Touker Suleyman, the rag-trade tycoon who has spent the better part of a decade dispensing blunt advice and hard-nosed cheques from the corner of the Den, is stepping away from BBC One’s Dragons’ Den.
The 72-year-old retail entrepreneur confirmed his departure on social media, telling followers that after ten years in the famous chair, and with one eye firmly on the calendar, the moment had come to reprioritise. It is a characteristically understated exit from a businessman who has rarely been understated about anything else.
Suleyman joined the panel in 2015 for the programme’s thirteenth series, arriving alongside Sarah Willingham and Nick Jenkins as part of a wholesale refresh of the line-up. He quickly became one of the Den’s most recognisable fixtures: the fashion man with the encyclopaedic eye for margins, forever pressing founders on their cost prices and their cash flow rather than their slide decks. Over the course of his tenure he has pledged several million pounds across dozens of fledgling businesses, from pet smoothie maker Furr Boost to eyewear venture Pop Specs, cementing a reputation as the panel’s most instinctively commercial operator.
His route to prime-time television was anything but smooth, which is precisely why founders warmed to him. Born in Famagusta, Cyprus, in 1953, Suleyman arrived in Bermondsey, south London, as a five-year-old who spoke no English. He trained as an accountant before stumbling into the fashion trade, built and then very nearly lost everything when the collapse of Bamber Stores in the 1980s left him saddled with debt and forced to sell his home, and rebuilt from there. In 2001 his Low Profile Group bought the ailing shirtmaker Hawes & Curtis for £1; he later added the fashion label Ghost and, more recently, Savile Row institution Gieves & Hawkes to his stable. Last November, Drapers handed him a lifetime achievement award for a fifty-year career in fashion.
That appetite for distressed retail has not dimmed. Only last year Suleyman emerged as a leading contender to rescue Claire’s UK out of administration, a reminder that his exit from the Den is a reprioritisation rather than a retirement. Few expect a man with his deal-making instincts to spend his Sundays in the garden.
His departure leaves a notable gap in a line-up that the BBC has worked hard to keep fresh. Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden and Steven Bartlett – the youngest Dragon in the show’s history when he joined – have anchored recent series, supported by a rotating cast of guest investors. The producers have leaned increasingly on that guest format, with beauty entrepreneurs Susie Ma and Jenna Meek among those drafted in, so the machinery to fill Suleyman’s seat is already well oiled. Whoever inherits it will have sizeable shoes, and an even larger order book, to follow.
For the entrepreneurs who pitched to him, Suleyman’s legacy is a particular brand of tough love: the Dragon most likely to tell a founder their pricing was wrong, and most likely to write a cheque once they fixed it. The Den will feel quieter without him.
