Face Yoga Before Shark Tank
Koko Hayashi is the founder of Face Yoga with Koko. She started to get into skincare and cosmetics when she was younger, and she came up with Mirai Clinical, a special soap made with Japanese persimmons that tackle the smell people develop when they age.
Even though that business was hugely successful, Koko’s entrepreneurial spirit became restless. She decided it was time to bring facial exercises, popular in Japan, over to the United States. Koko developed a one-hour class, working one-on-one with her client base.
She managed to earn $17,000 doing these classes and teaching others the art of Face Yoga. Koko planned on scaling the business by charging potential instructors to learn the craft. Would this impress the Sharks enough for them to invest? Let’s take a look.
Face Yoga on Shark Tank
Entrance & Presentation
Koko said that today, appearance is everything. She asked the Sharks what they would say if she told them they could look ten years younger without Botox injections or plastic surgery. She joked around, saying that she found the fountain of youth because she was 61 years old! She was 40 in actuality.
This got a massive reaction from the Sharks, who told her she should’ve gotten an immediate investment from all 5 of them if she’d been the 20 years older she’d claimed. Once the chaos died, she said that her business was Face Yoga, a great natural way to regain a youthful appearance. She unveiled the more oversized posters of the same pictures she wore on her clothing, and some Sharks laughed.
It wakes up the sleeping muscle in your face and relaxes the over-arching muscles for wrinkle reduction. Koko brought up a picture of Kevin O’Leary to make a comparison. She told him he looked great, but if he started doing Face Yoga, he could look 20 years younger. She flashed to a photoshopped picture of him, wrinkle-free.
Koko warned him that if he didn’t do the exercises, he would age exponentially, and she showed another picture where he had additional wrinkles and laugh lines. Kevin laughed and said there was no way he would look like that. Koko said she knew better since she was a face yoga expert and invited him to the stage to teach him some of the exercises.
She walked Kevin through a move that would, in her words, either reduce or prevent a double chin. She had Kevin look up, partially open his mouth, and then stick his tongue out while clapping. Rohan Oza, the guest Shark, told Kevin that he looked like a seal.
Kevin said he already felt younger. She then had him smile wide and stick his tongue out, demonstrating that he should move it up and down across his face. Kevin protested, saying that it wasn’t an easy move. Mark Cuban started filming the spectacle on his cell phone. Kevin went back to his seat, and Koko continued her presentation.
Question and Answer
Koko said she has taught over 200 people and charges $200 for a one-hour session. Rohan was confused – if the whole workout only took 5 minutes, what was she doing the other 55 minutes? Koko explained that she teaches how to do specific exercises in detail, like a personalized seminar.
Koko presented that Japan had been very into face exercises for over a decade. There are many different schools, events, and teachers over there. Lori asked how Koko was attracting clients. Koko explained that one of her income streams was licensing the method to other instructors.
She said she already had two instructors under her and was planning to scale that further. Rohan wanted to know if she was making any money since she valued the business at $1 million. Koko insisted that even though she had only made $17,000, she could make much more money with additional instructors.
She asked the Sharks to consider the beauty industry and all the different invasive procedures such as botox, filler, facelift, and neck lift – it was all a multi-million dollar industry worldwide. Barbara asked her if she thought that she was going to compete with all of that head-on. Koko said that she would, and she looked like she believed it.
Lori wanted to understand better how popular face yoga was in Japan. Koko explained that there were over 800 instructors in Japan. Kevin acknowledged that it was a big business but wanted to know how much that would translate to money. Koko advised him that she believed it was tens of millions of dollars, but she thought the market in the US could be even more significant considering the increased population.
Koko admitted that she was living off the money from another cosmetic business she had that was doing $500,000 in sales. Rohan pointed out that she might want to focus on the business making money. She told him it was a good question, but she was an entrepreneur who loved doing something new and Face Yoga was her passion.
Koko said the cosmetics business was for the senior market – people in their 50s and up.
It was a unique soap that targeted aging body odor. Kevin asked if he would get a portion of the cosmetics business if he made an investment. Koko laughed and said that it was a separate company, a separate business.
Let’s Make a Deal
Barbara said Koko was remarkably entertaining and believed she would hugely succeed with a comedy routine. But Barbara was out; she wasn’t a fan of the Face Yoga business.
Lori told Koko that the American market liked seeing fast results. She thought American culture would tend to go towards fillers, which would be an immediate result, as opposed to Face Yoga, which could take months to show results.
Koko refuted this, saying that her methods were all natural and cost much less than the medical treatments. Lori apologized and went out. Kevin was the only Shark left standing. He said that he did the exercises and immediately felt 20 minutes younger. He said that one of the things he loved about Shark Tank was that he learned new things every day.
He said that The Face Yoga business was worth less than $1,000,000.
He was trying to be pragmatic about it, which was unusual for Mr. Wonderful. Kevin went out. Koko thanked everyone, bowed, and left the stage, with everyone wishing her good luck. In her backstage interview, she said she would laugh at them when she became very successful. If they came to her later, she would refuse to teach them exercises, and she said she would tell them to leave with their saggy face.
Face Yoga Now in 2024 – The After Shark Tank Update
She also managed to add Kim Kardashian to her list of clients when she appeared on Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Koko’s Face Yoga now also has an app that guides students wherever they may be. It also uses AI technology to adjust activity patterns according to the user’s facial features. On the IOS App Store, it has a rating of 4.1 out of 5, with almost 100 ratings.
Koko likewise delivers Free Face Yoga tutorials on YouTube and offers in-person training and conditioning over web conferences. While there are many other facial exercise videos and tutorials, Face Yoga by Koko may be the only brand that provides a complete mobile application and a dedicated gym for facial exercises.
Koko’s YouTube channel promises a new video every three days. It has 494K subscribers, and her featured video on the channel has 1.4 million views. Koko’s videos address topics such as eliminating a double chin and improving TMJ symptoms and nose breathing to prevent worsening COVID-19 symptoms.
In November 2022, Koko posted a video of her waiting in line at America’s Got Talent auditions. She’d gotten through the process but was rejected at the audition stage. She described her demonstration as a stand-up comedy act centered around Face Yoga. In the video, Koko indicated that she would try again in June of 2023.
Koko is talented at social media marketing, which matches her peppy personality. Her Face Yoga TikTok account has an impressive 563.1K following and 10.8 million likes on all her videos. It is regularly updated, just like her 125K follower Facebook page. Despite the challenges, Koko has decided to continue to improve her clients’ skin naturally.
