S15.E08: Snow in Seconds; Black Paper Party; Pick-Up Bricks; The Tomte Cake

[JTMacc99]

Quote

"Shark Tank" rings in the holiday season as the Sharks look to spread festive cheer to four new entrepreneurs. They are presented with business opportunities that are sure to turn anyone's spirit merry and bright.

 

[CrazyInAlabama]

Season 15, episode 8, 15 December

Holiday theme

Sharks-Mark, Kevin, Daymond, Lori, Barbara.

Snow in Seconds-Artificial snow.  Jonathan Dusing $50,000 for 10%.  Take a small scoop, add water, and it grows into fluffly white snow, feels real, cold to the touch, but never melts.   It’s an agricultural product originally, one packet makes a gallon of snow.  They use it in movies.  Lori says it feels powdery and soft.    Competitive products don’t have the feel of snow.   $2 million lifetime sales in 15 years, they sold $250k last year, $40,000 profit.    Margins 80 to 90%.    He used to have a partner that failed.   Lori loves the packaging, but it’s too seasonal for her, so she’s out.   Kevin hates the seasonal deal, and sales, and he’s out. Mark is out.   Barbara says he needs help with profits, low sales, and it’s not pitcher’s only business, she offers 1/3 for $50,000.

Barbara makes the deal for 33 1/3% and $50,000. This company will fit in with two other winter holiday companies she has, Holiball and Hire Santa. (My guess is this is a product for people with a lot of money, to make a bunch of snow for the kids.  I can see the applications for movies/TV/ and other entertainment or decorating applications. )

Pick-Up Bricks- LEGO Vacuum- Aurora and Steven want $200,000 for 10% of their company.  Cordless, durable, separates the toys from the dirt, and animal hair.   Teaches kids to pickup their toys.   Great suction.   Daymond wins with the fastest pickup.   Retails for $99, just under 60% margins, selling all direct to consumer.  Sales are $348,000 in the short time they've been in operation.   They do 75% of sales during the holidays.   

Kevin is out. Next year they want to sell in U.K. and Germany.    Daymond says to license the manufacture, $200k for 20%.  Barbara offers $400k credit line for 20%.  Lori offers $200k for 20%, and she's open to an inventory credit line.   Mark 200K for 12%.  Lori changes to $200k for 15%.  Daymond goes to 15% for $200k.   

They make the deal with Mark and Lori for 16%, split between them at 8% each, for $200k.

Black Paper Party -Gift Wrap- Jasmine, J'Aron, and Madia, they want $250k for 5%.  Cuturally relevant seasonal gift wrap, gift bags, and decor.   They have stockings.  They do all designs in-house, and they're in over 6,000 stores Target (quite a few products), Walmart (a few products) and others.   $844k in 2022, over a million this year.   53% gross margin for 2022, after they paid themselves.  57% wholesale, 27% licensed, and 16% direct to consumer.   I love the background of the two marketing partners, and the creativity of the partner who does the designs and creation.  

They are looking to expand to Valentines Day, graduation, Black History Month, and other occasions.    They want to expand marketing, e-commerce, and inventory.    They need help with fulfilling orders.   

Kevin says they need distributors, so he's out.   Daymond is having issues with the valuation.  Barbara makes an offer, $250k for 15%.  Mark may want to go in with Barbara.  Mark and Barbara together $250k for 20% together.   

Barbara makes the deal for $250k for 10%, cutting Mark out.   I love their business, and think they'll grow so much. 

 

The Tomte Cake-Gingerbread house, all-in-one cake pan, comes with a children’s book about Tomte the gnome, and his adventures involving the gingerbread house.  Tomte the gnome is a metal statue that is baked into the cake, and he’s the star of the story.  Miranda Vaughn, she wants $200k for 10%. A 3-D gingerbread cake mold, no assembly of the gingerbread house, comes with the little figurine, and the book.  Tomte is a Swedish Gnome.  The gnome is big enough not to be a choking hazard.  The best part is the gingerbread cake mix isn't dry like the put together houses.    75% margins. 

She grew up in a cult, left, and didn't celebrate Christmas until she was grown up.    She wrote and illustrated the book herself.   She wants a mentor, wants add other holidays, Valentines, birthdays, and other product lines.  Kevin offers 25%, with a royalty, $200k.   Kevin says to stay online, not retail.  Lori says expand to Valentines later, birthdays, 200k for 33 1/3%. Mark is out.   Barbara says to build a team, like her group, 200K for 20%, with team support.   Daymond offers to partner, and Barbara says no.   Lori won't partner with Daymond either.    Daymond offer 200k for 20%.   I think Daymond would be a great licensing and mentor partner.   I love that Miranda has four offers. 

