Shark Tank Negotiation & Business Valuation Lessons Drop Stop Simple Sugars Cool Wraps Traditional Fisheries Buggy Beds

Maria Curcio and Veronica Perlongo from Freehold, NJ, are getting an update segment on their popular product known as Buggy Beds.  Buggy Beds is an early detection system for, you guessed it, Bed Bugs.  Shark Tank update segments usually convey good news, so we’ll expect to hear that Maria Curcio and Veronica Perlongo have experienced tremendous growth in Buggy Beds Gross Sales.  One reason that Buggy Beds made for such a memorable Shark Tank segment is that all five sharks agreed to invest in the business.  The last update on the deal is that it has not been finalized with the sharks for Buggy Beds.  This makes sense, as there are many parties involved in the Due Diligence, the five sharks and their advisers/assistants/attorneys, Maria Curcio and Veronica Perlongo and their professional advisers.  Throw so many chefs into the Due Diligence kitchen and expect that things will take more time.  Either way, Maria Curcio and Veronica Perlongo have a great story and Buggy Beds is a product with a huge market whenever bed bugs make news.  Buggy Beds is definitely a money maker for Maria Curcio and Veronica Perlongo.

Have you ever had something fall between the center console and your car seat that ends up wedged in a hard to reach spot? If that is a yes, then you know how annoying it can be. Also, it can be very dangerous, if it distracts your driving. This leads to the Drop Stop, which was pitched on Shark Tank by the Los Angeles based duo Marc Newberger and Jeffrey Simon. Drop Stop, much like Simple Sugars, was created out of necessity, as Marc Newberger had a very close call in a driving mishap where he jumped a curb and nearly struck a pedestrian and a light pole. After going through a few variations that did not work well, Marc Newberger and Jeffrey Simon finally switched to using neoprene as the material to make Drop Stop out of. Neoprene is an expensive material that is durable, so Drop Stop should be a quality product that lasts, and not a cheap throwaway. Marc Newberger and Jeffrey Simon received offers from both Kevin O’Leary and Lori Greiner for Drop Stop. Drop Stop definitely seems like a product right up Lori Greiner’s alley. The only question is if Kevin O’Leary can trump Lori Greiner’s offer by offering to take no equity in Drop Stop, instead opting for royalty payments. As has been discussed previously, offering royalties are in most cases far less preferable to giving equity. In short, the reason that is the case is that paying royalties drain working capital for the business, which hampers growing the business. Thus, the offer from Loru Greiner was a no brainer for Drop Stop. Lesson Learned here is avoid offering royalty payments to investors, as they eat into cash flow, working capital and profits.

Lani Lazzari from Pittsburgh, PA was third in the Shark Tank to pitch her business which is a line of All Natural Body Scrubs called Simple Sugars.  One extraordinary aspect of her story is that she was 18 at the time of taping her Shark Tank segment for Simple Sugars. She was incredibly polished and poised on the set.  An even more extraordinary things about Lani Lazzari’s story is that she began creating her all natural body scrubs at the age of Eleven!  Like many great inventions, Lani Lazzari created Simple Sugars Body scrub based on necessity.  Lani Lazzari has very sensitive skin, so much so, that she isn’t able to use commercially available products, and thus, was compelled to create Simple Sugars all natural body scrubs to help her and her family.  Will Lani Lazzari’s Simple Sugars get a deal on Shark Tank?  It seems like Daymond John and Lori Greiner are going to be the best fit for Simple Sugars.  However, all four sharks aside from Mark Cuban were out.  They cited the fact that they were not going to be able extract value for themselves unless they took a great enough share of equity to make it unappealing for Lazzari.   This is despite the fact that Lani Lazzari had proven herself to be a dynamite entrepreneur.  However, that was enough for Mark Cuban to be interested, but as the other sharks alluded to, he needed enough equity to make it work his while, so he got Lani Lazzari to give up 33% in Simple Sugars.  During Negotiations, Cuban made an offer for 33%, which elicited the counter offer from Lazzari for 25% equity.  Cuban gave a simple no to the 25% counter offer.  This is where the negotiation skills became apparent.  Cuban was wise to say no, and not offer a different counter to Lazzari.  This is because he had the leverage, there were no other bidders.  Lazzari knew that she did not have the leverage, which made her accept Cuban’s offer for 33% equity too quickly.  What could she have done differently.  After Cuban said no to her counter, she could have said something along the lines of “Let’s do 30% equity” and then accepted Cuban’s 33% equity offer if he said no to that.  Lesson Learned if you don’t have leverage in Negotiations always make one last offer while leaving the door open to accept what the other party put on the table.

David Johnson of Traditional Fisheries jumps into the Shark Tank not to swim with the sharks, but to swim with Lion Fish, which form the focus of his business.  Lion Fish are native to the West Pacific and Indian Oceans.  They are super predators of other native reef fish with their large venomous external spines and have become a problem in the Caribbean Ocean.  You can see in the image, Lion Fish are quite colorful and the venomous spines are quite large.  David Johnson’s Traditional Fisheries is a business that aims to commercialize Lion Fish and help control their invasive spread in the Caribbean Ocean.  The sharks enjoyed the taste, as they doned on Lion Fish.  But they did not give David Johnson an investment for Traditional Fisheries.  The problem for the sharks was that they felt that raising market awareness to make Lion Fish a commercially viable product was too long of a horizon for their investment.  Lesson Learned Here: Successful investors want a quick return on their money.  It’s best to pitch investors when you have your product ready to hit a big break.   .Let’s hope that national television helps David Johnson and his partner cultivate a market for Lion Fish sooner than later.

Giving gifts is a lot of fun.  Opening gifts can be even greater fun, especially for little kids who get a ton of amusement from the gift wrapping.  But wrapping gifts can be a lot of work.  Jeffrey Miller wants to make gift wrapping a simpler and more fun process.  As such, he’s invented a patented and trademarked concept called CoolWraps.  CoolWraps are essentially Shrink Wrap gift bags.  Jeffrey Miller made CoolWraps a simple three step process.  It is as easy as placing the gift inside of a CoolWraps gift bag, sealing the bag with the closing flap and heating the bag with a hair dryer to shrink the CoolWraps bag to fit.  As is evidenced by the CoolWraps website, the product isn’t on the market yet, but is advertised as available for licensing or complete purchase.  This was a very interesting segment for many reasons, but we’ll point to one big misconception of the show.  The verbal deals struck on the set are not FINAL.  Meaning, when Lori Greiner said to Miller that her offer for $150,000 for 100% equity would make CoolWraps either her problem or success is misleading.  There is no way that Lori would Finalize a deal with Miller after Due Diligence if her homework told her that the product was not going to a worthwhile money maker.  That means she would walk away, and Miller would be left with nothing.  As it is, Mark Cuban Recognized this and trumped Greiner’s offer by $100,000 plus a royalty for 100% equity.  These verbal deals are ‘No Obligation’ deals for the sharks.  By the looks of CoolWraps‘ website, it looks like the deal with Cuban either never materialized or is still in progress at the time of original airing of the episode, which aired about 6 months after the segment was taped.  Think that this is a one off thing?  Hyconn, LLC and You Smell Soap are two examples of deals made on the set that did NOT materialize after Due Diligence.

Want to read recaps of previous Shark Tank episodes? Click here to see the entire collection episode recaps, all of them with business lessons you can take away from each pitch.
For More information on how Just Elementary, Inc, Business Brokers can help you with Valuation Matters & Negotiation Techniques for your business contact our Client Care Manager Sonia Chhabra at (888) 926-9193 or email cs@justelementary.com