A Vernon sister duo walked into the season finale of CBC’s Dragons’ Den with a zero-waste product that’s been flying off the shelves at their Kelowna store.
They left with multiple offers on the table, having struck a deal with one of Canada’s top entrepreneurs.
Ali and Jaye Siegmueller opened up their zero-waste store, Farm Bound, in Kelowna in 2019. Their shampoo bars were one of their top sellers, but as Jaye explained to the Dragons during the Season 15 finale on Dec. 17, the two struggled to find a Canadian company to produce them.
So they decided to produce the bars themselves, and have launched the product into its own boutique brand: Bottle None.
The Siegmuellers asked the Dragons for $110,000 in exchange for 10 per cent ownership of Bottle None — a $1.1 million company valuation.
“This is the first time we’re really taking the business seriously,” said Jaye during her pitch to the Dragons, adding they’ve had $230,000 in sales through their first nine months.
The sisters are still making and selling the bars themselves, but will look to scale up the business under the mentorship of their new business partner, Arlene Dickinson, a self-made millionaire who has starred on Dragon’s Den since its second season in 2007.
The Siegmuellers accepted Dickinson’s counter-offer of $110,000 for 15 per cent of the company.
It’s not the first time the sisters have shook hands on a deal around a self-started company; the two recently sold a cosmetics business they started eight years ago.
“I love the past experience, I love that you’ve done it before,” Dickinson said. “There still is a lot of work to do to scale this company properly.”
“We feel very excited, and we feel so honoured that they loved our business and they loved our passion, and they love who we are as entrepreneurs,” Kaye said once outside the Dragons’ Den.
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