Product Update
Is Mode Al Still in Business? (2026 Update)
Is Mode Al from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy Mode Al today.
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Mode Al pitched in series 2 of Dragons' Den asking for 225,000 pounds for half the business, and it did land a deal on the night. What happened after the cameras stopped is more interesting than the pitch itself, and it is genuinely hard to say from the public record whether the company is still trading today under that name.
The short answer
Mode Al got its deal in the Den, but the founder chose not to take the Dragons' money in the end. There is no confirmed, current evidence that the company is still selling under the Mode Al name. Treat any claim that it is definitely still open, or definitely closed, with caution.
The pitch
Mode Al appeared in series 2, episode 6, in the Home and Lifestyle category. Founder David Lees built the company around modular aluminium furniture designed to house technology, television units, edit suites and the like, built from the same aluminium extrusions used across the range. He asked the Dragons for 225,000 pounds in exchange for 50 percent of the business.
By the time he walked into the Den, Mode Al already had a real trading history behind it. Lees had formed the company back in 2001, and it was doing genuine commercial work rather than pitching a prototype.
What happened with the deal
Duncan Bannatyne and Theo Paphitis both offered to invest. That is where most Dragons' Den write-ups stop the story, but the more interesting part happened off camera. Lees has said publicly that the exposure from the show triggered a bidding war between banks eager to lend him money, and that his accountant persuaded him a bank loan was the better route rather than giving up equity to the Dragons.
So while Mode Al technically secured investment interest on air, the deal that shows up in most records as accepted did not necessarily convert into the Dragons actually owning a stake, at least not on the terms discussed in the Den. That is a different outcome to the simple 'got a deal' headline, and it matters if you are trying to work out what Mode Al looks like today.
Where the trail goes cold
A 2010 trade piece described the aluminium furniture business as still thriving several years after the broadcast, doing bespoke work including edit desks with matching chairs in the same extrusion. That is the most recent solid, dated confirmation available of the original business operating.
Beyond that, the public trail is thin. There is a company using a similar name that turns up in searches, based in Daventry and working in digital signage rather than furniture, which was acquired by another firm in 2019. Whether that is the same entity that once made bespoke aluminium furniture, a rebrand of it, or a completely unrelated business that just shares a similar name, is not something the available sources settle either way.
Why this case is harder than most
Series 2 aired in 2005, which puts Mode Al among the earliest pitches the show ever filmed, from a period when very little business press coverage followed up on Dragons' Den companies once the cameras moved on. Later series generated far more secondary reporting, follow-up interviews and anniversary retrospectives, none of which exist in any depth for this particular pitch.
Bespoke, made-to-order aluminium furniture is also the kind of business that can survive quite happily without much of a public footprint. A company doing custom edit suites and technology housing for broadcasters and studios does not need a flashy consumer website or active social media to keep taking commissions, which makes the usual signals we would look for, an active shop page, recent social posts, marketplace listings, far less reliable here than they are for a consumer gadget brand.
Our honest verdict
This is one of the cases where the fair answer is that we do not know for certain. The 2010 record shows a functioning business well after the Dragons' Den appearance, which is a genuinely good sign for longevity. But there is no reliable, dated confirmation that Mode Al is selling furniture today, under that name, in 2026.
If you are trying to buy this specific product, the most useful next step is to search current company registers directly rather than relying on old Dragons' Den recaps, since a lot of the detail from this era of the show simply was not tracked well online. We would rather leave this one open than tell you a confident story the evidence does not back up.
Where to buy Mode Al
Still selling as of 1 April 2026. Check today's price and availability.
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See the full Mode Al deal breakdown and term sheet →
