‘Shark Tank’ revisited: Spikeball, Shark Wheel, Gato Cafe, Sway Motorsports

Given that the new season of “Shark Tank” is premiering in just a week’s time, it only makes some sense that Friday night, the ABC series would choose to re-air the last new episode from the spring. The season finale aired in May, and given that Nick Woodman was featured as the “guest shark” for the episode, it made some sense that a lot of the products featured were the sort that sort of suit the brand he’s established with a GoPro … at least other than that cat cafe. We’re going to have more on that in a minute, mostly because we find that story one of the most fascinating.

We’ve gone back and looked at the business featured to see what has changed since the show first airing; take a look at some of our impressions now.

Shark Wheel – You always hear in the tank a phrase akin to “this is a product” versus “this is a company,” and the biggest change we see in this skateboarding / wheel brand is that they feel so much more like a brand than they did a few months ago. They’re backing up the claims that their wheels are better than the standard ones, and they have a pretty wide selection of products at this point beyond just the wheels in the name.

Gato Cafe – In some ways, the business as presented on the show is all but gone. The website link we have just goes back to the server. The funny thing here is that as crazy as a cafe with cats running around may sound, we’ve actually heard about a ton of these since the show in such cities as New York and San Diego. Clearly, there is something about the idea that works, but for the show there just wasn’t anything proprietary about the idea, or any incentive for people to want to put money into this business.

Sway Motorsports – They are certainly in better shape right now than the Air Car that was first featured on the show earlier this season; the plan right now seems to be launching the tilting electric trike at some point next year. It’s a pretty cool product, but one with huge challenges still. It’s a big shift from what riders know, and it is a lot of money to pay for something they may perceive as a risk.

Spikeball – People were ambitious on the finale; we had people selling a whole new innovation when it comes to transportation, and this is an entirely new sport. We don’t really sense any huge change between now and when they were on the show the first time other than a little more success, but part of the reason for that is just because they seemed to have a good thing going before they ever came on the show to begin with.

We’ve featured a lot of products all summer long with this Revisited series, so be sure to head over here to check some more of them out! Also, you can sign up here to get some other TV new son everything we cover sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)