Our Dragons’ Den product made viewers gag – we rejected £50K offer after dragon nodded off in pitch & rowed with co-star
FEATURING two toilets, a discussion about poo and a fatberg taken from a sewer, Giorgia Granata’s pitch was dubbed Dragons’ Den‘s “grossest ever”.
Fans were left “gagging” and “wanting to vomit” after learning about Wype, a gel that turns toilet paper into a biodegradable wet wipe.
7
7
When the BBC show aired last year, the investors were mocked when their mortified expressions were turned into amusing memes.
Ultimately Giorgia, 36, and co-founder Eli Khrapko turned down a £50,000 offer for 15 per cent equity from Touker Suleyman but claim to have since made “nearly £1million in sales”.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, she admits she loves holding the title of Dragons’ Den’s “grossest pitch”.
The couple were shocked after being contacted by a scout for the show in early 2021 who encouraged them to apply – especially because they had never seen the show.
Giorgia tells The Sun: “I’m foreign, so I hadn’t watched it. My impression was that it was a good opportunity and free publicity, but it wasn’t an elegant way to go about business.
“Of course, there was a risk factor of looking like t***s in front of four million people but we decided we were ok with that.”
The pair went through “extensive vetting” from the BBC and worked on a game plan suspecting they would be “the crazy idea” picked for the Dragons to poke fun at.
After being put up for the night in a hotel, the couple arrived early at the studio for 11am but were told their pitch had been “bumped to the last segment of the day”.
7
Giorgia says: “We left the studio around 9pm, it was definitely a long time to have your adrenaline so high and sitting in a room practicing your pitch.
“The team kept checking up on us and asking if we were feeling ok and reminding us that the Dragons ask tough questions.”
Fake scene & ‘cardboard set’
Before heading into the den, they had to film a number of “fake” moments.
Giorgia says: “They filmed us coming out of the elevators when the elevator doors opened but the room was completely empty.
“Nobody was in there, but they needed that for the montage.”
Giorgia believes candidates are kept waiting in the “fake elevator” for around five minutes in a bid to get “more content while before going into the Den”.
During the pitch, she claims she was concentrating too hard to notice the hidden cameras but admits the set itself was distracting.
“It’s definitely just a hanger with a cardboard room in it,” Giorgia adds.
“It was a bit off-putting for a few seconds because you realise, ‘Wow, none of this is real,’ but then you’re back to concentrating again.”
7
‘Bumholes are like snowflakes’
The dragons recoiled after seeing the props for the couple’s pitch – especially the real fatberg that they borrowed from a museum.
Fatbergs are solid masses found in sewers caused by non-biodegradable matter, like wet wipes, clumping together, and reportedly cause 300,000 sewer blockages each year.
The UK’s biggest to date was a “giant 400-tonne terror” spanning 250m in Liverpool.
Giorgia remains unfazed by viewers’ feedback that the pitch left them feeling sick.
“I love it, frankly I don’t mind at all,” she tells us. “Some people think admitting there is something to clean is dirtier than not admitting it at all.
“The way that I see it, bumholes are like snowflakes – each is different and has different needs.”
Some of the dragons, however, were immediately put off by the toilet product – including Peter Jones who Giorgia claims “didn’t understand” the pitch.
“Peter pushed back on one point when I spoke about why cleaning with a wet tissue was better than with a dry one,” she recalls.
7
In the pitch Jones – worth an estimated £1.157bn – told them: “The thing that really hit me is you said it helps you when you have poo on your arm. I’m a bit confused, have I been doing it wrong all these years?”
Giorgia, who tried to diplomatically justify the comment at the time, now claps back: “It was a metaphor, a simile. It was strange that he didn’t understand, but it was late in the day for everyone.”
Despite the confusion, Giorgia says the dragons were “very gracious” – but Touker’s offer took them by surprise.
“I could see him nodding off a little bit during a few of the more tedious bits of our pitch and it looked like he got a little snooze in,” she recalls.
“It was very late though and they were filming all day so I think he must have been tired.
“What they didn’t show on TV – probably because it’s boring – was us going into the numbers and metrics, but apart from that it was a fairly realistic pitch.”
Co-star feud
7
During their pitch a fierce row erupted between Touker and Steven Bartlett, which ended with the 30-year-old being told: “What do you know about business?”
As they slung insults at each other, Giorgia and Eli were left trying to stifle their laughter and remain professional.
She admits: “It was definitely awkward but funny to watch.
“I didn’t want to laugh because I thought it would be disrespectful and had to try not to giggle or look uncomfortable.
“It escalated fairly quickly, which made me think it was obviously a long-running tension. It seemed like Touker had been dismissing Steven repeatedly for him to react in that way.”
Giorgia claims the TV spat paid off because the clip went viral and newspapers reported on the dragons’ fight, which gave their business more exposure.
Spike in business
Touker offered all the money but in return for 15 per cent – over seven times more equity than the two per cent they’d planned to give away.
Despite his reported £150m wealth and vast business links, the couple rejected Touker’s offer.
“The only person we would have accepted was probably Steven, anyone else we would have said no,” Giorgia admits.
“Touker didn’t understand our brand, he wanted to market to the mums and babies market. We did the ‘talk to the wall’ but decided it was a no almost instantaneously.”
Since filming they claim to have had no further interaction with the dragons, but ahead of the show airing were given a warning by the BBC team.
Giorgia explains this was to allow them time to amass enough stock in preparation for “a spike in business” afterwards.
7
“It was a risk because we didn’t know if we would feature as a three-minute segment with lots of toilet puns, or be something bigger,” she explains.
“But it was actually quite wonderful. There were a few viewers who thought it was ‘disgusting’ but that’s all banter and part of the game.”
Giorgia claims Wype sales went through the roof and they made nearly £1million in sales in 2022.
She adds: “Before Dragons’ Den we did £300,000 a year and last year we tripled. We’ve now got 80,000 customers too, and 4.7 stars on Trustpilot.
“The business is doing great and overall we’re very happy. We made nearly a million in sales last year and have done £1.4million in lifetime sales.
“I have no regrets and 100 per cent would go on Dragons’ Den again. We’ve made a lot of mistakes but it would have been a bigger mistake to take Touker’s offer.”
The BBC did not respond to The Sun’s request for comment.
