Echo Valley Meats
Echo Valley Meats is a butcher shop in Peoria, IL, the makes meat product gift boxes. This typically involves cured meats or pre-packed products like flavored cheese dips. However, not unlike Omaha Steaks, they can also ship steaks to customers on order.
As of the airing, Echo Valley Meats is comprised of a retail location, a catering business, and the mail order business. However, when questioned, the entrepreneur stated that he would prefer to focus on growing the mail order side of things and is asking the sharks for $300,000 to fund his marketing efforts.
Unfortunately for the entrepreneur, he appears to have been deeply unprepared to enter and pitch in the tank. His answers were general and he didn't have all of his numbers at the ready. One of the few numbers he did cite was that the business as a whole did $1,250,000 in sales the previous year. When asked, he was unable to tell the sharks what the cost of his customer acquisition was.
All in all, the sharks were unimpressed with what the entrepreneur was able to tell them and they dropped out quickly and no deal was reached.
This deal aired on Episode 4.21.
Second Attempt
In an extremely rare event,[1] the entrepreneur behind Echo Valley Meats returned two seasons later to try to pitch the sharks again on his mail order meat business. This time, he was much more prepared.
Not only had Echo Valley Meats been divided into separate companies (and he was now there pitching only the mail order business (for a $150,000 ask versus $300,000 two years before) but he rattled off his numbers without any issues. He reported that the mail order side of the business made $190,000 in sales for the year before the tank (rather than the $1,900,000 that included all sides of the business) but that, after appearing, sales exploded. In the year after appearing, the company booked $1,400,000 in mail order sales along. Additionally, they had a 35-40% customer retention rate.
All of this was enough to convince Mark that the deal was now ready to be taken serious and he invested $150,000 for 25% equity, just 5% higher than the original deal. This resulted in a modest bite of $150,000 from the company's original value.
The second attempt at a deal aired on Episode 6.21.
Updates
In Season Ten, during the Moink pitch, Mark dropped out of consideration for the deal because he considered it a conflict with Echo Valley Meats.
Notes
- ↑ How rare is it for a company to essentially have a do over in the Shark Tank? Very. In fact, as of Season Eleven only three companies have done so: Echo Valley Meats, Kymera Body Board (in seasons five and eleven), and Copa Di Vino (in seasons two and three.