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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