A viewing party at Ucluelet’s Black Rock Resort was fired up as the town watched two of its fiercest entrepreneurial dynamos slay their pitch and score a mint deal on CBC’s Dragons’ Den.
Robyn Mair and Monika Scott of Mint Cleaning were the first to present in front of the Dragons during Nov. 14’s episode and shone so brightly that a bidding war took off with three competing offers.
They had asked for $400,000 for 10 per cent of their company and wound up accepting exactly that from Dragons Michele Romanow and Brian Scudamore, who also pitched in a $400,00 line of credit.
The episode was filmed on May 13 and since that time, Mair and Scott showed some Dragon flair themselves, telling the Westerly News that they were able to negotiate that offer up to $425,000 for the same 10 per cent, though with just Scudamore as Romanow proved to not be a good fit for Mint.
“Brian is amazing,” Mair told the Westerly after the show’s airing. “Unfortunately, we didn’t go ahead with Michele. We just focused on Brian. He is such an amazing guy and such a good business person and so purpose-led and our values align. We are so excited to take that deal with Brian and see where and how we can grow the business. We’re still in talks, but I think the future is looking awesome with him.”
She suggested Romanow was pushing for faster growth than she and Scott were comfortable with.
“Unfortunately, with Michele and her team it just wasn’t a good fit. It didn’t feel right,” Scott said. “Personalities didn’t align as much as we’d hoped, whereas Brian and his team speak from the heart. They’re so sweet they’re so kind.”
Romanow seemed to be the prime target for the Mint team while the Dragons wrestled each other in a bidding war during the show.
Manjit Minhas was the first Dragon to place a bid, offering the exact $400,000 for 10 per cent deal the Mint Cleaning team had asked for and her offer was then matched by both Arlene Dickinson and the Romanow-Scudamore team-up, which originally asked for 12.5 per cent.
“As soon as Manjit said ‘I’ll give you a deal,’ we were just relieved,” Mair told the Westerly. “It was smooth sailing from that point.. As soon as we got a deal (offered) we were just like, ‘OK we’re good. We didn’t fail miserably.’”
Scott visibly teared up after the first offer.
“Once they started fighting over us, I just had this overwhelming feeling of ‘Oh my god, they’re fighting over us. This is happening. Are we actually this good?,” she said. “This overwhelming moment I remember just took over me and I ended up crying a little bit.”
Romanow suggested she could help the business grow its online, direct-to-consumer, potential, but Dickinson said the company should focus less online and more in store.
“I have a very different view of your business,” Dickinson said, noting about 54 per cent of Mint’s business currently comes from in store sales. “I don’t think of it as an online play.”
She suggested that while Mint products are currently available at over 200 stores, she could get them into 10,000 or more and reiterated her belief that focusing on the online, direct-to-consumer model would be a mistake.
This led to some playful banter between Dickinson and Romanow, who thrives in the direct-to-consumer space.
“C’mon!..She took a dagger through my heart,” Romanow laughed. “The only mistake you could make is going with Michele, that’s what she said.”
Dickinson offered $400,000 for 10 per cent as well as access to a $400,000 line of credit, prompting the other two bidding parties to add that same line of credit as well.
Scudamore then seemed to jump ship from Romanow’s offer and said he would join Dickinson.
“I have huge respect for what you bring and you’re going to change the world with this,” he said to Mair and Scott.
Mair and Scott remained focused on Romanow, though, and asked if she and Scudamore could take 10 per cent for $400,000 and the Dragons agreed, securing the original deal.
Scott told the Westerly that while Mint’s segment on the show lasted for about nine minutes, the actual pitch and negotiation took about an hour.
“It’s a lot more chaotic than it shows on TV,” she said.
She added that she and Mair believed at the time that Romanow’s vision for the company was more aligned with their own than Dickinson’s.
“At the time going into it, we really wanted to expand our online sales, our direct-to-consumer DTC and that’s what Michele is notorious for: growing companies online. Whereas Arlene is more retail, so getting you in box stores and stores across Canada and the U.S.,” she said. “Our vision for our business is more online direct-to-consumer, so that was our decision with Michele; that’s her whole jam, so it was kind of a no brainer for us. But, Arlene is so sweet. I felt really guilty. That was really hard…It was a crazy, crazy moment trying to decide between all these amazing offers and people.”
