Harrison Nott, the 15-year-old founder behind innovative UK small business CoolTowel, has been crowned the winner in CoCreate Pitch, a competition run by business-to-business e-commerce platform Alibaba.com.
The young entrepreneur received a $200,000 prize, made up of $100,000 cash and $100,000 Alibaba credit, after presenting CoolTowel, a product that provides instant, reusable cooling relief for workouts, hot days and adventures.
Harrison’s business turns over £200,000 and he documents his entrepreneurship journey through social media, where he has built an online audience of more than 50,000 followers and attracted millions of views.
Harrison Nott said:
“I’m speechless. I have worked so hard to get here and didn’t expect to win. CoCreate Europe has been a great event. I couldn’t be any more grateful to Alibaba.com for the opportunity.”
Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com, said:
“CoCreate Europe was a fantastic event that celebrated the very best of SME product innovation from across Europe. It was extremely inspiring to experience firsthand the level of fresh thinking, creativity and innovative solutions in our hotly contested CoCreate Pitch competition, and we have a one-of-a-kind winner in Harrison Nott and CoolTowel.”
A total of 30 entrepreneurs from across Europe presented during the CoCreate Europe event in London. The judges were former England footballer and investor Rio Ferdinand, entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den investor Sarah Davies, Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor, serial entrepreneur Ledger co-founder Eric Larchevèque, truefuels founders and double Olympic triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee.
In addition to the overall winner, 10 finalists were highly commended and awarded $20,000 worth of prizes each. They were Nutri Troops, Intotum, and HUID from the UK; Azza Fencing, Opack, and Portalo from France; TRAINOM, RAZECO, and Garados Swimwear from Germany; and Reeflex from Italy.
Thousands of entrepreneurs entered the CoCreate pitching competition. Alibaba said that 18% of the British submissions showcasing environmental concepts, higher than applications from France, Italy and Germany.
We interviewed Rio Ferdinand before the pitching competition. Look out for the interview on SMEWeb.com soon.