Craig Polley set to enter Dragon’s Den
One Prince George resident will have a chance to pitch his idea in the Dragons’ Den.
Craig Polley got a call back from the show’s producers last week, meaning he’ll be making his way to Toronto in the near future in the hopes the Dragons will invest in what he’s tentatively calling Empress Limousines, a limousine service based in Chongging, a Chinese city of 32.8 million people where not one similar service exists.
“They have no full-time professional delivery services there,” Polley, who lived in the city for 10 years, said. “This is a market that hasn’t been developed yet.”
He explained the Chinese people are more affluent than they’ve been before, and now they can afford more luxurious services, and they are hungry for them.
Currently a hotel or an affluent person might own a limousine, something to be used to pick up specific guests, but there are no companies that offer the service.
“China is becoming car crazy,” Polley said. “And Chongging is a very modern city. It’s grown so much in the last 10 to 15 years.”
The boom in China would allow him to tap into not only transporting hotel passengers from the airport to their accommodations, but allow him to grab a piece of the marriage market as well, something that has grown about 240 per cent in the last eight to 10 years.
If Polley gets investors in the Dragons’ Den, he intends to use the money to purchase six to 10 vehicles plus put money into office space and other sundry costs. He said he will hire experienced bus drivers because they understand customer service as well as how to manoeuvre unwieldily vehicles in traffic. He will also provide his own training in pampering customers so they receive a luxurious experience, and may offer the option of a valet service.
Besides serving marriage parties and hotels, Polley added each season in China brings important festivals where a limo would be appropriate, and he will bid for major government contracts.
Most importantly, though, because he lived there 10 years and has a lot of friends and contacts in China, Polley said he has guan xi, or good relationships with others, something he said China runs on.
Polley added if there are any local dragons interested in investing in his idea, he’s ready to hear from them.
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