At just 10 years old, this boy has to wash cars to be able to afford a pair of shoes.
As he makes each vehicle shine, he has no idea he will one day become the
father of a 250 million dollar company.
Though his family almost disowned him, it would be a worthless invention that would
carry him to his unimaginable success.
This… is Aaron Krause.
The daddy of the Scrub Daddy.
As a child, Aaron was told that he was always going to have something to pay for.
Raised by parents who wanted to instill the value of money and hard work
into their children from a young age.
His childhood looked a little different from most.
Whether it was a new pair of shoes or a video game system, he had to earn it.
But how could a ten year old afford these things?
His parents would pay him to do chores around the house.
$2.00 for making his bed.
$5.00 for vacuuming his bedroom.
But the task that would earn him the most?
Washing his family’s car for $10.00.
In fact, he became so good at it, that he would find other people
with dirty cars in the neighborhood.
And, once he saved up enough to get himself a new pair of shoes,
he understood the value in them more than other kids his age.
“There’s a real difference.
When you work for and you buy your own pair of sneakers, you don’t
jump in the mud puddle anymore.”
Yet, it wasn't just about earning and saving money for Aaron.
His knack for problem-solving seeped into other parts of his life, where he
began tackling everyday inconveniences with a spark of creativity.
This became clear when he used dental floss and wheel casters
to create a mechanism for turning off his bedroom light.
His frugal father kept the house at a cool temperature.
So, being able to turn off the light from the warmth of his
bed solved his first problem.
“I remember, when I made it and it worked, I had this epiphany that
I could create devices that could change and better my world and I
never stopped from that point on.”
In highschool, he wasn’t just washing cars anymore, he was detailing them.
Making hundreds of dollars in a single day.
After graduating from college, he sat his parents down to tell them his plan to
open a car washing and detailing business.
Both doctors, they were beside themselves.
“Well, my mom’s crying.
And my grandmom’s like, ‘just disown him!’”
But to him, it wasn’t only a car washing business.
He was the president and CEO of a company.
And his dad turned to him and told him that he had until the end of
the summer to make it into a real business and get out of his garage.
Which had been his base of operations.
And, that’s what happened.
But a costly accident was about to change everything.
While buffing a new Mercedes, he broke the mirror right off the side of the car.
And replacing the high-tech mirror cost Aaron 900 dollars!
He knew it wasn’t his fault, but that of the badly designed buffing pad.
So, he decided right then and there that he was not going to let that happen again.
He was going to invent a better pad.
And when he did, it was an instant success.
“Within three months we were selling it all over the country.
Within 6 months we were selling it all over the world.”
He would spend the next 18 years manufacturing foam buffing pads full time.
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This business would accidentally lead to his most profitable invention yet.
The Scrub Daddy.
You see, while working at the shop, Aaron would constantly find his
hands covered in oil and grease.
Regular hand and nail scrubbers were simply not cutting it.
So he used his years of experience with foam and his many connections
in the industry to come up with the perfect hand scrubber.
It was made from a custom material the industry had never seen.
His first prototype, like most sponges, was square.
But he didn’t like the feeling of holding it when cleaning his hands.
So, he tried cutting it into the shape of a circle.
Which worked much better.
Though, he was still having trouble cleaning around his fingers and nails.
So he added two holes for his fingers and spikes for cleaning under his nails.
He quickly filed for a patent and started marketing it to body shops.
Where oily and greasy hands are the norm, he figured they
would be his target audience.
To his surprise, they were not interested.
So, he put the sponge in a box marked “SCRAP,” and placed it in the back
of his shop where he forgot about it.
That is, until the multinational conglomerate, 3M, showed
interest in Aaron’s company.
Their deal was simple.
$3 million dollar for his entire company, and he gets to
keep his box marked as SCRAP.
To them, it had no value.
But soon, they would come to learn about their multi-million dollar mistake.
While cleaning lawn furniture in his yard, he became frustrated
when the regular sponge he was using was simply not cutting it.
“Then I remembered a box of stiff sponges that I had back in my factory.” “That
were just sitting in a box and I thought, ‘finally, I have a use for these things.’”
With his once forgotten sponge in hand, he got back to work.
And what he was about to uncover would change everything.
As it would turn out, he had never fully immersed the sponge
in hot or even warm water before.
So, when on this 50 degree fall day, he dunked the hard, rough sponge
into a bucket of warm water, he was utterly shocked by the resulting
change to the product in his hand.
It went completely soft.
He even thought that he may have broken it.
“And I had really thought that I had done something.
