A lot of people encouraged Billie Asmus, founder and CEO of Repaint Studios, which sells reusable paint trays, to apply to ABC’s hit show Shark Tank.
Her thought? What’s the worst that could happen? She wouldn’t make it. That’s not that bad.
Well, she not only made it on the show, but she obtained a deal from Barbara Corcoran and Chip and Joanna Gaines for $250,000, with Corcoran getting a 10% equity stake and Chip and Joanna getting a 5% equity stake in her company.
The episode that included Asmus, who is from Hampton, Iowa with her company based in Iowa Falls, aired Oct. 8.
“Getting the deal was a surreal experience, because I had been following Chip and Joanna Gaines for my entire home improvement life, and so here was my chance to be in front of them and share my story,” Asmus said.
Asmus quit her full-time job at the end of 2020 and in 2021 she started a furniture flipping company and she and her husband bought a fixer up that needed a lot of paint. She was constantly going through paint liners and couldn’t find an effective way to save her paint and when she researched a better option, she couldn’t find one. That’s how the idea for her invention, the Repaint Tray, was born. The Repaint Tray is a reusable silicone paint tray system designed to eliminate single-use plastic liners and reduce waste in the painting process.
Her deal on Shark Tank builds on successes she’s achieved in the last few years.
Among those are winning the Pappajohn Iowa Entrepreneurial Venture Competition for $40,000, winning the $100,000 InnoVenture Challenge, and landing a deal with Lowe’s after going through a pitch competition with the retailer. Her products are also in Home Depot and Ace Hardware.
Though her time on air was brief, she said she was there for close to an hour and there was “tons of dialogue that people don’t get to see or hear.”
“There was a product demo with Chip Gaines,” she said. “He came up and showed the durability of the … tray, which I was super bummed that they did not show, because I thought it was a really good demonstration.”
The Shark Tank investment will go toward development of new products, including an updated repaint tray that’s a more universal fit for the Canadian and European markets, as well as a roller cover and a smaller and larger tray, she said. The company is also working on a paint bucket.
“There’s so many things that are in the works,” she said. “It’s trying to figure out, … one is it going to sell really well, but two, meet the demand of what people are looking for.”
As part of the Shark Tank deal, she said she’ll have access to Corcoran’s team and the Gaines’ team for mentoring, eventually meeting with them quarterly.
The moment of getting the deal was this “all time high, but also this extreme low at the same time,” she said.
“It’s this interesting situation where it feels like everything in your career is leading up into this moment, even though, in all reality, it’s just the beginning of it,” she said. “There’s so much that comes after the fact, after the show airs, after you start working with the Sharks, there’s more that happens. And that’s when a lot of the big things start coming together.”
Adaptive apparel company gets mainstream attention
Erica Cole started her company, No Limbits (pronounced limits) when she was a student at the University of Iowa.
She was in a car accident in May of 2018 that resulted in the amputation of one of her legs. She said she started an alterations business for people with disabilities out of a “personal need.”
“After struggling with finding clothes that would fit over my own prosthetic, [I] realized that there is just massive need in the space for ready-to-wear clothing for people with disabilities that have been really designed to work with the unique challenges of folks with disabilities,” Cole said.
Cole, an alum of the Venture School program, was on Shark Tank in April 2022. Judges and investors Mark Cuban and Emma Grede invested $100,000 total for 10% ownership in Cole’s company, 5% each.
“It was like the first time an adaptive apparel company had a mainstream news moment like that; there were these real investors that were looking at the space,” Cole said. “So it gave the company a lot of credibility. It gave me a lot of credibility as a founder. I’m always, I feel like still fighting that – ‘Well, you don’t have a business background, you don’t have a fashion background. You were a college kid studying chemistry, and now you have this apparel startup.’ There’s just this huge public show of faith from these real, credible investors.”
And while the money was great, she said, the moment on Shark Tank was more about the relationships and expertise coming from Cuban and Grede, Cole said.
“I still meet with both Mark and Emma’s teams,” she said. “It’s been really cool to be able to have their eyes on our business. … It’s amazing. I really thought that I would not see — I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m ever going to see Mark or Emma again,’ but I have, and it’s been a phenomenal experience with both of them.”
No Limbits now sells apparel that serves four categories – people with a lower limb difference, wheelchair users, people with sensory processing challenges and people who have limited dexterity in their hands and arms, Cole said.
Recently, No Limbits, which is headquartered now in Richmond, Va., acquired another company called Buck & Buck which does similar work but in the senior space, she said.
“And so now we really serve the breadth of needs in the adaptive apparel space, from just needing some minor adjustments because of your living, primarily independently, all the way through to folks who have … 24/7 caregiver intervention,” she said.