He may be a one-man-band, working from his flat in North London, but Barry Freeder, who founded HIT Products three years ago, recently hit the small screen in a big way on ITV’s Give It A Year series at the beginning of the week.
The episode saw Barry – who invented the CouchCoaster, a giftable, sofa-resting cupholder – receiving mentoring advice from the programme’s presenter Karren Brady, along with Ken Daly, ceo of JML.
Did Barry heed their comments on pricing? “I did agree that £19.99 – delivered – had possibly kept the product out of the reach of the real mass market and I have therefore reduced the price to £14.99 plus £2.99 shipping on CouchCoaster.com,” he confirmed. “The advice was the same from both Karren and Ken so I couldn’t ignore it.”
Filming took place between September 2016 and September 2017, with Barry highlighting that the figures discussed were actually a year out of date. “While I missed my target of selling 80k to 100k units during the 12 months of filming, I am now in that range, with the product currently doing really well on Amazon,” Barry confirmed. “The day after the programme aired, sales really shot up!” he added.
Top: Entrepreneur Barry Freeder with his invention, the CouchCoaster.
