Member Article

Entrepreneur to share Dragon’s Den experience with South Tyneside businesses

A Great British Entrepreneur of the Year finalist is to share his experiences of pitching to the Dragons in the next Invest South Tyneside’s next live-stream Business Talk.

Founder Gary Giles moved his business OGEL into One Trinity Green, South Shields, in December 2020 in a bid to grow his revolutionary building system business, just days after winning recognition at two national and international awards.

A finalist in the prestigious Great British Entrepreneur of the Year 2020 award, Disruptor of the Year category, the former accountant is taking the construction world by storm and has appeared on TV’s Dragon’s Den, which will be aired on Thursday 8th July.

Gary will be the special guest at a special Business Talk next month when he will be able to reveal his experience of pitching his business to the Dragons, as well as discussing how he came up with his revolutionary new building system and share OGEL’s successes to date.

Gary’s appearance will be the latest in a series of Business Talks launched by Invest South Tyneside last year. He will be interviewed by host Ian Farrar, and the talk and interactive Q&A session will be live streamed from One Trinity Green’s Content Suite at 10am on Friday 16th July.

Following on from 2020’s Tech Talks series, the Business Talks will feature an exciting line up of interviews with South Tyneside business leaders, with engaging Q&As and motivational and inspirational takeaways.

OGEL also reached the final of the Building and Construction Product of the Year category at the Plastics Recycling Awards Europe 2020.

Gary, 53, from South Shields, and E3 Design, based in Newcastle, have developed a brand new system that uses recycled plastic to construction walls, floors and roofs – the first ever to be globally patented.

Simple, fast, light and reusable, with no glues to stick them together – and they can be used to build anything from flood defences, exhibition stands, flat pack houses, home offices, garden rooms, staycation pods, humanitarian shelters, as well as internal walls in existing buildings.

These bespoke walls or buildings, which are currently manufactured in Worcester, are fitted out with standard windows, doors and electrics and can also be insulated, though this often isn’t required as the system is warmer than a standard house.

Gary launched the OGEL TaskPod designed for those working from home in June 2021 and the garden rooms to follow in August 2021.

Gary, who came up with the idea a few years ago, said: “Our ‘products of mass construction’ journey has been amazing so far and we’re looking at a very bright future.

“It’s been one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done, but to bring it to market in 2021 makes the hard work all worthwhile.

“We make the most of throwaway items from the most permanent materials so it’s great to be reusing and recycling plastics waste as a force for good.

“Since filming Dragons Den we made some design modifications prior to taking our system to market, and we’ve just had a pop-up building delivered to Vero Grid based in Port of Sunderland, for a control room in Zambia which will hopefully lead on to other work for a number of well-known overseas agencies.”

“OGEL as a business is going so well that we’re hoping to take on another four people over the next few weeks.”

One Trinity Green has benefitted from £2,466,500 of European Regional Development Fund monies, managed by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Gardiner Richardson .