Two Dragons’ Den stars have revealed their ‘whirlwind’ journey of transforming £100 each into a six-figure business.
Birmingham-based entrepreneurs Brendon Manders and Jaydon Manders entered the Den in a recent episode, hoping to convince the likes of Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Touker Suleyman, Sara Davies, Steven Bartlett and guest Dragon Emma Grede to invest in their business.
The brothers were pitching their seasoning and sauce brand Lumberjaxe, and requested £90,000 for a 20% stake, having already turned over more than £100,000.
They’ve now revealed the immense success they’ve had since the episode aired, which saw Brendon break down in tears and leave the Dragons and viewers at home touched by his story.
‘It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since to be honest, it’s been great,’ Brendon, 31, told Metro.
‘We’ve had such a lovely response from everybody, endless messages,’ he went on.
‘A lot of people saying they’ve been teary at the show, and it’s been really nice because everyone seems to have enjoyed it. I think it struck a chord with people.’
During the episode, Brendon broke down as he shared how their work ethic came from being raised in a single-parent household.
‘Our mum raised us on her own, we come from a council house background, she’s a health care assistant so she’s always worked her hardest,’ Jaydon said, as Brendon struggled to hold back tears.
‘We’ve always had nice Christmases, nice birthdays, so the work ethic in our family is to go out there and get it, and we’ve been a very tight-knit family.
‘I could just beam with how we’ve got good work ethic and determination.’
In the tearful moment, Steven praised: ‘You don’t need to beam it, because it shows. Some people just have that life force and you can tell that this isn’t a game to them, this isn’t a hobby, they’re really fighting for something.’
Recalling their mum’s reaction to the tearful scene airing, which had viewers emotional too, Brendon shared: ‘I think she’s a bit taken aback by how much people have resonated with our story, and I think she’s a bit overwhelmed with it all at the moment.’
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Meanwhile, Jaydon, 22, brought more emotion to the Den when he was branded ‘so impressive’ for his age, with Touker saying: ‘I’m sitting here listening to you and I’m just taken aback. Seriously, you are one of the brightest 21-year-olds ever to enter this Den.’
‘I’m so overwhelmed with how many people have watched it and said, “I was in tears”,’ he told us, saying he’s finding it ‘bizarre’ now being recognised in his local corner shop.
‘I was so overwhelmed by it, it was so surreal,’ Brendon added, praising how the BBC edit felt ‘true’ to their experience in the Den.
The brothers explained how they began their business as a lockdown-project, when Jaydon had been training as a pilot and working in McDonald’s, before it grew to what it is today.
‘He would do a week’s worth of shifts and then put that money into pilot lessons,’ dad-of-five Brendon proudly recalled of his younger brother.
Jaydon had come up with the idea of starting a business during the pandemic, with Brendon developing that into selling seasonings and sauces.
‘We pitched loads of ideas,’ he admitted, revealing their ‘phases’ making the likes of candles and concrete garden statues.
‘We always came back to food,’ he said.
Deciding on their product, they each put £100 into the new venture, bought some tins, labels and ingredients, and ‘had a bit of a play’.
Brendon began creating flavours and the pair launched on Instagram, starting with a few hundred followers.
‘We grew the page and started posting that we’d be releasing this seasoning, and one day we dropped it, and before we knew it, a week later, we’d sold 100 of them,’ they explained.
‘We’d only made 100, and then we went again. That grew to 1,000 and then we went again, and we just kept selling and selling and selling.’
As the world opened up again after the pandemic, they began putting all their profits back into renting stalls at markets and shows, before turning over six-figure sums and boasting over 70 stockists.
Ahead of Dragons’ Den, Lumberjaxe had made £150,000, but by the end of 2024, their business was worth around £250,000.
When Jaydon applied to be a contestant on the programme, he’d not even told Brendon, assuming nothing would come of it.
‘I literally put one sentence answers to the application questions, because I thought there’s no way,’ he admitted.
Instead, the brothers left viewers across the nation emotional, and walked away with a huge investment.
Now, with the episode having aired, they’re predicting even more success, thanks to their new investor, Emma.
‘At the end of the day, sometimes, just sometimes, it’s not necessarily about whether or not I can see an immediate return in my money, sometimes there’s this thing we say in the US about paying it forward, and sometimes you’ve got to take a chance,’ she’d told them.
‘I’m trying to stop myself from crying because there’s just something about you two that makes me caught up, so I’m going to give you the £90,000 for what you asked for, because I believe in the two of you and you deserve that somebody takes the chance on you.’
Despite the praise they received from the Dragons, Brendon and Jaydon were close to leaving without an offer, until Emma’s last-minute investment.
‘I am not investing knowing you’re going on to better things,’ Peter said, while Sara said it was a ‘journey’ she didn’t want to go on.
‘I’ve never invested in something like this and I know it’s tough, and I don’t see how I can really help you,’ Touker said, with Steven saying that though he felt as though he wanted to invest in the pair themselves, he didn’t find ‘passion’ in their business.
‘You’ve got success ahead of you, so I don’t worry for you, sometimes people stand in the Den and I worry for them, I don’t worry for you – you’ve got it,’ Deborah added.
Having heard all the other Dragons opt out of investing, the duo shared a moment of doubt about the company’s future success.
‘The whole thing was like a rollercoaster, and that resonates with what happened in the Den,’ Jaydon said.
‘We were going in not expecting anything at all.’
He recalled one moment of silence, which Deborah called ‘a good thing’, but it actually ‘lasted much longer’, leaving Brendon worried there was even a ‘technical error’.
‘And then they started dropping out,’ Jaydon continued. ‘And I thought, okay, we’ll just have to rinse the marketing from the PR off of it, and we came and did our best, it is what it is.’
At that point, they were even concerned Emma would reject them because she felt like ‘the least likely Dragon to make an offer’.
‘We looked deflated because we’d been in there for two hours at that stage,’ they said. ‘And then our saving grace came out of nowhere.’
The brothers praised Emma’s ‘genuine’ personality and how ‘approachable’ she’s been, guiding them since filming the episode and being ‘very hands-on’.
‘She’s genuinely the most sincere person I’ve ever met in my life,’ Brendon added.
Dragons’ Den airs Thursdays at 8pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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