the deal by mutual agreement later and raise more than £1m in a crowdfund campaign. In 2019 North Shields protein bar and brownie makers Oatein also braved the den, securing £50,000 investment.
Sean Ali and Charlotte Bailey, founders of Rheal, got to know the senior team at Oatein – John-Paul Gardner and Andy Dixon – ahead of entering the Den.
And Mr Wong said that he also got to know Mr Ali and Ms Bailey ahead of his TV appearance.
“I got in touch with them after their airing last year and we’ve become great friends since then and they’ve actually been giving a lot of advice for how to handle going on Dragons’ Den. They’ve been really helpful throughout the journey.”