Product Update
Is Tancream Still in Business? (2026 Update)
Is Tancream from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy Tancream today.
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Tancream set out to solve a problem anyone who has ever slathered on a self-tanner over the top of moisturiser will recognise: two products doing jobs that could be combined into one. It walked away from the Den with two investors and has kept its own website running ever since.
The short answer
Tancream is still in business. The skincare brand continues to sell its sun protection and self-tan hybrid products, along with a lip balm, tanning mitt and vanity bag, directly through its own website. There is no Amazon listing, the company sells direct-to-consumer instead.
Running your own storefront for years after a Dragons' Den appearance, without needing the reach of a marketplace listing, is a reasonable sign of a loyal enough customer base to sustain direct sales.
Self-tan and sun care is a fiercely seasonal category, with sales concentrated heavily in the spring and summer months. A brand that manages its cash flow well enough to keep operating year-round despite that seasonality, rather than folding during a quiet winter, has clearly built the operational discipline that a lot of small beauty brands struggle with.
The Dragons' Den pitch
Gillian Robson and Katy Foxcroft pitched Tancream in series 17, episode 1, presenting a sun protection and moisturising product built to combine skincare and tanning into a single step, aimed at people who wanted sun protection without an extra layer of routine.
They asked for £75,000 in exchange for 25 percent of the business, a solid stake for a skincare product entering a beauty category where consumer trust and repeat purchase take time to build.
Combining two established product categories, sun care and self-tan, into a single hybrid item is a genuinely tricky formulation challenge, since sun protection ingredients and tanning actives do not always play well together in the same bottle. The founders' ability to bring a working, stable product to the pitch was likely as important to the Dragons as the market opportunity itself.
The deal that got done
Touker Suleyman and Sara Davies teamed up to back the founders, splitting the full £75,000 investment between them for the 25 percent equity requested, each taking an equal share of the stake. A joint deal like this often means the founders get two networks of retail and manufacturing contacts instead of one.
Suleyman's manufacturing and retail background paired with Davies's experience building a consumer products company from scratch gave Tancream two very different but complementary kinds of support behind the same investment.
Building out the brand
Since their Den appearance, the Tancream founders have taken up office space at business incubator The Catalyst, a sign of a company investing in its own infrastructure rather than running the whole operation out of a spare room years after launch. The product range has also grown to include a lip balm, tanning mitt and vanity bag alongside the core cream.
Growing a single hero product into a small range, while keeping the original positioning intact, is a common and sensible way for a skincare brand to build repeat custom without diluting what made the original product distinctive.
The founders have also stayed close to the media narrative around the brand's Dragons' Den origins, continuing to reference the pitch and its aftermath in their own content years later. That kind of ongoing storytelling helps keep a niche skincare brand visible in a category where paid advertising budgets rarely match those of the major cosmetics houses.
The brand's stated ambitions to expand into markets like the United States and South Africa, where rates of skin cancer are a well documented public health concern, also point to a company still actively planning for growth rather than simply maintaining the status quo years after its television appearance.
The bottom line
Tancream asked for £75,000 for 25 percent, got exactly that jointly from Touker Suleyman and Sara Davies, and has spent the years since building out its product range and its own office base rather than fading after the broadcast.
If you want to try it, the company's own website remains the place to buy, there is no Amazon listing to fall back on.
Where to buy Tancream
Still selling as of 6 February 2026. Check today's price and availability.
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See the full Tancream deal breakdown and term sheet →
