A business just landed a big deal on the show “Shark Tank”. The company Sweet Kiwi, a frozen yogurt business appeared on last Friday’s episode to hopefully get an offer that would help move their business along even more.
Sweet Kiwi was created by a Nigerian born woman named Ehime Eigbe after a health scare that caused her to rethink her diet and change to a healthier lifestyle, which meant she had to cut out one of her favorite treats which was Ice cream. After cutting Ice cream from her life, she still had the desire for the frozen treatso she began to look for a healthier alternative, which is when she became a fan of frozen Greek yogurt. However, during her time in Nigeria in 2011 she was surprised to find that frozen Greek yogurt or any frozen yogurt stores were nowhere to be found, this is how her idea for Sweet Kiwi was born.
Now, along with her business partner and husband Michael Kindele, they’ve grown the company and set to release the frozen treat in over 2000 retail stores across the nation, these stores included: Whole Foods, Walmart, and Kroger. However, they took it one step further by taking a chance on the ABC show “Shark Tank” where people go onto pitch their inventions/businesses to the 4 shark tank investors to see if they can get their help with their business in the form of investments.
Ehime and Michael took a leap of faith and pitched their idea to the sharks, the sharks were very happy and interested with the pitch and the first to make a pitch was the shark named Kevin O’Leary, who gives himself the nickname “Mr. Wonderful”.
“This category is very crowded,” O’Leary said. “The fact that you got Kroger … it’s very hard to get in. I’ll give you $250,000 for 20%.”
With O’Leary’s offer on the table, a few of the sharks began to pull themselves out of the investment running out of consideration, however Ehime and Michael still wanted to hear from the other sharks and tried to convince and re-entice them to look at the product. This angered O’Leary so much that he pulled himself out of the running and rescinded his offer to the business, leaving Sweet Kiwi still needing an offer from a Shark once again.
“Alright, alright, I’m out. Out. Gone,” O’Leary said. “I don’t know what you’re doing … Mr. Wonderful is pissed.”
This left Sweet Kiwi’s investment chances in the hand of Robert Herjavec, the only Shark left who hadn’t put out an offer or pulled themself out of the investment running. Herjavec took O’Leary’s offer and put it back up as his own offer. However, Sweet Kiwi tried to convince him to lower his amount to 7.1% with an additional 5% from in advisory shares. This led to Herjavec changing his offer to 16% which Sweet Kiwi agreed to.
“We just keep at it. We just keep pushing no matter what. And that was what you can see on ‘Shark Tank’ as well,” Eigbe now says. “It didn’t matter what Mr. Wonderful had to say. We’re going to keep pushing and keep trying to close a deal.”
