Human Trainer on Dragons Den
Suspension Gym Season 7 Episode 12
 |
| Human Trainer Suspension Gym by Astone Fitness |
The Human Trainer Suspension Gym was featured on the Dragons Den with the inventors Darren Shane and Joel Grenz from Richmond, BC. The fitness trainers who own Astone Fitness came prepared to give the Dragons a good workout and get a $500,000.00 investment at the same time. The investment would be for only 20% of the business which puts the market cap @ $2.5 million.
The Astone Fitness designs and develops new and original fitness products with a few very successful already on the market. Their latest invention, The Human Trainer, is a body weight suspension gym consisting of pulleys, weights and straps that gives you a full gym style workout.
Jim Treliving and Dave Chilton put on a good demonstration that prove's if anything else, these exercises are not as easy as it might look. The entire suspension gym comes complete in a nice looking small canister which does add to the over all appeal.
Kevin O'Leary wants to know how this company can survive when the entire fitness product market maybe gets one block buster every 10 years? It's simple, their business strategy from the beginning was to grow an e-commerce website which greatly has reduced the advertising dollars while still making a profit and continue to develop new country's around the world. Joel also explains "they are a Top Rated Seller on Amazon.com along with 7 other Amazons around the world".
Getting down to the business side O'Leary asks "How much money have you made"? Astone Fitness grossed over a million dollars, but did not turn a profit last year. The year prior they made $100k and the year before that they turned a profit of $60k.
This year how ever Darren and Joel are on track to do between $2 to 2 1/2 million with $300 - $400k profit. They are looking to grow the Astone Fitness product line to $25 million with distributors around the world.
Bruce Croxen likes those numbers and immediately says he will give them the $500k but wants 40% of the equity. Arlene Dickson almost looks stunned while saying "that's exactly where I was going to go". Kevin O'Leary is even more stunned they even got an offer at all for a market segment he obviously is not fond of. Arlene and Jim decide to partner with Bruce's offer when Kevin says "I would be stunned if you didn't take real money for utter crap". Ouch, he sure has a way with words.
Shane and Grenz decided not to take O'Leary's advise, and instead countered the three Dragons offer with 25% of the business for $500k. This gets a good chuckle out of Kevin as he already knows it probably cost them any chance of getting a deal, and it did. All 3 of the Dragons go out in quick fashion and No Deal for the Human Trainer.
Astone Fitness may not of got a deal on the Dragons Den but that has not stopped them from going forward with their dreams to succeed in a multi-million dollar a year business. Currently the fitness products include the Rip Cord, Leg Cords, Stretch Buddy, Complete Chin Up and the Human Trainer.
They have also just released a DVD called Circuit 7 which is an instructional video on how to get the most out of the Human Trainer.
Comments
Post a Comment