SHARK TANK
Rachel and Krissy have been doing life together for close to 30 years. They began their friendship many moons ago in 3rd grade in Covington, Louisiana. They have fond memories of going to thrift stores and creating new clothes out of old dresses to playing the mud in Krissy’s backyard.
Years later, both ended up in San Antonio Texas, and in 2008 when Krissy became a mother, she started finding needs in the market for parents. It was then when she and Rachel joined forces and started to create children’s products. Between Krissy’s 3 kids and Rachel’s 2, they continued to identify needs and improvements to existing products and created new solutions.
SLEEPYHEADZ napmat/pillow (2013)
Fast forward to summer of 2018 when Krissy was about to embark on a cross country family road trip with her husband and 3 kids. Pulling her hair out, she thought HOW WILL I SURVIVE THE FIGHTING?!!! She proclaimed, “you’ve got to keep them separated - let’s put the kids in collapsible laundry hampers!
SPACE TRAVELER PROTOTYPE 1 (2018)
Worked OK, but needed improvements. Jump ahead to a trip to Orlando a few months later, she thought, “let’s try collapsible dog kennels!” Genius! Quietest trip ever! The fighting had pretty much come to a screeching halt! Still needed some tweaking but the idea had been born, THE SPACE TRAVELER!!!!
SPACE TRAVELER PROTOTYPE 2 (2018)
We immediately got to work on our first sample, pitched it around to manufacturers for licensing deals and learned about a Shark Tank open casting call in NYC May 2019. What started as a good excuse for a girls trip to NYC, soon included standing in a line for 8 hours for a 1 minute opportunity to pitch our product at the open casting call and ended with an email a couple weeks later saying we had made it to the next round!
After recovering from the shock and excitement, we got to work forming our LLC named Bright Idea Designs and found a manufacturer to produce a couple Space Traveler samples.
The summer of 2019 was spent meeting all the requirements from the Shark Tank team and early that Fall, we learned we would be flying out to CA to film a couple weeks later. We scrambled to pull it all together in time! Costumes were selected, logo created, props ordered and scripts memorized as our two samples arrived just in time from China for us to hop on a plane to LAX.
Arriving to the hotel was surreal and keeping the three kids happy, fed and entertained required a little extra help from our friend Joy - who has been with us from the beginning giving us tips and teaching us tricks to keep our energy alive and have a whole lot of fun through the process!
Now looking back, the whole filming process was quite a blur, but we can remember the nerves, the butterflies and sleepless nights all put at ease by the incredibly supportive Shark Tank team. We are still pinching ourselves and asking if this all really happened to us! Filming day was long and draining, so we returned to the hotel, snapped a few photos by the pool in our costumes before heading out to the beach for a beautiful sunset and dinner to digest all the events from the day.
What a wonderful kids tool !
This is actually a great idea for social distancing for kids in cars. You should pitch the safety angle!