‘Shark Tank’ preview: Foot Cardigan, Nerdwax, Two Guys Bow Tie, ValPark Mobile, and Honeyfund
Friday night’s “Shark Tank” is coming up with a variety of different products, and to go along with that, we’ve also got the second Guest Shark of the season in Troy Carter. He is a prolific investor and music manager, and is one of the forces behind Atom Factory (they represent Charlie Puth, John Legend, Meghan Trainor, and others). You may not know him as well as Ashton Kutcher, but like with him he does bring an entertainment background into the mix.
Before we get into anything else, let’s start things off here with, as always, the official synopsis for the episode:
“A duo from Dallas, Texas pitch their eclectic sock of the month club subscription while standing in their boxer shorts, but will Sharks jump in feet first? Two men from Tulsa, Oklahoma offer the Sharks an investment opportunity in their unique line of wooden bowties, lapel accessories and men’s fedoras; an entrepreneur from Springdale, Maryland has a valet and garage parking app that enables users to pay in advance by credit card; and parents of youngsters tout the benefits of their grippy balm that keeps eyeglasses from slipping. And in a follow-up segment on several of Kevin O’Leary’s previous deals, we see how he is leveraging the success of his investments including Bottle Breacher, Wicked Good Cupcakes and Honeyfund into brands to celebrate a wedding couple on Nantucket, with Mr. Wonderful officiating for the Happy Couple.”
Now, we turn to the products:
Foot Cardigan – Love the name, and while a sock-of-the-month club is a little out there, we’ve seen so many subscription services that people really love. Why can’t they also love this one? $9 a month for a unique pair of socks is pretty fun, but there are two things working against them: There’s nothing altogether proprietary about this other than cool designs and a cheeky website, and for fellow members of the Sasquatch army, they don’t really cater that well to us.
Nerdwax – In some ways, this is the perfect product for us given that we have really terrible vision and therefore always wear glasses. Also, we’ve had the age-old problem of glasses falling off our face. We’ve just never been someone to care enough about the problem to go out and buy a solution. This is probably great for pretty-active nerds out there, but just the sheer market size (or lack thereof) may not be able to get it a deal.
Two Guys Bow Tie – There’s an interesting theme among these three products: They’re all pretty fun and in theory, could be right for us as a consumer. We’re just not sure we’d ever feel the emotional need for any of them. We seriously didn’t know that wooden bow ties were a thing before this company came to the tank, and to us, they seem rather expensive for a standard company. Also, we’re not sure that Daymond John wants to get further into the bow tie company given that he has assisted in an advisory way Mo’s Bows.
ValPark Mobile – This does fulfill a need in that there are plenty of people out there who are probably interested in getting their valet cars to them at a faster rate after having dinner out and the like. The tricky party with an app is that they really have to convince you that it is worth downloading and going through the hassle of startup, and we are not quire sure that this particular business has done that just yet. They need to deliver a super-strong pitch Friday to get their message out there.
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