Shark Tank: Phone Soap Cleans Up With Lori Greiner’s $300k Investment

Dan Barnes and Wes LaPorte have a company called Phone Soap. They say your cellphone has more germs than a public toilet, and one in six has fecal matter on it. They say it’s large enough for any phone to fit inside, and because it’s a universal charger, it works for all phones, too.

They’ve developed a product that uses ultraviolet light to kill the bacteria on your phone, while charging it. They warn that cleaning chemical cleaners strip a protective coating from your phone, causing more fingerprints on the screen, as well as possibly damaging the phone and voiding the warranty.

The idea came when Wes was doing cancer research, and Dan told him about an article that claimed cell phones were 18 times dirtier than toilets. Intrigued, Wes followed up, and found that his own cell phone was really that dirty. Because he uses ultraviolet light to sanitize instruments in his lab, he thought it would work well for phones, too, and had the idea to combine it with a charger.

[name] is asking the sharks to invest in [company] to enable it to

The offer to the sharks is 7.5% of the company for a $300,000 investment. They already have an investor in for $800k, and they’ve spent $80k in marketing. The current investor has 60% of the business.

In five and a half months, they’ve made $537,000 in sales. The device costs $20 to make, and sells for $59.95. They started with online sales, and now have a contract with Staples. They’ve also had hospitals invite them to show the devices, which could be used for the tablets that doctors often use to take notes as the check on patients. They have two patents on the device.

A few concerns the sharks had were that people prefer chargers that are portable, rather than…well, large, and that people probably don’t care that much about the dirtiness of their phones — though Herjavec admitted that if half a million units had already sold, maybe they were wrong about that.

Robert Herjavec was first to bow out. “I don’t need a tanning bed for my phone.”

Mark Cuban was interested — conditionally. He wondered about the hospital application. Specifically, could they get the device to clean tablets in under a minute? He felt confident that the device could be sold in health settings, to be used by visitors, similar to the hand sanitizer dispensers that currently line hospital and health center halls.

Barbara Corcoran interrupted Mark’s musing to echo concerns about the device being too bulky, and to time consuming. She says she uses a baby wipe to clean her phone — just wipes it down, throws it away, and is done. “For all those reasons, I’m out.”

Kevin O’Leary made a conditional offer. He’d give the $300k, but wanted a return of $6 per unit until he’d recouped the $300k, and $3 per unit after that, until he reached $1.2 million, at which point he’d consider himself paid in full and fade out. (Barbara called the offer a rip-off.)

The Phone Soap team, without quite explicitly turning down the offer, said, “We think the company is worth what we’ve asked for.”

“Okay,” Kevin answered, “How’s this? I’m out.”

Mark, continuing with the idea of selling for doctors’ waiting rooms — if the use time could be reduced: “You can’t give up your phone for five minutes,” — made an offer too. He’d give $300k for 20% of the company. The other contingency was that the unit price needed to come down to the $12 range.

Lori Greiner announced that she had a better offer. She’d give $300k for 15%, and put the unit on QVC and sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of them.

The team asked if Mark would consider lowering the equity he’d ask for. “We came in at 7.5%. If we could meet halfway…”

Lori said she’d go for 10% if they’d take her offer right now, and the two agreed instantly.

Final Deal: Lori Greiner invested $300k in Phone Soap for a 10% stake.

[Photo: Phone Soap]

Shark Tank: Phone Soap Cleans Up With Lori Greiner’s $300k Investment