The best ideas happen in the shower, right?
For Lisa Lane, that’s never been more true.
Lane and her son, Jake Lane, won big on “Shark Tank” Friday, securing a dream deal for their shower attachment product.
And yes, it all started in the shower.
Lisa, who lives in Millstone Township, was at the family’s Shore house in Beach Haven one day when she found herself trying to bathe a series of dogs.
When their extended family got together, there’d be 15 people and four dogs, so while she wanted to be on the beach, she’d inevitably be tending to the sandy pups.
“I was filling a bucket over and over,” she told the sharks on the Jan. 31 episode of “Shark Tank.”
Then came another well-worn saying:
“There’s got to be a better way.”
In 2019, Lisa, now 59, teamed up with Jake, 26, to create a prototype for the Rinseroo, a slip-on hose attachment. The gadget has a spray head and fits over shower heads as well as bath and sink faucets to ease cleaning ... dogs, messes and humans.
To see if their idea had any potential, they consulted shark Lori Greiner’s book “Invent It, Sell It, Bank It! Make Your Million-Dollar Idea Into a Reality.”
They were excited to learn they had a “hero” — and not a “zero.”
The product could be used to help clean dirty boots, dirty babies, dirty dogs and dirty adults.
They launched Rinseroo on Amazon, and it was an instant success.
Within a few months, the fledgling business was profitable. In the first year, the Rinseroo generated $1 million in sales, the mother-and-son duo told the sharks.
Their product taglines: “No more buckets, no more backaches,” “rinsing reinvented” and “rinse and roll.”
Lisa and Jake demonstrated the Rinseroo during the episode of “Shark Tank” by spraying a blow-up kangaroo with water. Lisa explained how Jake hated to clean his shower in college, and that trying to wash his pet with the “bucket-and-splash” method was like “setting off a water bomb.”
Rinseroo to the rescue!
One member of the panel of super-entrepreneurs, Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, asked why the product was worth $6.8 million.
The Lanes, who filmed the episode in June, explained they’d be making close to $5 million for the year.
The figure had another shark, Mark Cuban, doing a double-take.
Lisa and Jake have made almost $1 million in net cash profits.
And that was without having the product in brick-and-mortar retail locations, which was their aim in going on “Shark Tank,” to secure connections to get Rinseroo in stores.
“That’s really amazing,” Greiner said of the Lanes’ progress, applauding their use of her book.
Cuban inquired about the product price and how much it costs to make a Rinseroo.
They reported quite a favorable profit margin. They spend $2.50 to $4.50 on the shower/faucet attachments and sell them for $15.95 to $29.95.
To keep their online sales going, they spend 10% of their revenue advertising on Amazon.
What do they do about knockoffs of their patented product? O’Leary wanted to know.
There are quite a few of those, so the Lanes employ a protection service to get them taken down when they pop up on Amazon.
While sharks Daymond John and O’Leary made them offers that fell short of their ask, Greiner ultimately stepped in to extend her “golden ticket.” She gave the Jersey family exactly what they asked for:
An offer of $343,000 for a 5% stake in the company.
“You read my book from cover to cover, you followed it, you did what it said, it helped you,” Greiner told Lisa and Jake. “You are like my perfect entrepreneurs. You were successful.”
“You are our dream shark,” Lisa told her, leaving the episode visibly jubilant after their high-energy pitch.
Lisa tells NJ Advance Media that finding Rinseroo a home with Greiner was the best possible outcome.
“She was our target shark,” she says.
Just getting on “Shark Tank” was a dream realized for the Jersey entrepreneur.
“I’ve been a fan since forever,” she says of the show. “It was my goal from day one to do ‘Shark Tank.’ In fact, we applied three times.”
About five years later, she finally made it after going the online route with a video submission (there are also in-person tryouts).
“I got into a bathtub as part of it,” Lisa says.
Since introducing the Rinseroo, she’s seen the product go viral a few times and take off on TikTok, which has helped make an impression.
Lisa attributes its success to “mass-market potential” — plenty of people might find more control over the output of their tub, sink or shower useful, whether it be for themselves, their home, their child, their elderly relative or their pet.
“It’s a real game-changer for a lot of everyday chores,” she says.
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, some even turned to the product as a substitute for an out-of-stock necessity.
“People ran out of toilet paper and they were using the Rinseroo as a bidet,” Lisa says.
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Jake never thought he’d be working with his mother when he was majoring in risk management and insurance at Florida State University.
However, Lisa’s job offer to her son came in handy.
“I was graduating in the middle of COVID and a lot of people weren’t able to get jobs,” he tells NJ Advance Media.
Before making her shower idea a reality, Lisa worked in marketing for a pain management practice. Before that, she was a stay-at-home mother, and before that, a pharmaceutical sales rep.
Initially, she thought Rinseroo would be a side gig.
“Then it just took off,” she says. “I couldn’t believe it, it was full-time for me and for him.”
“Shark Tank” or no, Lisa encourages anyone with a business idea to act on it and start making prototypes.
“I think it’s a dream that a lot of people have,” she says. “I never wanted to be an inventor necessarily, but it happened.”
Now she holds six patents.
For more, visit rinseroo.com or @officialrinseroo on Instagram.
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at [email protected] and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter/X, @amykup.bsky.social on Bluesky and @kupamy on Instagram and Threads.