PEEQUAL Enters The Dragons’ Den: The Women’s Urinals Take Primetime TV
Amber Probyn and Hazel McShane, the co-founders of PEEQUAL, take their women’s urinals to the BBC big screen, spotlighting inequality in toilet queues, highlighting the time wasted at live events and presenting the so-loo-tion worth investing in.
From Festival Season to the Den
PEEQUAL winds down a jam-packed events season before heading straight into the Den to pitch for peequality!
Following our fifth full summer season bringing pee-quality to 35 festivals, marathons, and spectator sports events across the UK and Ireland, this week our women’s urinals are popping up somewhere completely new: Dragons’ Den!
PEEQUAL’s co-founders, Amber Probyn and Hazel McShane, headed to the iconic studio to pitch our award-winning urinals to the Dragons.
Of course, they didn’t arrive empty handed…
The Dragons Even Popped A Squat In The Urinals
With our squat-and-go urinal in tow, all five Dragons gave it a dummy run – fully clothed – to experience how they work. It’s not everyday you see the Dragons pop a squat on TV!
Amber said:
They all popped a squat to see how the toilets work – which was amazing! I used to watch the programme all the time, but I definitely never thought I’d be on it. It was such an amazing experience!”
Over 1.25 million people have already used our women’s urinals at events including Glastonbury, TCS London Marathon, The Boat Race, Brighton Pride, Reading and Leeds Festival, and many more (52 other distinct events if we’re counting…) since launching in 2022. Now the Dragons get to see what all the fuss is about!
PEEQUAL: Worth The Dragons’ Investment?
The most successful entrepreneurs design a solution to a real problem. The most successful investors spot that innovation and back it. One of the biggest problems at events, experienced firsthand by our co-founders, was the women’s toilet queue where they’d miss lunch breaks or their favourite acts because they were stuck waiting to pee. Amber and Hazel knew this wasn’t good enough. They dialed in to the problem and focused their Master’s research in Innovation on this pervasive problem.
Women spend far too long queuing for the toilet at events.
They set out to change that. PEEQUAL provides another option for the 90% of women in that queue that just need to pee. The same way standing urinals have been standard for decades, PEEQUAL provides an ergonomically designed squat urinal for those that squat to pee, getting people out of the queue and back to the event they paid for. Simple.
And never been done before. It’s a simple problem that we’ve designed the perfect so-loo-tion for; the flatpack PEEQUAL women’s urinal that can be assembled in just 90 seconds.
Our urinals are 3x faster to use than traditional portable toilets thanks to the squat-and-go design, slashing queue times by cutting the faff. No more toilet seat wiping, hovering or holding your breath from the stench; PEEQUAL is the touch-free, open-air revo-loo-tion elevating users’ event experience.
Amber said:
Women queue for an hour longer than men each day at festivals. Over a summer season, this adds up to nearly 10 million hours of wasted time in toilet queues*. Our urinals are all about bringing pee-equality to all so everyone can enjoy the event. It was great to bring this issue and our solution to primetime TV!”
Behind the Scenes in the Den
Taking a squat urinal into the Den was always going to get a reaction.
Hazel remembers the moment they arrived:
I think everyone was a bit surprised when we backed our truck into the studio and started hauling out the urinal. We quickly announced it was freshly cleaned!”
But behind the laughs, the pitch was a pretty nerve-wracking experience. Anyone who has watched Dragons’ Den knows that pitches always face tough questioning.
Hazel said:
When you’ve watched pitches torn apart on TV, it’s a little scary heading to the lift. We’re really proud of how we did though. They asked some really insightful and informed questions and were generally really impressed.”
From Glastonbury to Electric Picnic
The Dragons’ Den appearance comes at the end our biggest summer yet, with our women’s urinals at 34 events across the UK AND our first international deployment in Ireland which launched peequality into the 80,000 capacity festival, Electric Picnic.
Now we’re lining up a roster of European events with our PEEQUAL Partners, ready to bring PEEQUAL to more people in more places in 2027. Get in touch to see how you can go touch-free with your women’s toilets both in the UK and beyond!
The Secret’s Finally Out!
The hardest part has been keeping all this a secret since filming!
Hazel said:
Not telling anyone about it has been so hard! People kept saying ‘you should go on Dragons’ Den’ and we couldn’t say a thing.”
Our Dragons’ Den episode airs on Thursday 24th September at 8pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer, watch here.
And remember… pee-equality waits for no one.
➡️ Get in touch to book PEEQUAL for your large-scale event and cut those toilet queues!
*This is calculated from UK Music estimates that 6.5 million people attended music festivals in 2022. PEEQUAL’s research shows that women on average queue for an hour per day at festivals. Assuming 50% of festival goers are women and the average festival length is 3 days creates: 9,750,000 hours spent in queues (this is likely an underestimate too, as many weekend festivals are at least 4-5 days).
