First time FridgeFronts Entrepreneur Jan Augenstein appears on Shark Tank and makes deal with Barbara Corcoran who brings in Kevin Harrington.
According to Jan, she put her product in SkyMall an inflight magazine similar to Sharper Image that features all kinds of products for sale. She said she sold $40,000 worth from an $18,000 advertisement. Kevin was impressed, obviously he’s sold products through SkyMall before, but I didn’t think that was such a great return on investment.
FridgeFronts Magnets stick on the front of refrigerators and other appliances. They are designed to improve the appearance of old or bland looking units. She has all different kinds of designs, but Barbara made the deal contingent upon focusing on three designs that she already has.
Jan financed her business with an investment of $250,000 from her brother, and her primary concern is to make sure he gets his money back from his investment. While this is something that is very important to her, I thought it would damage her ability to get funds from the Sharks.
Investors want to know that your primary motivation is success, and not getting the money back for a previous investor. If you are successful, getting the money back is a given. The last thing an investor wants to do is to put money into a deal to bail someone else out.
Jan has received significant attention for her product, being featured on Rachel Ray, and having her website crash due to the amount of traffic that hit the server. This is a great problem to have, but the prepaid printing ended up being tied up in a printing company that went bankrupt. She had to literally buy her paid order again to get it out of bankruptcy proceedings.
I think Jan has big things ahead of her. I just don’t know why she hasn’t got her product on the Do It Yourself Cable channel. It would seem to me that this would generate considerable sales for her company.
Jan is an entrepreneur with a ton of passion and heart. She’s going to make it because she will do what it takes to get the job done, no matter what!
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