Classic Bride clinches win in magazine Dragons’ Den

A wedding magazine aimed at women marrying later in life has taken top honours in this year’s Dragons’ Den contest for magazine journalism postgrads at Nottingham Trent University.

Classic Bride (right), the brainchild of Caitlin Kelly, Vicky Lomax and Chloe McNab, was described as “a gem of an idea” by the judges who said it was “genuinely meeting the needs of the reader” with its ideas for features on celebrity marriages, honeymoon destinations and tackling the etiquette of the wedding invitation.

It would make an excellent quarterly ‘coffee table’ magazine or a supplement to an existing magazine such as Good Housekeeping, said judge Elise Wells, editor of Slimming World.

The other two contenders, Baker to Baker and Young Entrepreneur, also won praise for their imagination and the quality of their ideas.

Baker to Baker (B2B), the magazine for the baking industry devised by George Ellis, Leo Forfar and Stewart Thorpe, had a “zeitgeisty name”, said judge Tim Relf, communities and farmlife editor at Farmers Weekly.

Dragons deliberate: (left to right) Sophie Turner, Elise Wells and Tim Relf. Credit: Dan Hodgett

Judge Sophie Turner, one of the team behind last year’s winner, Women’s Tri, and now a digital marketing assistant at Nottingham Trent, said the third title, Young Entrepreneur (formerly Pulse), had clearly identified a target market around the interest in setting up a business among people in their 20s and 30s and the pitch by Jodie Armstrong, Charlotte McIntyre and Emma Turner, had “great authenticity”.

Julie Nightingale, course leader for the MA/PGDip in Magazine Journalism in the Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism at NTU, said the competition helped students to grasp the challenges of thinking up a good idea then translating it into a product for a particular readership.

“Dragons’ Den isn’t just a nice exercise. Both the judges on the day and the feedback on our blog, where the pitches are also posted, give students professional, honest critique, just as they would get in industry. That is exactly what we want for them: our students must leave the course understanding the realities of the market they are entering while also being enthused about the possibilities.”

Classic Bride will be worked on by all of the students on the course this month (February) and will be published online in April.