A HAMPSHIRE entrepreneur received a roasting when he braved BBC’s Dragon’s Den.

The fearsome five didn’t seem to grasp David Overton’s concept of Ordnance Survey maps printed on fabric as his pitch for a £60,000 investment in return for a 15 per cent share of the Chandler’s Ford-based business flopped.

Sporting one of his maps as a natty cravat, David explained that his maps were ideal for hikers and mountain bikers as they were far easier to manage in the great outdoors than the notoriously difficult-to-fold paper alternatives.

They could be worn as scarves, scrunched up in the pocket and tossed in the washing machine if they got dirty.

To round off his presentation Dave presented each of the five with a personalised SplashMap showing their home area.

Peter Jones, who seemed not to have been listening, said: “What is this a map or a scarf?”

While Touker Suleyman , the Cyprus-born businessman who made his fortune in the fashion retail trade, said David’s target audience was “Very, very niche.”

David, a former Innovation manager at the OS, had been pinning his hopes on support from Nick Jenkins, the founder of on-line greetings card firm Moonpig, who admitted he was a big fan of maps.

It looked to be going well as Nick pronounced: “I love Ordnance Survey maps. I’m your target audience.”

But then he dashed David’s hopes by claiming that if his idea was such a good one the OS would have taken it up themselves.

“The OS is a thousand times more powerful than your brand,” he told David.

A disappointed David told the Daily Echo that although he had come away empty handed on the day he had gained 10 minutes’ free publicity for his product on primetime national TV.

He added: “Going to the Dragon’s Den gave me the discipline to have a look at the finances of the company and renewed confidence in my business plan.”

If David had been successful in securing the £60,000 investment he had planned on using part of the money on expanding into the US market.