Fortress Clothing
Fortress Clothing makes apparel for the most extreme conditions. Extremely cold conditions. To demonstrate their effectiveness, the entrepreneur behind Fortress Clothing brought in a cryogenic tank that could bring temperatures down to -112F. And to test it out, Robert volunteered as a guinea pig. After enduring the cold for a bit, Robert attested to still being warm where he was wearing Fortress apparel.
The problem, according to the entrepreneur, is that cold weather clothing is that it keeps in heat which makes the wearer warm which then makes the wearer sweat. This sweat then soaks into the clothes and once your clothes are wet, the game is over. To counter this effect, the entrepreneur claims to have created a proprietary insulation.
To further demonstrate the product, the entrepreneur shows a video of someone falling into ice water and then claims to have that same person warmed up in just forty-five seconds. The scenario in this video makes sense once the entrepreneur has revealed that his primary customers are oil industry workers that do their jobs in extreme climates.
The entrepreneur previously had a "telecommunications company" that he sold for $33,000,000.
When questioned by Kevin as to where he wanted to go with his product--perhaps retail or fashion--the entrepreneur responded that he wanted to go after the "low hanging fruit" with the sharks as a platform for getting the word out.
The sharks are then informed that Fortress Clothing has attempted to license the product to other clothing manufacturers but that this has been difficult because the company only has $3,500,000 in sales since 2012, which does not average out great. Apparently other manufactures think this too because the licenses have fallen apart without "market validation" behind them.
When questioned why Fortress Clothing produces everything from base-layers to jackets when the secret sauce seems to be in the base-layer, the entrepreneur states that the base-layer isn't enough because it doesn't stop wind. Still, Barbara states that the company should focus on doing just base-layers and becomes the Fortress Underwear Company. But, since they didn't see this before hand, apparently doing it later isn't enough for her because she drops out of the deal.
Lori also drops out because she doesn't like the amount of risk she sees in the deal and she also doesn't seem to like having to manufacture all the different layers.
Kevin states that he doesn't see a strategy forward for Fortress Clothing and that a $600,000 investment is just too much risk to take a flyer on and is, likewise, out of the deal.
Robert, on the other hand, doesn't see a through line between ice videos and oil workers and drops out in confusion.
Mark is the last shark in the deal and tells the entrepreneur that selling new technology requires a clear message that the entrepreneur should have down solid but that he just hasn't heard for Fortress Clothing. He says that he thinks the entrepreneur will eventually figure it out but that he's also out of the deal.
Your Stats Shark was going to make a snarky comment about asking for $600,000 but, honestly, it's not even in the top-20 of companies asking for crazy amounts of money. So... good for them? Sadly, however they still leave the tank without a deal.