I rejected Dragons’ Den’s huge offer – my jam company is now worth £2m and it was the best thing I ever did

DRAGONS’ Den businesswoman Rachel Kettlewell thought she’d struck gold on the show when she got a huge offer.

However, she has explained that she later didn’t accept the deal to sell a slice of jam firm Fearne & Rosie.

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However, the firm went on to rocket anyway and is now accepting smaller investments from fans of the brand.

Vitamin mogul Tej Lalvani, 47, who bowed out of the show this series, offered Rachel £40,000 for 35 per cent of the business – or 30 per cent if he got his money back quickly.

Speaking to the Express, Rachel said: “I held it together until Tej said he would like to make an offer.

“At that point, I just burst into tears because it was such an emotional experience.”

However, she later decided not to go ahead with it – saying the jam firm took off after appearing on Dragons’ Den.

She explained: “We just didn’t do the deal because it wasn’t the right deal for the business. We grew an awful lot quite quickly after the show.”

The jam specialist impressed the panel in the show last year when she told them: “My name’s Rachel and I’m here today to ask for £40,000 in return for 20 per cent of my business.

“I’m a teacher who whilst on maternity leave with Fearne and Rosie and then George developed and launched a range of reduced-sugar jams and no added sugar sauces.

“I spent a year at home developing recipes before launching in February 2018.

“Unbelievably within a few months of being out in the big wide world we launched nationwide into 152 Waitrose stores.

“We’ve also managed to secure a local listing with Morrisons, we sell online and we met with Ocado earlier this year who are also keen to stock our products.”

Today the brand is now valued at £2million, and is listed in a string of major retailers.