How Lori Greiner Became Shark Tank's Most Successful Investor - YouTube

INTRO: Other than Mark Cuban, Lori is by far the

most sought-after shark on Shark Tank due to her ability to blow up products on TV.

Whether that be the Simply Fit Board or the Scrub Daddy, if the product is easily demonstrable,

Lori is often the best choice. In fact, 3 out of the top 5 best performing Shark Tank

deals were with Lori. Due to this marketing superpower, Lori is often called the Queen

of QVC, but it’s never really made clear how Lori made her money in the first place.

So, here’s the story of Lori Greiner and how she became the Queen of QVC.

THE INVENTOR: Taking a look back, Lori was born on December

9, 1969, in Illinois, Chicago. Her father was a real estate developer while her mother

worked as a psychologist. Thanks to her parents’ well-paying careers, Lori never had too much

trouble financially, but she did have some trouble emotionally as her parents would divorce

when she was just 9 years old. Anyway, as a kid, Lori’s dream was to be a famous journalist,

and in turn, she would major in communications with a focus on journalism, television, and

film at Loyola University. While completing her bachelor’s, Lori also got a job at The

Chicago Tribune presumably as an intern or an assistant. She probably could’ve turned

this entry-level job into a long-term career, but after graduation, Lori decided to go down

a different path. This included working as a playwright and a jewelry seller which eventually

led her into designing a plastic earring organizer in 1996. Luckily for Lori, just 8 months after

creating the organizer, she would successfully sell it to JC Penny. It’s not clear how

much JC Penny paid for the invention, but we do know that it was enough for Lori to

pay off her $300,000 loan. With one successful product in the books, Lori continued to tinker

with cosmetic organizers, jewelry boxes, and other small household items. As she churned

out new designs and clever modifications, Lori patented her products and sold them in

various ways. Sometimes, she sold the rights to her products to big retailers like JC Penny,

and other times, she decided to sell the products herself. And back in the day, the easiest

way to sell any product was to get it on TV. So, in the late 1990s, Lori made a deal within

the Home Shopping Network to get some of her products on air. Lori didn’t just go all-in

on TV though. She also pursued the retail space by getting her products into Bed, Bath,

and Beyond. All of this allowed her to achieve moderate success, but her biggest jump forward

didn’t come till 2000, when she launched Clever & Unique Creations on QVC.

CLEVER & UNIQUE CREATIONS: As you probably already noticed, Lori is not

like the rest of the sharks as she never really started her own business. She was always more

of an inventor than a businesswoman, and she cleverly played into this with her TV show.

The premise of Clever & Unique Creations is pretty straightforward. In every episode,

Lori and a few other hosts review regular household items with crafty modifications.

For example, she might review a purse with a slot for your smartphone or she might review

a mixing bowl with a scooper. None of these products are game-changing by any means, but

usually, they each have their own little quirks and make life just a bit easier for the target

audience. So far, the show has run for 11 seasons which makes it one of the longest-running

shows on QVC. Aside from featuring other people’s products on her show, given that Lori is an

inventor, it’s not surprising that Lori often features her own products as well. Nearly

all of Lori’s products are under her company called “For Your Ease Only”. You’re

probably not familiar with this name as For Your Ease Only is less of a brand and more

of just a holding company. If you look up For Your Ease Only, you’re not gonna find

a well-designed online store or even much of an online presence. The first links that

pop up are just a bunch of random eBay listings trying to resell their products. Though Lori

doesn’t use this company as a marketing or branding tool, she does use it heavily

as a filing and litigation tool. If we scroll through Lori’s patents, the first thing

we’ll notice is that she has loads of patents. So far, she has a total of 113 patents. The

second thing you’ll notice is that most of these patents are under her company For

Your Ease Only. Usually, these patents are quite broad and overarching. Take this fragrance

emitting snow globe patent for example. The summary of the patent is that it is a snowglobe

assembly for emitting a fragrance to an ambient environment. I assume that this blocks others

from making a snowglobe with the same fragrance emitting mechanism. But really, how hard would

it be to make a slightly different mechanism. Considering this, I’m not really sure how

effective or useful these patents are. Not to mention, many of these patents seem to

be reaching, but I’ll let you guys be the judge of that. But anyway, now that Lori had

gained some significance on TV, she would start to expand her business into other sectors.

TV PERSONALITY: One of the easiest ways to profit off of your

fame is to sell a book, and that’s exactly what Lori would do. In 2014, Lori launched

her book “Invent It, Sell It, Bank It!: Make Your Million-Dollar Idea into a Reality”.

