Product Update

Is Umbrolly Still in Business? (2026 Update)

Is Umbrolly from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy Umbrolly today.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 10 July 20266 min read

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Umbrolly holds a special place in Dragons' Den history: it pitched in the very first episode the show ever aired. The story since is more complicated than a simple yes or no. The original three-way company did not survive as pitched, but a version of the business, under a new structure, has continued in various forms since.

The pitch and the deal

Charles Ejogo pitched Umbrolly, a multimedia vending unit that sold umbrellas and carried advertising, in series 1, episode 1. He asked for £150,000 in exchange for 40 percent of the business.

Peter Jones and Duncan Bannatyne made a joint offer at those terms, £150,000 for 40 percent, becoming Ejogo's business partners in a vending concept neither of them had direct experience with. It made for good television and, for a while, a working partnership.

The deal that fell apart

Roughly seven months after the episode aired, the original three-way arrangement broke down. On Peter Jones's advice, Ejogo set up a new company without his original Dragons' Den investors, effectively starting the business afresh rather than continuing the entity that had appeared on air.

That is an important distinction. The company most viewers think of as "the Umbrolly that got the Dragons' Den deal" did not continue in that form. What continued was Ejogo's idea, rebuilt under new ownership.

What happened to the business itself

Ejogo grew the rebuilt business into Ireland, France, Germany and the Netherlands before resigning from it in April 2010, after the operation lost its UK partner, Photo-Me International. At that point the UK trading arm ceased operating.

Losing a single operating partner being enough to end UK trading is a reminder of how dependent vending and installation businesses are on the physical partners who host and service the machines. Umbrolly's model relied on Photo-Me's existing footprint and relationships to place units in high-traffic locations, and once that relationship ended, rebuilding an equivalent UK distribution network from scratch proved to be more than the business could manage.

Even so, reporting indicates the underlying concept kept going overseas under licence, in France, Germany and the Netherlands, alongside consultative services and overseas sales of the vending equipment. There have also been more recent, unrelated sightings of umbrella vending machines appearing at UK train stations, though it is not clear these trace back to the original Umbrolly operation rather than a separate venture using a similar idea.

A complicated case worth flagging

Our directory currently marks Umbrolly as still selling. That is defensible only in a loose sense: the original UK company that took the £150,000 did not survive intact, the deal itself collapsed within a year, and the UK trading arm shut down in 2010. What has continued is a licensed, overseas version of the concept rather than the company that appeared on screen. This nuance is being flagged for the site's editorial team.

It is a genuinely messy case, more interesting than a clean success or failure story, and worth presenting honestly rather than squeezing into a simple still in business or not verdict.

Why this one is genuinely hard to score

Most companies in this directory sort fairly cleanly into still trading or closed down. Umbrolly resists that, because the entity that took the £150,000, the deal itself, the underlying concept, and the UK trading arm all had different lifespans and different fates. Treating any single one of those as the whole story risks giving a misleadingly simple answer to what was actually a fairly tangled decade for the business.

The most honest framing is that the idea behind Umbrolly proved more durable than the specific company and partnership structure that pitched it on series 1, episode 1, which is a genuinely different outcome from either a clean success or a clean failure.

The verdict

Umbrolly's story does not fit neatly into either box. The company that pitched in the very first episode of Dragons' Den did not survive as originally structured, the Peter Jones and Duncan Bannatyne partnership dissolved within seven months, and the UK arm stopped trading in 2010. What has persisted, in some form, is the underlying vending concept, licensed overseas and occasionally resurfacing in the UK.

If you are hoping to find the original Umbrolly company still humming along today exactly as it appeared on series 1, episode 1, you will not. If you are asking whether the idea itself outlived the deal, the answer leans closer to yes, just not in the form the cameras captured.

Where to buy Umbrolly

Still selling as of 10 July 2026. Check today's price and availability.

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See the full Umbrolly deal breakdown and term sheet →