That the soap ruined it or I didn’t know what happened, I thought maybe, you know,
that they’d been sitting around too long.”
In reality, he had just unlocked once hidden potential within the sponge.
Because, as he continued to work outside, the cool air began turning the soft
sponge back into its former hard self.
“It was literally getting harder and harder and I could feel - the harder
it got, the firmer it got, the rougher it got, the better it scrubbed.”
The sponge could change its level of toughness.
Warm temperature equalled soft and squishable and cold temperatures
changed it back to being a rough, hard and stiff texture.
And better yet, when Aaron went inside to clean his now dirty
sponge, it rinsed out perfectly.
Returning to its original yellow glory.
And it didn’t leave any scratches on his furniture!
But Aaron wasn’t done discovering.
That night he went to work tackling the dishes in the kitchen sink.
And with that, he found the perfect use for the sponge.
Using the two finger holes, he could hold onto it and give a 360
degree clean to the inside of a cup.
And then he looked down and saw that the sponge was missing something - a smile!
The next day, he cut a curved line into the product, completing the now
infamous smiley-faced Scrub Daddy.
But it wasn’t just for looks.
The mouth would be perfect for cleaning utensils!
He knew he had a hit on his hands and he needed to get to work.
Right away he applied for a new patent on the product.
Now, both the sponge and Aaron had a newfound purpose.
Aaron began marketing the sponge as a dish washing tool!
He created packaging for the product and came up with a plan.
He wanted to get it into supermarkets.
The only problem was - no one would take his call.
Thankfully he knew someone who owned a few local supermarkets and convinced him
to allow Scrub Daddy to be sold there.
But they just weren’t selling.
So, his friend suggested performing demonstrations for the customers.
And it worked!
Anybody who stopped to watch the pitch was hooked and bought the product.
But that wasn’t enough.
He needed more business and more customers.
So, he made one of the smartest phone calls possible.
He contacted the editor of the local newspaper and convinced them
to run an ad for his new product.
They even titled the article “The Daddy of the Scrub Daddy.”
Something Aaron has been calling himself ever since.
This garnered more business, but, more importantly, it caught the
eye of someone who helped catapult Scrub Daddy into its next league.
The home shopping television network, QVC.
This guy set up a meeting for Aaron and it turned out, they wanted him to be
the one selling the product live on air.
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And once he got the hang of it, he felt like a star.
But his next move is why he’s worth over $70 million today.
One night, while watching Shark Tank with his wife, Aaron had a revelation.
The people on the show at the time didn’t seem to know their business well
enough, and with Aaron’s newfound TV expertise, he knew he could do better.
“They don’t know their numbers when they’re going on
a national television show?
I could go on that show and kill the sharks.
In fact, I could go on Shark Tank.”
So, two months of phone calls with the show’s producers later, he was
flown to LA to give a presentation in front of 30 Sony and ABC executives.
One that ended with a chorus of applause and Aaron being asked if he could do it
again the next day in front of the sharks.
And that’s what he did.
He presented Scrub Daddy in an infomercial-like presentation
to the sharks the next day.
He was asking for one hundred thousand dollars for a ten
per cent stake in the company.
The moment he finished his pitch, the sharks entered into a bidding
war for a piece of his company.
One that ended with Lorri Greiner as the winner and her final competitors, Daymond
John and Kevin O’Leary dead in the water.
With a twenty per cent stake in the company for two hundred thousand
dollars, Aaron and Lorri had a deal.
And this… is exactly what Aaron and Scrub Daddy needed.
Because, following Shark Tank airing on television on October 25th, 2012, Aaron
and Scrub Daddy were given huge exposure.
“I can tell you, the night that we aired, we had over 30,000 people on our website.”
And within the next few days Scrub Daddy made around one million dollars in sales.
Then, the big chain stores started calling him.
And the rest, as he says, was history.
Since Aaron’s debut on Shark Tank, Scrub Daddy has come to be known
as one of the most successful Shark Tank products in the show’s history.
Aaron has even expanded the brand to include the likes of the Scrub Mommy,
sponge caddies, Mop Daddy Butterfly Mop, BBQ Daddy, Scour Daddy, Eraser Daddy and
even an EcoMesh Scrubber made from coconut and post-consumer plastic to name a few.
Today, Scrub Daddy is estimated to be worth approximately 250
million dollars and growing.
“Actually, I’ve only been an inventor.
From the time that I was a child, I actually knew that I loved
tinkering with things, creating things, and starting businesses.”
And the lessons taught to him by his father that have
carried him through his success?
He plans to pass on to his children as well.
“BAM!
Scrub Daddy, OUT!”