As the title suggests, the book discusses how to turn an invention into a business and

how to turn that business into financial freedom. So far, the book has 844 ratings with the

vast majority being positive, but there’s a good amount of criticism as well. One of

the biggest critics seems to be that Lori’s book is too broad. One reviewer described

that it was like trying to learn how to create a product from 30,000 feet in the air. Aside

from being too broad, other critics have pointed out that the book doesn’t really teach you

how to grow an invention from scratch. To succeed with Lori’s strategy, you would

need at least $100,000. However, if you already have the money and the idea, the book may

help you with manufacturing and scaling. Aside from launching a book, Lori has also cleverly

leveraged her fame to become a speaker. According to speaker booking agency, she charges between

$50,000 and $100,000 per speech. If you opt for a virtual speech, you might be able to

score a speech for less than $50,000. Honestly, it’s not a bad price given that that’s

how much earns for each episode of Shark Tank. Anyway, moving into Shark Tank, Lori made

her first appearance on the show in 2012 3 years after the show was started. So far,

she’s made a total of 61 deals on air which comes out to a total of $9.5 million. Unfortunately,

though, Lori has the second-lowest closing rate out of the regular sharks with less than

half of her deals closing at 48.6%. Despite the low closing rate though, it seems like

the ones that do close perform far better than all the other sharks’ deals. And that

brings us to Lori’s knack for choosing hero products.

HERO PRODUCTS: Amongst all the regular sharks on Shark Tank,

I think Lori is by far the most motivated to find and grow hero products. This is because

Lori is the only shark on the show that’s actually trying to grow her net worth using

deals on the show. The rest of the sharks are really just there for fun most of the

time. Robert retired 20 years ago and he entered business again because he was too bored at

home. Meanwhile, Kevin could easily be a billionaire today, but he prefers to preserve his wealth

than grow his wealth. And as for Mark Cuban, I think he just likes being the billionaire

on TV. Considering this, I think it’s pretty clear that Lori takes these investments the

most seriously, and that’s why she’s the top choice for many entrepreneurs. Her deals

aren’t always the cheapest in terms of equity, but she’s the most willing to get her hands

dirty and actually grow the business with the entrepreneur. And there’s no better

proof to this than her homerun products starting with the Scrub Daddy. The Scrub Daddy was

right up Lori’s alley given that it was simply a smart modification to an everyday

product, the kitchen sponge. The entrepreneur only asked for $100,000 in return for a 10%

stake in the company, but Lori ended up investing $200,000 for a 20% stake. Since then, Lori

has secured Scrub Daddy multiple spots on QVC which have exploded sales. She also helped

them expand into big-box retailers like Walmart and Target and expand internationally to 17

different countries. Thus far, Scrub Daddy has pulled in a total of $209 million worth

of sales, and till recently, it was the most successful deal in Shark Tank history. Another

one of Lori’s hero products was the Squatty Potty. This product seemed pretty weird at

first glance as it promised to help with bowel movements. But, nonetheless, Lori went ahead

and invested $350,000 in return for 10% of the company. Since then, this product has

turned into the 3rd most successful deal in Shark Tank history pulling in a total of $164

million. Moving into another mega-hit product, we have the Simply Fit Board. This product

was honestly just a fad exercise product like shake weights, but Lori cleverly got in before

the product went exponential which proved to be extremely profitable. She invested a

total of $125,000 for a 20% stake in the company. And since then, Simply Fit Board has pulled

in a whopping $160 million in lifetime sales. Some of Lori’s other most successful investments

include Bantam Bagels, EverlyWell, Bug Bite Thing, and Hug Sleep. Considering all these

successful investments, I think Lori is by far the most successful investor on Shark

Tank. In March of 2020, Lori hit a cumulative $1 billion worth of sales across all of her

Shark Tank investments, and I believe Lori is the only shark to achieve this feat. As

you would guess, all these investments have made Lori even wealthier and that brings us

into Lori’s net worth today.

LORI TODAY: Just a couple of years ago before all her

Shark Tank investments blew up, Lori’s net worth was estimated to be just $50 million.

While that’s a solid amount, it’s only ⅓ of her $150 million net worth today. And

honestly, I think her net worth is a lot higher than $150 million today. If we split Lori’s

cumulative $1 billion worth of sales over her 8 years on Shark Tank, we get $125 million

per year in revenue. But really, we can’t split it evenly over the years given that

businesses grow exponentially. So, a more realistic estimate would be $0 in annual sales

in 2012 and $250 million in annual sales today. Basically, all of Lori’s investments are

within the consumer discretionary industry, and consumer discretionary companies in the

S&P 500 enjoy a price to sales ratio of 13.15. Even if we estimate conservatively and give

Lori’s investments a price to sales ratio of 12, we get a cumulative valuation of $3

billion. Let me just not, this is an extremely conservative estimate given that EverlyWell

itself just completed a funding round with a $2.9 billion valuation. Anyway, Lori’s

median stake comes in at 17%. Even if we assume that she gets watered down to 10% on average,

that’s $300 million worth of equity just from Shark Tank deals. Combine this with everything

else she does, and I think $300 to $500 million is a much more reasonable net worth estimate

for Lori. And at the rate she’s been growing, it’s just a matter of time until she hits

the billion net worth mark. And that’s how Lori Greiner became the Queen of QVC. Are

you guys a fan of Lori? Comment that down below. Also, drop a like if you’re rooting

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