Whatever Happened To Hairy Grabster Shower Hair Trap After Shark Tank Season 12?

Jun 24, 2023

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Everyday cleaning takes quite a bit of time and effort. Dishes have to be washed and put away, floors have to be swept and mopped, and surfaces need to be dusted and wiped down. Unfortunately, however, this routine workload increases even more when one or more of the members of your household has long hair. A simple trip to rinse off in the shower can quickly turn into a mess of shed hair stuck to the walls or clogging the drain, so Illinois couple Andrew and Patricia Watne decided to try their hand at developing a solution after Andrew experienced a shock opening the shower curtain. "One day Andy came to me, looking very concerned," Patricia said in an interview with Inventor's Digest. "He was sure our oldest daughter needed to see the doctor!"

To make the cleaning process a bit easier, the Watnes created the Hairy Grabster, a device that sticks to the shower wall and acts as a collection point for wet hair. The idea is simple and easy to market, but, unfortunately, the pair's time on "Shark Tank" didn't end in any financial support or praise from their potential investors. Instead, they continued to work on building up the business on their own, hoping to prove the Sharks wrong.

Andrew and Patricia Watne began their pitch on Season 12, Episode 18 of "Shark Tank" with a hypothetical scenario: You head to the bathroom to take a shower after your family member, friend, or roommate, and as soon as you pull back the curtain, you're greeted with a gross collection of hair along the walls. To decrease the chances of this happening, the couple pitched their Hairy Grabster, asking the stars of "Shark Tank" for a $75,000 investment in exchange for 20% of the business. This ask is fairly low, especially compared to some of the other deals pitched on the show, but it made sense when the pair revealed that they had only sold around $600 worth of product that year.

Unfortunately, none of the Sharks seemed compelled to bite on this offer, with many of them agreeing that it wasn't solving a large enough issue to become profitable across the board. The pair left with a bit of helpful advice from Mark Cuban but no additional funding in hand. Despite this, however, they still seemed motivated to succeed. "This is absolutely not the end for Hairy Grabster," Patricia Watne said as she left the Tank. "We're going to go ahead with our plans to launch further online, and we're gonna keep moving forward."

Before their appearance on "Shark Tank," Andrew and Patricia Watne didn't have much success when it came to sales. They had only sold about $600 worth of their shower-saving devices, and they were still working on expanding into e-commerce to make their products more available to a wider audience. After appearing on the show, however, it's clear that the couple experienced the boost in sales often associated with coming on the show, also known as the "Shark Tank" effect.

"We have received THOUSANDS of orders, messages, and comments since our "Shark Tank" appearance Friday!" the pair said in a post on Facebook. The Sharks may have shared that they didn't think the Hairy Grabster was solving a big enough problem to be successful in the business world, but it's clear that plenty of viewers on the show were interested and willing to spend their hard-earned money on the idea.

Thanks to the boost in sales from appearing on the show, it looks like Hairy Grabster is still in business and doing fairly well. The brand's social media pages and website are both active, and the product is still available for sale in multiple places online. On the brand's website, one Hairy Grabster will cost $12.95, and a two-pack goes for $21.95. The brand has also expanded to allow for a bit of personalization and offers its hair-grabbing tools in three different colors: violet butterfly, pure white, and ocean blue.

In addition to selling on their website, it looks like Hairy Grabster has also expanded to offer its products on Amazon and through Walmart. This company might not have received a deal while on the show, but it's clear that the appearance got it started on the right foot and exposed its products to an audience that was willing to buy.

In a bit of a deviation from their original products, the developers behind Hairy Grabsters released Bottle Grabsters, a shower accessory designed to explicitly label shampoo and conditioner. This product is essentially just a reusable rubber band with text that reads either "shampoo" or "conditioner," but it could be helpful for people who don't have the best vision and have to take their glasses off in order to shower.

Currently, it's unclear whether the team behind the Hairy Grabster plans to focus more on their original product or continue branching out to explore other developments. If they do focus on the original Hairy Grabster, it's likely that they will develop and release new colorways to cater to their audience's taste, but this, of course, fully depends on what they decide is the best course of action. Either way, however, it looks like the brand will continue providing creative shower accessories for the foreseeable future.