Editor’s note: As we ring in 2013, we’re taking a look back at our top stories of 2012. From Friday, Dec. 28, through New Year’s Day, we will publish the top 20 stories since Port City Daily’s launch in September. Port City Daily’s top stories were determined by readership. The story below was first published Oct. 17.
Until it unfolds on national television this Friday, there’s little that Zach Crain and his staff at Freaker USA are allowed to tell about the recent experience the company had in the “Shark Tank,” the ABC program that features entrepreneurs in uphill attempts to woo powerful, frank-mouthed investors.
One might guess, however, that the difference in personal style between Wilmington’s convivial Crain, his colorful product—a stylish one-size-fits-all beverage insulator called a Freaker—and the all-business Sharks will make for memorable viewing.
Crain—with an earthy beard, top hat and wide-open button-up shirt—will appear on “Shark Tank” during its 8 p.m. airing this Friday, Oct. 19. (View a clip here; fast-forward to the 43-second mark.)
While the 27-year-old’s non-traditional business attire evinces Freaker’s achievement model—don’t take it too seriously; just have a good time hawking a fun product—Crain and his crew are completely earnest about their work. Based in a cinder-block office on Castle Street in Wilmington, they presently have distributors or buyers in Japan, South Korea, Slovenia, Switzerland and Canada among other territories. In the United States alone, more than 300 stores carry their wares. To date, the company says it has sold as many as 85,000 Freakers.
“We’re just doing our thing. I think that’s why we’re able to keep moving forward,” Crain said Tuesday, sitting on his office floor. In the adjacent room, boxes of newly manufactured Freakers huddled up around an employee at a packaging table while others on staff worked the computers, wisecracked and listened to hip-hop (the office building itself once housed a rap recording studio, Freaker-team member Lauren Krakauskas noted).
The company presently employs seven people, all in their 20s.
“We’re just producing our content and trying to do the best that we can with what we’re working with. It just kind of naturally progresses,” said Crain. “We’re just kind of getting that lifestyle and fun feeling out there with the product.”
A Freaker specifically is an insulating cloth bottle-cover, sort of resembling a funky thrift-store sweater, with enough elasticity to dazzle soda cans and large wine bottles alike. The company’s website boasts it “quickly grew to be the global leader of preventing moist handshakes and sweaty beverages. They aren’t just selling you their fit-everything product, they’re giving you an invitation to their party; a starter kit for a new lifestyle.”
The company’s patent makes it confident the product is one of a kind, and that would satisfy one question the Sharks tend to ask the entrepreneurs hoping for business arrangements on the show. Televised nationally since 2009, “Shark Tank” frequently features ridicule of inventors whose creations are things anyone else could easily manufacture and market. In such cases, the Sharks—including Dallas Mavericks owner Marc Cuban and FUBU clothing originator Daymond John—usually say they want no part.
But if the proposal involves an eye-popping or in-demand invention or service with a lot of money-making potential–and a patent–the Sharks will compete with each other—and sometimes join forces—to buy in. According to the show’s website, the Sharks as of last season made television history by “offering over $6.2 million of their own money in investment deals to bankroll a creative array of innovative entrepreneurs.”
The website also features a form for companies wanting to appear on the show.
Whatever the outcome for the Freaker on Friday—contractually, Crain has had to keep it a secret, though his appearance was filmed in July—the company is preparing for a boost in interest. Often, the exposure alone can prove golden for the companies cast on the “Shark Tank.” Freaker USA just revamped its website and completed a new run of orders from the manufacturing plant in Montgomery County.
Freaker USA is still a young enterprise, though, having established itself roughly two years ago. Crain and his staffers are adamant that even the smallest successes so far have meant a lot. Before he registered the business proper, he was knitting and selling the Freakers just to pay for his day-to-day.
“I started cutting up old sweaters (to assemble the items) because I was living in my car and I needed some extra money,” he said. Since then, “It’s been success, but on the way of seven people getting by on skin and bones, not paying ourselves for a year and a half.”
For Justin Mitchener, Freaker USA’s vice-president and art director, the pace and fun deliver most of the reward.
“None of us are motivated by money,” he said. As is, “I feel like we’re so busy, we’re just always working in the moment.”
Contact Ben Brown at [email protected] or (910) 772-6335. On Twitter: @benbrownmedia
