91Èȱ¬

Sometimes all it takes is one good question from a Dragon to expose the flaw in a business plan. It's quite startling when that question is "Is it legal?"

Simon and Allan deliver a confident pitch for a website that seems to tap perfectly into current consumer feelings about saving money and preventing waste. Their website Gift Card Converter lets people sell or trade their unused gift vouchers for less than their face value, with a portion of the sale price going to the site owners.

Duncan Bannatyne thinks this is a fantastic idea. His companies sell vouchers and Duncan is annoyed when they are not used, meaning the money is wasted. But he isn’t convinced they will change people’s habits and make the business work.

Allan and Simon respond strongly with a mobile phone analogy. People wouldn’t have previous thought of recycling them but there are now plenty of publicised services that will buy or recycle them.

Deborah Meaden also thinks it's a great idea and disagrees with Duncan’s concerns. She wants to know what costs are involved. Currently there are none: the technical work on the website is all done.

Peter Jones disagrees with Deborah’s optimism and also offers concerns that companies offering vouchers would act to close off trading by successful companies. With heartfelt advice to drop this venture, Peter declares himself out.

Theo Paphitis queries the legality of their business and when informed everything’s perfectly legal the retail expert presses to clarify that this may only be in some cases.  Even the defence that the company will only act as middleman fails to appease the Dragon.

For James Caan, the idea that retailers could tighten their terms and conditions at any time, subsequently putting their voucher trading service out of business, makes it impossible to invest, Duncan also bows out still unconvinced at the market potential.

Deborah is now also concerned over the legal issues, on confirming that the pair have received no legal advice she too declares herself out.

This just leaves Theo, whose position is already clear. He leaves the pair with a few words of advice. "Not all good ideas are money-making ideas and the sooner we all start realising, the better our businesspeople will be."

Simon and Alan thank them for their feedback but leave with nothing.

The deal done in the Den:

No investment.