S02.E14: Beyond The Tank Episode 214

[yeswedo]

Quote

History was made during Season 5 when all 5 Sharks invested $1 million in the mobile phone breathalyzer, Breathometer. Now, a dissatisfied Kevin O'Leary questions the value of their investment. In Season 6, Daymond John made a deal with Bombas, a sock business with a social mission. Can they go beyond their online business amidst strong competition? After a Season 6 appearance, the sales of Gold Rush Nugget Bucket increased three-fold. But Robert Herjavec thinks they may be missing an opportunity for further growth. Barbara Corcoran invested in the seasonal decoration kits, Hoppy Paws, during Season 6. Are they now spending too much time creating new products?

[starri]

I'm going to disrupt the breath analysis business right here.  If you need to know if you're hydrated, check and see if you're thirsty.  If you're wondering if you have bad breath, see if your significant other wants to kiss you.

[marny]

I'm not surprised the Breathometer business isn't all it was cracked up to be. I know a good bit about breath alcohol testing due to my job, and there's no way that device can be at all accurate for determining BAC. Even in the original episode, we saw Lauri drink about 3 sips of champagne and blow a .04. Not even close to what the result should have been. The only difference between it and the ones they already sell at drugstores all over the place is that it connects to your phone. The Sharks shouldn't have bothered with that company. Not surprised they're pivoting to something different. Which I'm also not optimistic about. 

[starri]

Not just that, they've discontinued both their original Breathometer and a wearable version (what possible utility could that have?) to focus exclusively on the bad breath one.

It reminds me of a small-scale version of the shell game that aspirational blood-testing company Theranos is running.

[PumpkinPK]

Why focus on Easter and neglect Halloween?  So many families do not celebrate Easter.  Halloween is celebrated by all kids.

My brother and I would have had so much fun with that gold pail kit when we were kids on our family camping trips, decades ago.  Nice to see kids still enjoying that type of activity.

[bilgistic]

The breathalyzer guy has quite the ego about Philips partnering with him. I wanted to smack the smugness off his face. Let's see how smug he is in a year after no one gives a hot buttered damn about carrying around a disk to tell them if they have bad breath. Gum or mints are the same size or smaller, and actually solve the problem.

[ClareWalks]

13 hours ago, PumpkinPK said:

Why focus on Easter and neglect Halloween?  So many families do not celebrate Easter.  Halloween is celebrated by all kids.

I agree, I thought the Halloween thing was a good idea. You could put glow-in-the-dark monster prints up your walkway for the trick-or-treaters.

[Tonypitt]

I thought Barbara's logic for not focusing too much on Halloween was good--why are you putting your new product up against a whole market full of competitors?  But then she suggested Christmas instead.  At that point I couldn't figure out what she was trying to achieve.

[starri]

23 hours ago, PumpkinPK said:

Why focus on Easter and neglect Halloween?  So many families do not celebrate Easter.  Halloween is celebrated by all kids.

 

Halloween is not a universal celebration.  There are plenty of fundamentalist Christians who consider it far too pagan.  Why Christmas isn't in there too, I don't know, but there is many a church that will find some alternate, more godly activity on October 31st.

There's an old joke about Baptists.  Baptists are against pre-marital sex because it can lead to dancing.

[Amarsir]

Mr. Wonderful scowling at people in the den feels like a character who's being mean for drama. Mr. Wonderful scowling at partners for not delivering checks as promised ... well that I can get behind. That was not a segment for blowing smoke, and Kevin was the right guy to bring some reality into it. (Although I really suspect the reason we saw him as the group representative is that he doesn't have as many other investments to go visit.)

One of the potential uses of the new breathometer did catch my attention though: fitness. You can get superior information about metabolism and workouts by measuring the CO2 proportion of your breath when you exhale. It's called "indirect calorimetry" and a mask to measure it costs more than my current car. But if they can get their device to measure it, even roughly, at a reasonable price I'd seriously consider buying it.  And then the breath and gingivitis and who knows what else are just side benefits.

[NikSac]

On 5/14/2016 at 5:13 AM, starri said:

I'm going to disrupt the breath analysis business right here.  If you need to know if you're hydrated, check and see if you're thirsty.  If you're wondering if you have bad breath, see if your significant other wants to kiss you.

Or just play it safe and eat a mint if you're worried about your breath.