Deal with $200k for 15% with Kevin.    Barbara and Lori look shocked.  Daymond comments that it's one of the few times Kevin scored the win, and scooped the others. 

Ad for Migration with Robert, Mark, and Lori: Tipsy Elves with live ducks for their promotion deal with Migration from Disney, with duck themed sweaters. This is just a commercial with Robert, Lori, and Mark.  This is not a real update, but a commercial.   Followed by another Wish and Shark Tank commercial.

Update: Holiball and Hire Santa are two of Barbara's business, and their both doing well.   Holiball are giant ornament inflated decoration balls, in huge and small sizes.   Hire Santa is doing fantastic and international business.  The two businesses did a huge party with toys going to charity.  

(Kevin may be blunt, but at least he's not kissing up to sellers who think they have a product, and a business, but they came to the Tank too soon, or aren't profitable and probably never will be. I think of him as the Simon Cowell of Shark Tank). 

Edited December 11, 2023 by CrazyInAlabama

[EtheltoTillie]

I loved the Black Paper folks. Fantastic products and opportunity for expansion into other types of celebrations. Glad they got a deal. 
The gingerbread house is a good idea too. 

[DEL901]

I was shocked there was so much interest in a $99 Lego vacuum.  

And I was surprised no one asked about the environmental impact of the fake snow.   And what happens when someone fills their backyard with it?  Does it blow away and pollute the neighborhood?   Could be it is completely environmentally friendly, but I think if it was, they would have bragged about it.  

[Vermicious Knid]

With Pick Up Bricks my immediate thought was, can't someone just get a little shop vac to do the same thing? So I checked and this one is $41.99 at Ace Hardware. Just leave off the attachments and the hose is big enough. Compared to the $99 they want for their product. 

[Tango64]

What do you do with one bucket of snow? Or with 10 gallons? To do anything visually nice or fun, the cost is going to add up.

And as someone mentioned above, how do you get rid of it? I wonder if 30 years from now we’ll look back on this “agricultural product” the way we look back on 1950s fake snow made from asbestos.

Did they mention whether you can make snowballs with it? Even if you can, that means the stuff will splatter all over and soon your $10 bucket of snow is all gone. I imagine lots of disappointed kids. 

[bilgistic]

I DETEST when people call grown women "girls", and Barbara called the Holliball owners "girls" every single time she talked about them. Internalized misogyny is wild.

[bilgistic]

I agree with other commenters about the fake snow. I immediately thought "microplastics". The owner said it was "polyacrylate", which is plastic under another name. No thanks.

I loved the Black Paper Party owners and products. I'd be a customer except that I just don't buy Christmas decorations or wrapping paper.

The toy vacuum was a temporary solution at best. If your kids don't pick up their toys now, they're not going to use the vacuum more than a few times. Teach your kids to be responsible instead of giving them another expensive gift they won't use.

Edited December 9, 2023 by bilgistic

[jcbrown]

Why does Kevin always have to be such a huge jerk? He's just rude. He may be good at making money but I would never make a deal with someone like him. Is assholery thought to be good TV?

[EXEAL]

I read the descriptions of the products here first and the comments. Then I was ready to watch the episode but forgot Shark Tank is on ABC and Directv is having some kind of contract dispute with ABC that has put a stop to watching that station for the time being. The last time this happened it took weeks for them to settle.🤦‍♀️ 
Thank you @CrazyInAlabama for the recaps for each product. If I couldn't watch it at least I know the who and what it was about.😊👍
As for the 'Snow in Seconds'... after reading that it "never melts" the first thing I thought of was what do you do with it later.🤷‍♀️ 
 

[DEL901]

3 hours ago, bilgistic said:

I agree with other commenters about the fake snow. I immediately thought "microplastics". The owner said it was "polyacrylate", which is plastic under another name. No thanks.

I loved the Black Paper Party owners and products. I'd be a customer except that I just don't buy Christmas decorations or wrapping paper.

The toy vacuum was a temporary solution at best. If your kids don't pick up their toys now, they're not going to use the vacuum more than a few times. Teach your kids to be responsible instead of giving them another expensive gift they won't use.

And with the vac….what of you have a dog or two?   Won’t that vacuum up dog hair with the legos?   Won’t that be nice.  

