Tag Archive for: Shark Tank
Season 4: Enter Fender Guitar. Ok, now no matter what you say, you’ve got to agree that Fender is the industry icon. Fender is a household name and a venerable company known for building high quality guitars that their customers are proud to own. Fender builds a great product and shows enormous respect for their customers and the environment. However, Fender also recognizes that in order to remain relevant and on top, you can’t just sit still and bask in past successes. They must move forward and demonstrate that they are not just keeping up with the times, but rather they are a forward thinking company. That’s where Voyage Air comes in. We ARE the innovation leader. Fender is hip enough to recognize that fact and astute enough to do something about it. In a series of “secret meetings”, the Fender and Voyage Air senior staff met to discuss what we would build, how to build it, and how to protect the integrity and independence of each brand. The result? We agreed on a market test. Shark Tank brought their cameras in to witness Kevin and I negotiate the terms of the market test with Fender’s senior staff. The test will include a very limited run of a few hundred Fender Voyage Air Guitars placed in key retail stores around the country. No doubt these guitars will become instant collectibles!

Season 3: I have made many friends at Shark Tank, and have kept in touch with them over the past 3 years. The producers thought it would be kind of fun to see what would happen if I returned to the Tank for Season 3. They knew how excited Kevin O’Leary was about Voyage Air Guitar and about all the buzz we were getting in the guitar world.
So, I returned to the Tank. As you could imagine, I received a wonderful reception from all the Sharks, including Mark Cuban (Mark replaced Kevin Harrington, the Shark who wanted to do an infomercial with us during Season 1). But the point-man remains Kevin O’Leary. Yes, “Mr. Wonderful” was annoyed that he let us slip through his fingers two years ago. Even though I was “dead to him”, he was more than willing to resuscitate me if he could get a piece of the action. What happened was the biggest deal ever made on Shark Tank.
However, the deal was too complex for TV. It included millions of dollars and was contingent on me negotiating a concurrent deal with a leading industry brand name, so the producers couldn’t figure out how to make the piece simple enough to be explained to the TV audience.

