Deborah Sonia Meaden (born 11 February 1959)[1][2] is a British businessperson and TV personality who ran a multimillion-pound family holiday business, before completing a management buyout. She is best known for her appearances as a ‘Dragon’ on the BBC business programme Dragons’ Den.[3]
Early life[edit]
Meaden was born Deborah Sonia Charles in Taunton, Somerset.[2] Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother moved Deborah and her older sister Gail to Brightlingsea in Essex. When Meaden was 7 years old, her mother married Brian Meaden who became “a true father” to Meaden.[4] Meaden went to the Godolphin School, Salisbury, for a brief period and then to Trowbridge High School for Girls (now The John of Gaunt School) which she left at the age of 16.[4]
Career[edit]
On leaving school, Meaden studied business at Brighton Technical College, after which she worked as a sales-room model in a fashion house.[5] After graduation, she moved to Italy at 19 and set up a glass and ceramics export agency, which sold products to retailers including Harvey Nichols.[5] The company failed after 18 months.[citation needed]
Meaden and a partner bought one of the first Stefanel textile franchises in the UK, which was based in the West Country; she sold out two years later to her partner for £10,000.[citation needed] She then had several successful leisure and retail businesses, including a spell operating a Prize Bingo at Butlins in Minehead.
In 1988, Meaden joined her family’s business to run its amusement arcade operations and in 1992, joined Weststar Holidays, a family holiday park operator based in Exeter, Devon, with its major sites in South West England. In 1999, she led a management buyout and acquired the majority shareholding. By the time she sold the company six years later, Weststar was providing holidays for more than 150,000 people each year with an EBITDA in excess of £11 million. In 2005, she made a partial exit when Weststar was sold in a deal worth £33 million to Phoenix Equity Partners,[6] and, in August 2007, her remaining stake of 23%[7] in Weststar Holidays was liquidated when the firm was sold to Alchemy Partners for £83 million, valuing her stake at about £19 million.[8]
In 2009, Meaden acquired Fox Brothers (a West Country textile mill established in 1772 and still based in Wellington, Somerset) along with fellow shareholder, Douglas Cordeaux, former design director at Pepe Jeans London.[9] She was also involved in a collaboration with BBC conductor Charles Hazlewood, ‘Play the Field’, a weekend of classical music on Charles’s farm in Somerset over the August bank holiday weekend 2009.[10] In October 2011, Meaden launched ‘The Merchant Fox’, an online store selling British-made luxury goods with provenance.
In 2009, a planning inspector criticised Meaden’s evidence to his enquiry as “implausible” in a dispute over the granting of village green status to a field on which Mudstone LLP, a firm in which she is a partner, wished to build 48 homes.[11][12]
Television[edit]
Dragons’ Den[edit]
Meaden is known for her appearances as an investor (‘dragon’) on the BBC Two series Dragons’ Den,[13] where she took over from Rachel Elnaugh in the third series in August 2006. Like Elnaugh, Meaden was the only female investor, although this changed in subsequent seasons with the arrival of Hilary Devey to replace James Caan. As of 2021, she has agreed investments through this route in 63 businesses to a value of over £3.3 million