Mair agreed and said Dickinson’s view of pushing the in-store presence didn’t sit right.
“We just disagreed with her,” she said. “We love that feeling of building a community, which I think you can do more so by having that online direct to consumer. That’s our goal and our vision for our business. It just comes down to values. I think our values aligned with Michele rather than Arlene in terms of where they wanted to take our business.”
Mair and Scott’s vision for their business has been impressively bang on so far, as they laid out in their pitch that led to the Dragons’ climbing over each other to snag a piece of it.
They became business partners seven years ago, launching a cleaning company together after meeting at a Moms Group in Ucluelet.
“We went from BFF’s to business partners the next day and started a cleaning company that became an overnight success,” Mair told the Dragons.
The motivation to launch a product line of effective, natural plant-based cleaning products came after they both suffered the effects of the products they were using.
“After years of using harsh chemical cleaners all day, we both began to get very sick,” Scott said.
“I actually ended up in the ER with an asthma attack and an X-Ray revealed that I had scarring on my lung,” Mair added. “That was a wake-up call.”
Scott suggested the eco-products they tried either didn’t work or were “just plain greenwashing,” so the pair set out to make their own.
“We hit our kitchens and got to work. With our cleaning company as our testing ground, we whipped up batch after batch of products, fine tuning recipes until they were nothing short of magic and that is how Mint Cleaning was born,” Mair said.
The pair added a trivia game to their pitch, which Scudamore won in a sweep of the answers.
Scott told the Westerly they went with the game show format to show the uniquely fun character of their business.
“Part of our whole thing is educating people about toxic cleaning products. It was just our way of showing what we’re about. We’re not just a cleaning product, we’re standing out from the rest,” she said. “We like to keep things light and fun and I think cleaning can be serious and depressing to people so it was our way of standing out…Our (social media) accounts are fun, cleaning is fun, our products are fun and easy to use and bringing that lightness that we bring to our social media and showing that to the Dragons was important.”
After the trivia, the mood turned to business with the Dragons firing off questions about Mint’s profits and ability to stand out in a crowd.
Scott noted the company has “a huge online community and following” and its social media channels include educational tools.
Mair explained the all-purpose cleaner is Mint’s highest selling item, costing about $3.60 to make and retailing for $14.
She said Mint Cleaning products are in over 200 stores across Canada and America and about 46 per cent of the business is online, adding that the company racked up $2.5 million in sales in 2023 and is on track for $4.4 million this year.
“We’ve been profitable every single year,” she said, adding after paying themselves a $90,000 salary each, the business makes about a 12 per cent profit.
“That’s so impressive,” Dickinson responded, noting Ucluelet is a “tiny” town on the west coast of Vancouver Island with a population of about 2,000 people.
“There’s such a great lesson here that a good idea can be started anywhere in this country.”
Several Dragons mentioned Ucluelet, expressing a fond familiarity with the picturesque tourist town and Scott and Mair were both thrilled to give their community some solid exposure.
“I was so happy they brought up Ucluelet and I was really happy they aired that because they did talk about it a lot. Robyn and I always say we’d be nowhere without this community. Ucluelet really took us off. Everybody in the community supported us right away,” Scott told the Westerly. “We always are first and foremost so grateful for Ucluelet. I was so happy that they talked about Ucluelet on there. I hope it’s motivating, like they (the Dragons) said for other entrepreneurs. You don’t need to be in a big city centre to start a business. We actually think it’s better to have the small town community support behind you.”
Mair agreed.
“It’s just amazing to represent Ucluelet and put Ucluelet on the map. That was definitely my favourite part of the show when they mentioned Ucluelet,” she said. “Like Monika said, our whole value of our business is building a community and having that support and there’s no better place to do that than Ucluelet.”
The team is now focused on working with Scudamore to ramp up Mint’s distribution capacity on the mainland, though both Scott and Mair are steadfast about staying in their home community no matter how big a success their business becomes.
“We’ll always stay in Ucluelet. We’re not going anywhere,” Scott said.
