Scrub Daddy was on Shark Tank nearly a decade ago in 2012 and has since sold over 250 million dollars in sponges.
The company before Shark Tank.
$100,000 in retail sales.
$100,000 on QVC.
Four years on the market, with mixed success.
The actual investment on the show was $200,000, which for a consumer product isn’t a lot.
The real benefit was the exposure on the show itself and want to breakdown that value.
Scrub Daddy went on the shows fourth season.
6.5 million viewers was the average per episode at the time.
To give an idea of the value, the Super Bowl charged 5.5 million dollars for a 30 second ad in 2021 and it had 96 million viewers.
Next up is the average commercial, which is 30 seconds and for normal TV, it cost $109,000.
The Scrub Daddy segment on Shark Tank went 11 minutes and 45 seconds.
Compared to the value of a Super Bowl ad factoring in ratings/time, that’d be an 8.7 million dollar ad.
Comparing it to regular TV, it’s 2.5 million.
And I’d argue Shark Tank was probably worth more than a Super Bowl ad or normal TV ads.
Ads…
People go to the bathroom.
People check their phones.
People talk
Shark Tank is a show literally about just watching product demos, discussing details on it and doing some sort of a deal based on it.
The mission is getting millions of eyes on and in this case, the pitch was worth purely from TV standards, anywhere from 2.5 million to 8.7 million. Something I’d argue was probably worth more in this case.
And that doesn’t factor in reruns.
Nine years later the episode has been replayed dozens of times on CNBC & ABC with cuts of the pitch/the updates getting millions of views online.
Shark Tank in this case made a brand which is growing to 100 million a year and probably ends up one of the highest selling kitchen products ever.
So does that make a case Shark Tank is a good place for startup products to go?
Not really
Ratings are down since the show, where they now average 3.5 million viewers an episode. Likely due to the decline of cable and not having a great online marketing/streaming strategy being on Hulu.
The other point is it’s a $5 sponge that most people probably watched in their kitchen. Other products likely wouldn’t do as well, but this was perfect.
This is still a good example though of the power the show had basically giving an 8 million dollar ad to a single product and why creators online should look at finding similar ways to grow products.