Eve Laird (left) and Sarah Cartwright (right), sisters originally from Nanaimo, recently appeared on CBC's Dragons Den seeking partners for their snack cracker business (Dragons Den/CBC)

By Alex Rawnsley

DRAGON DELIGHT

Nanaimo sisters trigger feeding frenzy for snack cracker business

Nov 16, 2019 | 12:42 PM

NANAIMO — A business that started in a single home oven has led two sisters from Nanaimo into the Dragons’ Den.

Eve Laird and Sarah Cartwright appeared on the CBC show Oct. 24, pitching their business Eve’s Crackers. The pair were asking for $150,000 in exchange for a 20 per cent stake in their company that started in the kitchen of their parents condo in Whistler.

“I was struggling with eczema and I went on an elimination diet,” Laird said. “I cut out wheat, dairy, nuts, sugar and alcohol…all my favourite things. There wasn’t a whole lot that I could eat so I started experimenting and came up with this cracker.”

After selling to friends, family, at farmers markets and beginning to build their retail network, the pair auditioned for the show in Vancouver before being invited to Toronto for filming.

The two spent months perfecting their pitch ahead of shooting the episode in May 2019.

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“Eve and I spent weeks watching old episodes of Dragons’ Den,” Cartwright said. “We were watching any pitch related to food and pausing it when they’d ask a question and figuring out how we’d answer that.”

The pitch lasted for approximately 30 minutes, but was edited down to seven minutes for television. Cartwright said the experience was just as tense and intimidating as it appears on television.

“We were pretty terrified. You enter from an upstairs area, you just walk in and they have no prior knowledge of you, you haven’t met them and you just have to pitch.”

Their pitch was ultimately successful, securing three offers from four Dragon’s. Laird and Cartwright accepted Arlene Dickinson’s offer, a partner they targeted going in.

“We did have our eye on Arlene because of her connections in the food industry, we were excited when she gave us an offer (that matched what we asked for) and it was a fairly easy decision.”

Cartwright and Laird eventually backed out of the deal during due diligence with Dickinson and her representatives after the show, however the bump to their business from being on TV was noticable.

“We saw a jump in our online sales the night of the show, since then we’ve seen a bit of an uptick in orders from most of our retail locations,” Cartwright said.

The pair distribute widely through grocery stores in western Canada and have their sights set on further expansion in 2020.

“We’d like to focus more on east coast then maybe in five years, see what’s going on in the United States with their cracker market,” Laird added.

Both Cartwright and Laird told NanaimoNewsNOW they look back favourably on their Dragons’ Den experience, and praised the organization and professionalism of the show.

They added they recommend the experience to any new business or entrepreneur.

alex.rawnsley@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alexrawnsley