[Madding crowd]

I didn’t understand the snow product at all. Maybe if you want to sprinkle it around some decorations in a store or something like that. I don’t think a tiny bag of it would be much fun for kids and I was waiting for the sharks to ask about safety if kids got it in their mouth. The presenter then said parents could buy it to build a sledding hill but it would take a ton of this stuff and be really hard to do. And one part of sledding is that snow is cold and you get bundled up. Sledding on gallons of plastic just doesn’t have the same appeal. 
I liked the wrapping paper and the gnome cake. 
 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Madding crowd

[Shrek]

1 hour ago, EXEAL said:

I read the descriptions of the products here first and the comments. Then I was ready to watch the episode but forgot Shark Tank is on ABC and Directv is having some kind of contract dispute with ABC that has put a stop to watching that station for the time being. The last time this happened it took weeks for them to settle.🤦‍♀️ 
Thank you @CrazyInAlabama for the recaps for each product. If I couldn't watch it at least I know the who and what it was about.😊👍
As for the 'Snow in Seconds'... after reading that it "never melts" the first thing I thought of was what do you do with it later.🤷‍♀️ 
 

The dispute is with Tegna who want more money, not ABC. It's the same on AT&T U-verse in the market areas where Tegna operate which is why it's not everywhere. 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Shrek

[Kleav]

10 hours ago, DEL901 said:

Won’t that vacuum up dog hair with the legos?

It has a little bin that dirt and hair fall into.

[eel2178]

On 12/9/2023 at 8:44 AM, bilgistic said:

The toy vacuum was a temporary solution at best. If your kids don't pick up their toys now, they're not going to use the vacuum more than a few times. Teach your kids to be responsible instead of giving them another expensive gift they won't use.

Do kids these days have the volume of legos to make this worthwhile? I just can't imagine buying them in huge enough quantities to make a $99 vacuum a necessity.

What was the capacity of the vacuum? If it can collect 100 pieces at a time and your kid has thousands of them, it's going to take a lot more effort to vacuum all of them up.

[eel2178]

On 12/9/2023 at 12:38 AM, DEL901 said:

I was surprised no one asked about the environmental impact of the fake snow.   And what happens when someone fills their backyard with it?  Does it blow away and pollute the neighborhood?   Could be it is completely environmentally friendly, but I think if it was, they would have bragged about it.  

They should probably just stick to selling it for commercial uses instead of trying to market it for home use.

[seacliffsal]

So now the Sharks are schilling for a movie?  I guess the mighty dollar is their motivator.

[SG429]

17 hours ago, seacliffsal said:

So now the Sharks are schilling for a movie?  I guess the mighty dollar is their motivator.

They do what the Mouse says 🫤

[CrazyInAlabama]

Since ABC and Disney are the same company as Discovery and a lot of others, I've been seeing the same cross-promotion for Migration on other channels too.  ABC shows and Disney have been doing this for a long time.   They had a funny one on House Hunters, talking about the ducks getting a house near the beach, 'a close waddle to the waves" or something like that. 

I really liked the presenters on this episode, I don't see much growth for the snow product, but the others should do very well.   I usually dislike the holiday themed ST episodes, but I really liked this episode. 

My favorite were the gift wrap and decor women.    Their backgrounds were very impressive, and they're very creative filling a needed section of the market, with great opportunities to expand to other occasions with their products.    I really like their decor items, cute and innovative.  

Edited December 13, 2023 by CrazyInAlabama

[silversage]

I don’t like it when people put a product down that already exists to show how theirs is better. That seems to happen often on this show. That gnome house looked like any other gingerbread house no matter how it is made and it will never be the next elf on the shelf.

The vacuum hose was too short. When they would stretch it you can see the tank part tipping forward. The cheapest way would be to teach your kids to pick up their toys or watch where you walk.

[potatoradio]

Like others, I kept wondering about how safe that fake snow was should, say, a precious tot or a pet ingest it. Poorly thought out home product; movies, sure, though there's still the environmental impact that nobody seemed to want to address. Is it recyclable? Since they didn't crow about anything like non-toxic and environmentally friendly, I'm guessing not. 

Lori can barely walk in her shoes. I worry when she rises from her chair.

I thought the gingerbread house and her homemade story were dumb. Why not buy a cake mold and make your own cake? I think it's kind of ridic to try to sell someone on a product as a "holiday" tradition of your own making. You want to create a tradition on your own product, you go right ahead, but I don't need someone else to sell me a tradition. /grinch