10 years on: 10 insights into the Aerodrums experience on Dragon’s Den

Back in 2016, only a couple of years after we first introduced Aerodrums 1 into the world, we appeared on the hit BBC show Dragon’s Den.

It’s pretty well-documented how our pitch went – in fact you can still see the clip online. Remarkably, it is now 10 years to the day since the episode aired.

Over the years, we’ve received both praise and stick in equal measure for turning down the offers made to us in the Den. Our decision was based on our unwillingness to part with (what we felt was) such a significant share in the business – but also because we were, and remain, reluctant to compromise our values and vision for Aerodrums. 

That is still the case today. Throughout the Aerodrums journey, we’ve turned down many opportunities to make more money, gain more exposure, or other activities where our saying ‘no’ would make other business-minded people think we’re crazy.

There is method to our madness though! We are driving home our message that Aerodrums is not a toy, not a gimmick, but a legitimate, innovative instrument – and here to stay.

To mark 10 years since our TV appearance, here are some insights and fun memories from our moment in the spotlight:

We were scouted 🔎

The programme scouts participants they think will make good TV. That’s right – they contacted us asking if we’d appear on the show!

Both during and since our TV appearance, we have realised that Dragons’ Den doesn’t have that much to do with business investing. The Dragons typically offer deals asking for 20% or more of the business. This is very uncommon for investment in early stage businesses, because it leaves little room for later investors to come in while leaving a reasonable share of the business to the people who started it.

In the real world, businesses look for investors, not usually the other way around. Perhaps our response and decision did make ‘good TV’, but the offer didn’t make good investment sense to us.

Still, we weren’t oblivious to the process. We gladly accepted the invite, and we enjoyed the experience.

A hazy memory 💭

Perhaps surprisingly, Richard has only ever watched the episode back on one occasion!

He describes his memory of the whole experience as “hazy and surreal”. He does however recall the nerve-wracking feeling of waiting for the “lift” before the pitch (which – pssst – is not actually a lift!)

Building a rapport 🤝

Yann was struck by how long contestants are actually afforded to chat with the Dragons compared to what is edited into the show. Yann reflects: “I think it lasted almost two hours from getting in front of the Dragons to walking away”.

Of course, for the purposes of entertainment, the only spicy moments of our meeting made the edit. You may not be surprised to know that they didn’t take up Yann’s offer of going out for a pint!

Lights… camera… action 🎬

It was pleasantly surprising what a good job the production team did to ensure we weren’t distracted by the filming.

There were issues with studio lights in the background not long before we had to start our pitch. We had to fix that at the last minute, so that was a somewhat stressful start to our time in the Den.

However, despite the fact that there was a whole room of people behind and off to the side, in the moment it really felt like just us and the Dragons in a room together. We barely even remember seeing any cameras.

Deal or no deal? 💰

A member of the production team told us just after our pitch finished that our time in the Den had been very exciting for the crew themselves to watch.

They genuinely couldn’t tell if we were going to accept the Dragon’s offer or not!

Blocking out the haters ✋

We actually don’t know what kind of response we had on social media – though we can make a good guess…

For many reasons, mostly because as a then two-man band focused on tech and product development, we didn’t pay any attention to what was being said online.

What was harder to ignore however was the influx from fans of the show rushing to Amazon to flood Aerodrums 1 with one-star ratings. Most of them told us we were ‘owned’.

It’s all character-building…!

Our most successful business year 🏅

We took part in Dragon’s Den primarily because we thought it would be a great way to get more people to know about Aerodrums. And it worked!

Within days of the episode airing, we ran out of the few hundred Aerodrums 1 we had in stock. We had to rush around like a pair of headless chickens, back and forth to the Post Office, to ship the influx of orders.

In the two months following the broadcast, we received preorders worth almost three times the amount of investment we had asked the Dragons for.

We should have anticipated the big response after the episode went live. That year is still the best year we’ve had in terms of sales. We had lots of time to prepare for it, but we still ran out of stock and faced huge demand. Another lesson learned!

A challenging business landscape 🥲

We’ve been in business for 14 years now. It feels like the world is a much more stark place for small businesses now than it was when we started, or since we were on Dragon’s Den.

We share the trials and tribulations of small businesses across the world, and it’s a reason we’re so protective over who has a stake in Aerodrums. Here are two of many examples on how this affects us:

– 30 years ago Google, Amazon and Meta didn’t exist. Now it isn’t uncommon for these companies to collectively take a 30% cut off a small business’ revenue (fortunately this is not the case for us). That’s huge!

– Further highlighting the testing financial landscape, the cost of the parts needed to make Aerodrums is going up and up. In Aerodrums 2, there is a computer that needs a memory chip. Last year that chip cost us $8. This year, thanks to the AI bubble, we will struggle to find it under $30. It turns out OpenAI, nVIDIA, xAI et al want so many memory chips to build server farms and have so much cash to buy them that everyone else is supposed to wait – or suffer price gouging. It’s a constant battle!

A startling stat 📉

The challenges also apply to the brick and mortar retail world too. In the last 10 years, three in every four physical music stores in the UK have closed. That figure regroups musical instruments, sheet music and record stores.

From what we’ve seen happen around us (e.g. Dawsons, PMT then GAK closing all stores), it’s been as bad for musical instruments stores as for wider retail outlets.

Always listening to our Aerodrummers 👂

Above all, it is you – our customers – that we are listening to in designing the future of Aerodrums. We learned a lot from the experience in the Den, but our most important lesson over the years has been to listen to our Aerodrumming community.

We have an awesome community of drummers and air-drummers. It is your feedback and enthusiasm for our instrument that spurs us on to make Aerodrums bigger and better in the future.

Thank you to those who have stuck with us along the way.

We’re delighted to share our Aerodrumming world with you, whether you caught us on Dragon’s Den a decade ago, or are just discovering our instrument.