I had the opportunity to speak with Dee and Angie Cowger, owners of The Custard Stand and makers of Custard Stand Hot Dog Chili. The couple opened The Custard Stand in their small town of Webster Springs, West Virginia in 1991. I immediately became clear that the “hot” item in their shop was their home-made chili, […]
Insta Fire – Fire and Charcoal Starter
Insta Fire is a product that lets you start a fire or charcoal grill in virtually any conditions. Whether you’re out hiking in the snowy mountains or just lighting the backyard grill, InstaFire can get you fired up almost instantly. Konnel Banner and Frank Weston created the product because they are both avid outdoors men who know […]
PRX Weight Lifting Racks
PRX Performance weight lifting racks owners Erik Hopperstad and Brian Brasch are two businessmen with a business they started together, Hopperstaad is a Division Manager at Weekes Forest Products and Brasch is the CEO of Branick Tools. Both companies are in Fargo, North Dakota – which happens to be where the guys make their PRX lifting racks. […]
Rompers by Rags to Raches
When Rachel Nilsson started selling her kids’ used clothes on Instagram to help pay the bills, she noticed people were most interested in the rompers she made herself. That’s when the light bulb went on and she realized she could make a business out of her hand-made rompers. She designed them to fit her frantic, […]
Custard Stand Hot Dog Chili
Dee and Angie Cowger are husband and wife “hotdogtrepreneurs” and the owners of The Custard Stand, a 5 unit franchised business in West Virginia. They started selling hot dogs at the original Custard Stand in 1991 and began making their hot dog chili in a converted car wash behind their Webster Springs, West Virginia location in […]
Tutu Blue Long Beach Suits
Mr. Wonderful is used to being the “villain” in the Shark Tank, but when Sarah Buxton pitches TuTu Blue, her line of “Long” beachwear, he may be over-matched. Buxton is most famous for portraying bitch extraordinaire Morgan DeWitt for several years in The Bold and the Beautiful. In that role, Buxton was a super villain who routinely schemed […]
SworkIt Workout App
When Ben Young and Greg Coleman met their business partner, Ryan Hanna, he’d already designed the framework a workout app as a project to teach himself coding. Young and Coleman had a workout app of their own, called Nexercise. They teamed up with Hanna to start Sworkit when it was clear there was synergy and opportunity. We’ll […]
NOHBO Balls
Benjamin Stern first got the idea for NOHBO Balls while watching a movie about pollution in middle school. Unlike most kids, he decided to do something about it. Inspired by laundry detergent pods, he believed he could put shampoo, conditioner, and other personal care products typically packaged in plastic bottles into water-soluble balls. This would […]
CleanSleep Mobile Mattress Cleaning
People clean their carpets, curtains, even mini blinds with mobile cleaning services; now Michael Ingle wants them to use his business, CleenSleep, to clean their mattresses. He started the business in 2013 with a specially equipped box truck containing his proprietary mattress dry cleaning machinery. Ingle pitches CleanSleep, a company he wants to franchise, to the […]
Smart Plate – the FitBit of Plates
There are smart phones, smart watches, smart door bells – why not a smart plate? The folks at Fitly thought making a plate that could count calories would be a neat idea, so they went out and raised over $100K on Kickstarter to get it made. Martin Dell’Arciprete pitches the invention in Shark Tank episode 721. The […]