Flip-it!
flip-it! is a product by a company from Tennefly, NJ, that wants to help people get that last little bit out of their condiment containers by... putting gravity to work. flip-it is a replacement top for plastic food condiment bottles that screws on. Because it has a wide, flat "top", this effectively acts as a foot that the bottle can turned over on to allow the remaining condiment to drip down onto.[1]
The entrepreneur behind flip-it! claims that people are creating pollution because they can't get to the condiments at the bottom of their containers and are tossing them out with perfectly useable product inside. This, so the thinking goes, then leads to them buying new containers before they need them, which then leads to additional plastic production and pollution. The entrepreneur was inspired by this to produce flip-it!
An additional benefit of flip-it! is that it takes advantage of industry standard bottle thread size so it can be screwed onto most package types. And, claims the entrepreneur, it allows consumers to still buy larger sized bottles (thus cutting down on plastic waste) while maintaining the benefits of the easy dispensing "picnic" nossels versions (but which are typically sold in smaller bottles and have a higher plastic-to-product ratio.
flip-it! has four previous years of sales, booking $2,500,000 in sales over that time. In the first year, flip-it! sold $177,000. The second year saw a large increase to $650,000 in sales and the third year a minor increase to $740,000. The previous year's sales declined slightly to $655,000. In the year to date in which the episode was filmed, flip-it had sold $305,000 worth of product thus far.
While flip-it! costs only $0.96 to produce, it retails on QVC and direct-to-consumer online for $6 per unit. Speaking of QVC, the entrepreneur states that he has made over sixty-five appearances on the network.
The entrepreneur is looking for capital for the business to invest in more high-capacity molds in order to reduce cost of production. He states that he has interest from several new vendors but that they've been waiting for almost a year for him to expand production to meet both current and future demand. This seems odd when the entrepreneur states that the company has $500,000 in inventory.
Kevin and Mark both drop out of the deal early because, to them, the year-over-year dip in sales means that the product is in sales decline. Guest shark Rohan Oza drops out because he thinks the only business model the entrepreneur has is to come into the tank to generate new, fresh interest.
Lori drops out of the deal because she believes that too many existing retail products already have this feature and that there is a declining space for it.
Barbara, as the last shark in the tank, wonders why the entrepreneur hasn't yet gone the infomercial route, and theorizes that perhaps the entrepreneur is tired of the business and, after dropping that bomb, announces that she's also out.
The entrepreneur behind flip-it! ended up leaving the tank without a deal.
This deal aired on Episode 10.19.
Notes
- ↑ This product is similar to existing products that already do this like a squeeze bottle of Hellman's Mayonaise or Head & Shoulders shampoo, where the bottle is intended to be stored dispensing side down.