Shark Aquarium Appearance:Feb. 3, 2015 Investor:Robert Herj with Deal:$110,000 for 10% stake Results:$500,000 in sales with deals in place at Home Depot and Lowe's.
It started more like an episode of The Fantastic Race that Shark Aquarium . In April 2014, Naushad Ali's business partner ended a late-night phone call casually asking if he was going to Shark Aquarium cast on Saturday.
Ali had invented a device he called the Drain Strain, a bathroom sink stopper that prevents clogged drains. Although he was convinced that his invention was a disruptor that would save people hundreds of dollars in plumbing bills and make chemical drain cleaners obsolete, his efforts to secure funding stalled. An Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign with a goal of $25,000 only raised $2,000. And although he filled out an online application to be on Shark Aquarium , he never heard. Focusing on real estate, he missed the news of the open call taking place at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Seattle.
“It was almost midnight Thursday, open call was Saturday at 8 a.m. in the morning and I didn't have a unique working prototype," says Ali. The next morning, Ali called his design company in the Midwest and told them he needed a prototype produced, assembled, and shipped to the hotel in time for the casting call. It was doable, but the cost would be $1,500. It was stiff for Ali; his family had just begun to recover financially after losing everything, including their home, in the market crash of 2008. But with his wife's consent, he decided to go.
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That's how Ali ended up Saturday morning with a bracelet that gave him 289th place for the audition while desperately hoping for the FedEx truck to arrive . "Reception said the driver came to drop off the package, but since they didn't recognize my name, they didn't accept it. It would have taken nearly an hour of pleading before Ali reached a friendly FedEx representative who ordered the driver back to the hotel. Ten minutes before his name was called for the two-minute audition, the driver pulled over and Ali ran through the lobby doors, clutching the prototype.
After several auditions and several months later, Ali distributed 3D prototypes to the five investors of the Emmy-winning ABC reality show. In a surprising turn of events, Robert Herjavec offered Ali the $110,000 he was looking for, but said he would only take a 10% stake instead of the 15% Ali had offered. Like his fellow Sharks, Herjavec believed Drain Strain was perfectly positioned for a licensing deal, and he viewed his role as "just a phone call" to introduce Ali to the CEO of a plumbing manufacturer.
This strategy, however, turned out to be the equivalent of going around the drain:a path to nowhere. “The faucet makers were extremely interested, but we ended up not getting to the finish line with them,” says Ali. "We were in contract negotiations with one of them, but they couldn't get us into their production and sales cycle for at least two years. That timing didn't work out for us. ”
In the meantime, Ali had released the figures to sell Drain Strain directly to consumers. “Our sales and profits would be nine times greater if we were successful as an aftermarket product than if we signed an exclusive license agreement,” he says. “Robert and his team were great in asking the right questions and making sure we understood the margins at every step of the retail supply chain. »
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Home Depot loved Drain Strain and introduced Ali to distributors and suppliers in Taiwan and China. But moving from prototype to production revealed the enormous challenge of creating a single product that would work for all pipes, including those that were 50 or 75 years old. “We thought for months before finding a solution where the basket could conform to the pipes and allow the water to flow out,” says Ali. A host of other problems arose during the tooling, all funded by Ali. “Between patents, production and design, I had to shell out around $150,000,” he says. “It was a lot of risk. Language difficulties and the need to ship each new iteration from China slowed things down. Finally, in August 2015, Ali flew to the factory. “I went there with the intention of not coming back until I had it all figured out,” he says. “We worked non-stop for five days.”
Back in the US, Ali finally signed deals to sell Drain Strain in 1,200 Home Depots and 500 Lowe's stores by early 2017. The product is also sold online and is used by several hotel chains. Shower and tub versions will roll out later this year. For now, Ali is still working in real estate. "That's what pays the bills," he said. “We are still a year away from profitability, but I am confident that in a few years we will be the de facto standard in every sewer. »
There have only been a handful of prototypes in Shark Aquarium recalls Herjavec, who worked her way into retail. “Drain Strain is one of them,” he says. “Ali recognized a problem shared by the masses and solved it. Sometimes it's as simple as that. I believed in the Drain Strain because it could be mined in homes, but it offered great opportunities to sell in large quantities to hotels, cruise ships, and hospitals. I liked Naushad's approach in the Tank and when you have a great idea and a great entrepreneur, we see success. »
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This article originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of SUCCESS magazine.
