Into the "Shark Tank"

Now that I'm off the news, and I can never find Law & Order, I don't have much "must-see" TV in my life.

But I can imagine it will be somewhat easy to get hooked on Shark Tank, a reality show in which entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a group of investors who decide, on the spot, whether to throw in some money. The investors are:

• Barbara Corcoran, who made her money in real estate
• Daymond John, the FUBU guy
• Kevin Harrington, "Father of the Infomercial" (thanks, Kev)
• Kevin O'Leary, who got rich with The Learning Company
• Robert Herjavec, security technology

Herjavec's bio is interesting. On the Shark Tank website, we're told that he was "eking out a living waiting tables' when he realized that "technology was the ticket to serious money" (Except, I guess, in my case). But according to the bio on Herjavec's company site, he was selling IBM mainframes before founding his own business.  It can, of course, be true that someone started out in mainframe sales, switched to waiting tables, and then founded his own company.  Still, not the norm, and there's no mention of table-waiting on Herjavec's professional site. Waiting tables is, of course, a lot more show-biz than flogging mainframes, which is I'm sure why it's part of his Shark Tank bio. (Me, I'd put down 'combat boot polisher,' the summer shoe factory job I once held.)

But enough about the guys with the deep pockets. Let's hear it for the folks with the big dreams.

Last Friday, the first dreamer up was Jill Quillin, a woman from Tennessee who's come up with a way to remix old partial lipsticks. Having rarely worn it, I don't know a hole hell of a lot about lipsticks, but I do know enough to know that a lot of it stays in the tube where you can't get at it.

LipstixRemix is a little kit that helps you meltdown the old and mold it into a new, perfectly good tube of lipstick. Quillin was looking for $105K marketing-expansion money, in return for 30% of her business.

Quillin was quite good in her presentation, and the idea does seem like one that will catch on for a while. Recession-prompted frugality will get some women to invest in a Remix kit. Longer term, the brigade who claim to spend $0 per week on groceries by clipping coupons, who get all their kids' clothing at swap-shops, and who, in general, make a fetish (necessary or optional) out of watching every penny, will probably enjoy this product, assuming that their budget allows for lipstick that's not home-made by combining melted Crayola stubs with Crisco or something.

Most women, I'm guessing, would find it too-time consuming to go through a melt-mold-freeze-retube process to save a few bucks on lipstick, and will keep on with their usual approach: an annual purge of the partially used lipsticks.

Still, Quillin did an excellent job of presenting her idea.

The two tech investors - Kevin O and Robert - were out of their element when it came to lipsticks, but the others were interested in playing. So Quillin ended up with the money she was looking for - but not without giving up 50% of her business.

Surprisingly, she didn't attempt to negotiate, which suggests that she went in prepared to give up that 50%. Or that, just as those bright lights can melt a lipstick, they can make you want to get the deal over and done with. (At one point, the deal was $105K for 40%, and Quillin went out to call her husband for his advice. By the time she returned, there was a new 50% deal on the table, which she took, saying 'That was the fastest 10% I ever lost.') I would liked to have seen her push back a bit, but, hey, it's her business, and I'm wishing her luck.  Her product does seem a natural for TV shopping.

Next up was one Tim Gavern, AKA Captain Ice Cream, a stunned looking goofball who rode in on his tricycle ice cream cart, a concept he hopes to franchise. Which he will be doing without any help, I'm afraid, from the sharks, all of whom took to his ice cream but not to his idea.

While he may have looked like a goofball, Gavern is savvy enough to have spun up the 10 reasons why his Shark Tank experience was all for the best. Sure, there's an element of licking his wounds, rather than a quiescently frozen confection in his write-up, but he did get right back up on his ice cream cart.

I made a lot of new friends because of “Shark Tank” – especially the production crew as I left about 300 ice cream treats in their freezer (in mid-August in L.A.). One crewmember’s response was, “Thanks, man. We never get anything.”

I can’t wait to find out who might be on the other end of my telephone because of my appearance on “Shark Tank.” Who knows who might call. The President? FYI: my phone has not stopped ringing since my episode aired.

After six minutes of airtime on ABC in front of 5 million viewers, Captain Ice Cream still has zero debt and I own 100% of my company. Ha ha.

The number one reason I was a contestant on “Shark Tank” was to build the Captain Ice Cream brand. Finding a way to instill a new brand name into the minds of millions of Americans is quite difficult today. I did it.

Gavern wants to aim his franchise at laid-off baby-boomers who wouldn't want to get back into the corporate rat race, even if anyone wanted them there.

Sure, riding a ice cream tricycle around beats being a Walmart greeter, but Gavern's only making $200 a day, and in many parts of the country, the ice cream vendor season is pretty darned limited.

No surprise that the sharks took a pass.

There was some interest, however, in Michael Schiavone's idea of the Caffeindicator, a sort of home pregnancy device that will let people know whether what they're being served is caf or de-caf.

Years ago, I watched a waitress pour two cups of coffee from the same (caf) pot, and then proceed to serve me one of them as decaf. When I pointed out that both cups had come from the same pot, she denied everything. Come on, honey, if you're going to serve the customer what she didn't order, why not at least do it out of sight. (Another time, I ordered a dish with penne, and was served spaghetti. Rather than acknowledge that they were out of penne, the guy argued with me that the spaghetti was actually penne. I had to give it to him for sheer chutzpah.)

So we all know that the caf switcheroo can be an issue.

Still, as one of the sharks observed, it's not something that most people are generally all that paranoid about.

Schiavone wants to pitch his idea to the packaged sugar and sweetener folks, and was able to get $200K for 50% of his company - he was asking for that amount for 25% - contingent on his striking a deal with one of the sugar/sweetener packagers.

I wasn't paying supreme attention, so I must have missed the part about why he would need the $200K if he actually had a deal with Domino or Sweet 'n Low.  Hmmmmmm.

The final business looking for investment was run by a couple who own a coffee shop legal clinic, Legal Grind, which is aimed at middle class folks too rich for Legal Aid and to poor for their own counsel. They come into the shop, have a cuppa, and get their divorce documents drawn up.

Annie and Jeffrey Hughes (he's the lawyer in the family) have been grinding out living this way for a while, and are hoping to franchise the concept.

Not, alas, with the help of the sharks, one of whom characterized their presentation as "bad theater," which, in a way, it was.

But, as far as I'm concerned, the Shark Tank was pretty good theater.

I will definitely be tuning in again.