Calgary furniture business to make an appearance on Dragons’ Den
Posted Sep 25, 2018 7:16 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CALGARY (660 NEWS)- A Calgary business that specializes in making furniture and decor out of whisky and wine barrels will appear on the entrepreneurial show Dragons’ Den on October 11.
Joel Jelinski, the founder and CEO of Burgundy Oak, applied to be on the show back in February.
“It’s been a dream of mine to be on the show,” he said. After doing two rounds of auditions, Jelinski said he flew out to Toronto to make his full pitch.
The 25-year-old said he was notified a couple of weeks ago of the air-date.
Burgundy Oak is seeking an equity investment to grow and take on larger licensing deals.
“One of the issues we found in the marketplace was that everyone has the same stuff…it’s all mass produced overseas and one thing we wanted to do is using authentic wine barrels and making sure that each piece is different,” he said.
The company launched in 2015 in a two-car garage based on an idea Jelinski had when he was 12.
“My mom does a craft with her friends every year and so one year she bought me a barrel and asked me to make something out of it, and so I made a bunch of candle holders and that’s sort of where the idea was born,” he said.
Jelinski originally invested $800 into the company. He then began going to farmers markets in Canmore, Cochrane, and Banff.
The products are being sold in over 500 stores across North America. They have 14 full-time staff working in a 8,300 sq. ft. facility.
“We’re really not at the end of the day selling furniture and decor, we’re creating conversations where we really want to enable our customers to dive deep into their memory lane and figure out how they connect with those barrels.”
-with files from Audrey Whelan
