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Hornit turnover set to top £1m despite Dragons' Den rejection

Investors shy away from backing business behind "world's loudest bicycle horn"...

Hornit founder Tom de Pelet may have been rebuffed on Dragons’ Den on Sunday, but his business is going from strength to strength with sales forecast to reach £1.2 million this year.

The former lawyer came up with what he says is the world’s loudest bicycle horn, which can reach 140 decibels, due to his experience of commuting by bike in London, reports the Evening Standard.

The 36-year-old told the newspaper: “I had so many near-misses while commuting and Ironman-training on London’s streets, and one frustration kept popping up: if a driver hasn’t noticed me and I’m in danger, I need something to make them see me.”

After giving up his job in 2011, he put £60,000 into the business but when the first batch of products arrived from the manufacturer, he found that four in five of them were faulty.

He said: “I used the 20 per cent of the units that were OK to start selling in the UK and online, and sending samples round the world and endless chasing.”

The Dragons’ Den episode was filmed in spring last year and in the following 10 months, the business’s turnover was £500,000 and is on target to his £1.2 million this year.

Mr De Pelet said: “Being in the Den was a mixture of fear, terror and enjoyment.  You put your life and soul into your business and the programme has the potential to turn it and you into object of ridicule in a few moments.

“But with hindsight, the outcome of my encounter with the Dragons could not have been better."

You can catch this week’s episode on BBC iPlayer here, with Hornit featuring 29 minutes 30 seconds into the show.

It’s the second time this month that a cycling-related business has been on the programme. The 8 February episode had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance from Green Oil.

In a Facebook post, the company said that the 5 seconds’ airtime it got, with not so much as a single product shot, was less than had been promised by the programme’s producers. It was not mentioned by name at all.

It added that the days of work involved in preparing for the show, including putting accounts and a business plan together, was a “complete waste of time.”

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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8 comments

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levermonkey | 9 years ago
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Tried Green Oil once. All it managed to remove was money from my wallet. Its performance was worse than a squirt of bargain basement washing-up liquid.

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tomturcan | 9 years ago
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severs1966 | 9 years ago
1 like

140 decibels?

Given that the head is probably within a metre of the handlebars, where a bike horn usually lives, 140dB could well be above the safe limit for loud noises.

This would be well into the realm of permanent hearing damage.

Sounds of over 120dB(A) typically require about 2 hours for the ear to recover.

At what distance is this so-called 140dB measured, and is it dB(A)? Without these qualifiers, this number lives somewhere inside a triangle whose apexes are labelled "bullshit", "meaningless" and "dangerous".

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don simon fbpe replied to severs1966 | 9 years ago
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severs1966 wrote:

140 decibels?

Given that the head is probably within a metre of the handlebars, where a bike horn usually lives, 140dB could well be above the safe limit for loud noises.

This would be well into the realm of permanent hearing damage.

Sounds of over 120dB(A) typically require about 2 hours for the ear to recover.

At what distance is this so-called 140dB measured, and is it dB(A)? Without these qualifiers, this number lives somewhere inside a triangle whose apexes are labelled "bullshit", "meaningless" and "dangerous".

The speed I go the sound would be a good 10 metres behind anyway, so no problemo.  16

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fatsmoker | 9 years ago
0 likes

I bought a couple of mini-hornits for the kids at Christmas. Excellent quality, fun and they do add to safety particularly around pedestrians. Good luck to the man.

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bikebot | 9 years ago
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I just wish it actually sounded like a horn.

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only1redders | 9 years ago
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'Putting accounts and a business plan together, was a “complete waste of time.”'

Right...........So, successful businesses don't need to produce accounts or a business plan? If these guys want to get funding from anyone, be it dragons, bank loans, government funding or other external investors, I'd suggest that they will be asked for these same documents

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TheHound | 9 years ago
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Maybe Green Oil should stop moaning about tv slots and spend more time on products that actually work rather than just smelling nice.

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