Sharon Wright
Sharon Wright was born in 1969, a single mother in her hometown of Scunthorpe.
She left school at the age of 16 with only 4 O levels and became one of thousands of young people who signed up to the YTS scheme. Her career developed through her sheer tenacity and determination to be the best in her field at whatever she turned her hand to, including a Quality Assurance Manager, Health and Safety Manager and finally National Sales Manager selling for a company in Rotherham.
Sharon divorced in 2001 and has a 13 year old daughter. In 2006 Sharon moved into a brand new home and watched with her own eyes as a BT engineer struggled to install her broadband by trying to thread a cable through a cavity wall. Her pure frustration watching the engineer fiddling about trying to find a way of getting the cable through the wall caused her Eureka moment and she invented the Magnamole. Unlike many she has successfully turned this moment into a thriving business. Sharon, being positive and her focused determination seem to have been fed into the product by some sort of osmosis and she has created a Company that most certainly is the start of something big and unique.
The product recognition has manifested itself, not only by the orders she receives from afar a field as the USA where Magnamole has already been approved by major telecom companies, but also in inventors circles. Sharon was awarded the Diamond Award for innovation in October 2008 at the British Invention Show beating off global competition. She also went on to represent Great Britain at the Archimedes in Moscow and received Gold, as well as The Euro Event in Romania where she received the Gold Award too.
Sharon turned out to be the Dragon Slayer in a bravura performance on the hit TV show Dragons Den. She so impressed the notoriously hard-nosed judges on the BBC show that she ended up selling them shares in her company at a much higher price than she’d originally required. The Dragons, who are well known for their grilling of hopeful entrepreneurs and dismissive comments about their pitches, all wanted to invest. For the first time ever in the 5 year history of Dragons Den it was a first when two of the dragons had to retire to the back of the room to negotiate an offer that would attract HER.
It remains the perfect pitch. A beautifully crafted three-minute appeal to fund an exciting new business venture made in front of millions of television viewers. It has propelled Sharon Wright into the limelight as an overnight entrepreneurial sensation. Sharon’s appearance on the programme has provoked the most astonishing public response around the world. Thousands of people have felt moved to congratulate her as inspirational working class hero. Her idea is beautifully simple – and ranks with Percy Shaw’s Cat’s Eye road reflectors as another world class Great British Invention.
Since her success on the Dragons Den episode in July 2009 – when all five of the Dragons vied for a slice of her business, Sharon’s life has become a whirlwind of meetings, engagements and new business opportunities.