Former DRTV project Bambooee is now a Shark-funded business.
Via Yahoo! Small Business Advisor:
By the time Noam and Irene Krasniansky’s Shark Tank pitch aired on ABC on Friday, February 28th, their reusable paper-towel product, Bambooee, was already available in northern California Costco stores, several Whole Foods stores, and thousands of natural food shops nationwide ...
[H]elp from the Sharks, they say, could help 'take Bambooee to the next level.' Noam tells Yahoo! Small Business that he and his wife auditioned with 50,000 other entrepreneurs for a spot on Shark Tank because: 'We’re not a large corporation with a lot of money, connections, and wherewithal for distribution. This is an innovative idea and we wanted it to grow quickly, so we needed the right partner who would understand our vision, not cut our wings, and help with distribution so that more people will have access to the product.'
You can read the full article here. My thanks to blogger Adrienne Burke for helping me learn more about the mysterious Noam, although I still can't quite place that accent ...
More to the point: Kudos to the Krasnianskys. Their item obviously didn't work as a DRTV project (else they wouldn't have needed to get in bed with Sharks), but they persisted and found success anyway. It's a positive case study in something I often tell newbies who ask me for DR help: If it fails on TV, that doesn't mean it won't sell somewhere else. It just means our particular customer didn't like it.
