Hairdresser receives mentoring from former dragon's den entrepreneur

Freelance hairdresser, Debs Imber, recently won a month of mentoring from former Dragon's Den star and YO! Sushi founder, Simon Woodroffe. Now, thanks to the scheme, which was set up by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles in partnership with The Times, the 38 year old has reconfigured her entire business. In 2007, Debs set up children’s hairdressing company, Tots Crops, which specialises in visiting playgroups and nurseries to cut children’s hair while their parents are at work. She spotted a gap in the market when she went to pick up her daughter, Ellie, from nursery and quickly realised all her daughter’s friends desperately needed a haircut. But Debs’s business reached a plateau when her severe number dyslexia meant that her finances, constantly playing second fiddle to her creative vision, had fallen into disarray. Fortunately, help came in the form of Simon Woodroffe, who chose Debs out of the hundreds of other businesses that entered the business mentoring competition due to her charismatic personality and boundless energy. At the first mentoring session, Woodroffe asked Debs to write down her daily spending for him and the two quickly came to the conclusion that Debs’s current business model, which involved selling Tots Crops franchises, was not viable. Simon introduced Debs to, Tony Rizzo, founder of the Sanrizz salon group, who set Debs off on a different track and the three quickly set to work on developing a new plan. Just one month after Debs first met Simon, Tots Crops re-launched in Tony’s Knightsbridge salon. Instead of selling franchises, the business now uses Tony’s training academy in Russell Square to offer flexible hairdressing training to young mums and people in need of a career that they can fit around their busy lives, just like Debs. Said Debs of the experience:  “This scheme couldn’t have happened at a better time. I had all this stuff in my head with no way of putting it together, and nobody to bounce it off. Simon has been amazing.” Simon commented: “Debs was the first to volunteer that she got it wrong, that doing a conventional franchise wouldn’t work, and in less than three weeks we had sorted it. If she can get the business to the level where it’s turning over a couple of hundred thousand, I suspect that someone who is better at operations will snap it up and make it something we all know about.”