A BURY businesswoman and salon stylist had a hair-raising experience when she appeared on Dragons’ Den.

Nicola Wood, 47, featured in Sunday’s show bidding, for £80,000 in exchange for a 25 per cent stake in her Easiweft hair extension holder business.

Things began well for Nicola, of Walmersley Road, who works part-time in Bury’s Great Lengths salon.

Dragon, Jenny Campbell said: “It’s a nifty little product. I quite like it.”

Peter Jones told Nicola: “I really like the product”.

And Tej Lalvanij said: “I must commend you. I like it when people come up with simple products that solve a problem.”

Television viewers only got to see three minutes of Nicola’s pitch, and ten minutes of her being questioned by the dragons, but Nicola revealed that she was grilled for 90 minutes.

“It was the longest one-and-a-half hours of my life,” she said. “You think you’re fully prepared for anything but then they throw questions at you that you’re not expecting.

As viewers of the show witnessed, when Peter Jones elicited that Nicola planned to use half of the £80,000 to buy her partner’s 50 per cent of the company, things took a downturn.

He pointed out that she was asking the dragons for that amount for just 25 per cent of the business.

“I don’t think that’s good,” he said. “I think it’s appalling actually…that’s really, really, really bad. That’s something you should have mentioned from the outset.”

Although Jenny Campbell said Nicola had made a big faux pas, she said that the reason she would not be investing was purely because sales were not yet where they needed to be.

Touker Suleyman said Nicola had made the thing “very complicated” and said he was out, and Deborah Meaden described it as “a catastrophic moment” and ruled herself out even though Nicola said she would be willing to get a £40,000 bank loan.

Things ended on a positive note though, with Deborah telling Nicola: “You’re good and you’ve done a cracking job.”

Speaking afterwards, Nicola said: “There was a lot of positive feedback in there and I’ll just crack on and I’ll make it a massive success.”