Squeeky Knees before Shark Tank
Squeeky Knees is a children’s clothing padded leggings with a squeak sound built into the pads. It was started by Lisa and Ivan who were too busy to keep track of their active, new born child. Lisa saw that her son was getting bruises and scrapes from crawling around the home when she wasn’t looking and decided to create a clothing pad that would not only keep her son safe, but allow her to hear where he was.
After coming up with the idea, Lisa and Ivan spent the first year of the business trying to patent their product as they wanted no one to steal the idea. However, Lisa and Ivan did not take the effort to get sales or distribution as they only had a website that they hardly advertised. Feeling they had a good idea and wanting to grow a business, Ivan and Lisa applied to be on Shark Tank and were invited for Season Five.
Squeeky Knees on Shark Tank
Lisa and Ivan entered the tank seeking $80,000 for 20% of their company. Lisa pointed out how every parent’s top priority is safety and how their product Squeeky Knees helps ensure this as parents can always hear where their children are. This is because their clothing have knee pads with a built in squeaker device. Lisa and Ivan then showed the Sharks a video of the product in action as children were wearing the product and crawling around the house. Robert brought up the obvious concern about how the sound would get annoying after a while. Ivan defended the product as he felt it was “endearing” to hear his children crawling around. Lori was interested in the numbers and Ivan mentioned they sold 500 units for gross sales of $10,000. Lisa and Ivan than stated they were in business for three years which upset all the Sharks at $10,000 in three years is basically nothing. However, Lisa mentioned their first goal was to get intellectual property rather than sales.
Daymond was wondering why they didn’t have more sales and how the business would grow. Lisa tried to say it is because she is a single mom and because they did not know how to market it. Kevin questioned if the no sales was an indicator of there being no market for the product as he believed the idea “sucks.” Ivan and Lisa tried to defend their idea, but kept giving excuses rather than justifiable reasons which upset the Sharks even more. Lori felt that if a product is successful, people would line up to buy it, but because she didn’t see that happening with Squeeky Knees, she went out. Mark stated that he liked the idea, but that Lisa and Ivan couldn’t turn it into a company as they could not dedicate their full-time to it as they have to work and watch the kids. Ivan disagreed with what he felt Mark was saying, and tried to defend Lisa by stating “stays at home moms don’t get enough respect.” Mark, however, politely responded with his common advice of how there is always someone out there who is devoting their full time to a similar business and will succeed more because of this. Because Lisa and Ivan couldn’t devote their full-time attention, Mark went out.
Robert wasn’t concerned that Lisa was doing the business part-time. However, he felt they were too soon in their business and went out. Kevin went back to his original statement of how he feels the market is telling Lisa and Ivan that they hate the product and that they would be killing money if they keep investing in the idea. Because of that, Kevin went out. Daymond was left and was disappointed with how Lisa and Ivan handled all the criticism they got. He was on the fence about whether to invest, but felt Ivan and Lisa were not open to advice and that if he invested, they would spend more time arguing that actually working. Because of Daymond didn’t believe in Lisa and Ivan, he also went out.
Squeaky Knees Now In 2024 – The After Shark Tank Update
While the pair didn’t land a deal on the show, they did get some exposure, which boosted their sales a bit. Unfortunately, it was only temporary; they never really took off after that. There wasn’t a lot of discussion about the product after the episode aired either, which is a testament to how popular it really was.
Having said that, they remained in business for several years until 2017, when they shut down. We’re not sure how many sales they did over the years but we’re guessing it’s not a lot. For one thing, many items on their website were listed as “out of stock” during that period. Perhaps they had stopped the production process altogether? Their social media pages were also last updated in 2014 so it doesn’t look like they were really active, if at all, between 2014 and 2017.
If anything, Mark was probably right about the pair. With Lisa being a full-time mom, and Ivan being a full-time worker, they simply didn’t have the time needed to dedicate to the product—more specifically to the marketing and the production processes. While the pair had objected to his assessment at the time, it looks like things have played out the way the shark had predicted.
As of 2024, there’s no trace of the company anywhere on the web. Interestingly enough, however, their domain is still online. Someone seems to have purchased and repurposed it into a baby blog, which was last updated in 2020.
What is the pair up to nowadays? According to LinkedIn, Ivan has been the Vice President of Sales at Overall Murals, an outdoor advertising mural company, since March 2021. Prior to that, he was the National Sales Director. And before landing that job, he was a Senior Account Executive at Wrapify. He also worked as a Dictor of Business Development at Pearl Media LLC., from May 2012 to August 216.
As for Lisa, our best guess is that she’s busy being a full-time mom. We looked at her LinkedIn page as well but all she has listed is Squeaky Knees so it’s probably outdated.
The bottom line is, we probably won’t be seeing Lisa and Ivan again on the show anytime soon. For one thing, the latter has moved onto other projects. Unless they come up with another business idea, that’s probably the last that we’ll ever see of them.
