Selkie secures four Dragons in £40,000 investment deal

Cicely Coops, a chemist who founded haircare brand Selkie in 2021, walked into the Dragons' Den asking for £40,000 in exchange for 12.5% equity. She left with the money but a very different cap table: all four Dragons in the room ended up investing.

Selkie's pitch centres on a powder-to-liquid shampoo and conditioner, formulated from more than 98% naturally derived ingredients and free of sulphates and silicones. Customers mix the powder into a refillable "keep-for-life" bottle, yielding around 300ml of product that lasts eight to ten weeks. The format is designed to cut single-use plastic and avoid shipping the water weight that makes conventional liquid haircare heavier and more carbon-intensive to transport. The brand is manufactured through a certified B Corp partner in Europe.

Inside the Den, the negotiation moved in stages. Guest Dragon Jenna Meek and Deborah Meaden each made initial offers before Peter Jones and Steven Bartlett joined forces, offering the full £40,000 together for a smaller 10% stake. Rather than pick one offer, Coops proposed that all four Dragons invest alongside each other at 5% apiece. Jones, Bartlett, Meaden and Meek all agreed, meaning Selkie secured the same £40,000 investment but gave up 20% of the company overall, well above Coops's original ask.

Coops filmed the episode while still holding down a demanding corporate job, resigning shortly afterward to run Selkie full-time, according to BusinessCloud. Since filming, the Amersham-based company has appeared repeatedly on a TV shopping channel and joined a beauty accelerator backed by Boots and TikTok Shop. Coops has said she wants to get Selkie onto retail shelves nationally and to extend the same refill model, no shipped water, no single-use plastic, into further products.