ABC-TV Shark Tank Pro Kevin Harrington on innovation
Each month we interview a different expert for their insider’s perspective on innovation. This month: Q&A with Kevin Harrington, the infomercial pioneer who’s worked behind the scenes to launch more than 500 inventive products over 25 years—generating more than $4 billion in sales and making dozens of inventors into multi-millionaires. Kevin’s now also one of five on-camera business “sharks” who evaluates (and sometimes invests in) inventions on ABC-TV’s hit reality TV program, Shark Tank. He’s also a new member of AbsolutelyNew’s board of advisors. Here’s perspective from Kevin:
Q: Inventors approach you daily with new product ideas they want to sell on TV. When this happens, what’s the first thing you do?
Kevin: The first thing I do is ask if the product is manufactured, so that it’s ready to sell. This is a business that’s all about paying the rent, making money, and splitting the profits—so if the product isn’t yet ready, you can’t start making money selling it on television.
Q: And then what?
Kevin: I then ask, “Has it sold successfully before?” You can give me all the details about the product, the market, and the competition, but what I really want to know next is if it’s ever been put to a rubber-meets-the-road test, and if so, what happened. I won’t invest big money before seeing a track record of success.
Q: How is selling on TV different from selling in stores and catalogs?
Kevin: The biggest difference is that, on TV, you have the ability to dramatically present the product in action, including demonstrations so people can better understand the product and how they might use it. Products on store shelves or in catalogs with pictures can’t talk to you the same way. TV is very, very powerful.
Q: What should every inventor know about selling on TV, that your experience indicates most inventors don’t know?
Kevin: Many inventors don’t know how to sell on TV. It’s part art, part science, but there’s a process to it. You really need to know the process. Also, inventors often get caught up in their own thinking or story, and I tell them every time they need to focus on features and benefits—it’s all about the features and benefits when you’re trying to get people to open their wallets and buy.
Q: When we watch Shark Tank on TV, we see maybe 5-10 minutes of back-and-forth between the sharks and each inventor/entrepreneur. Before all the editing, how much time do you really spend with each person appearing on the show?
Kevin: The shortest discussion was about 30 minutes. The longest was probably about an hour and a half. A lot of the dialogue ends up on the editing room floor.
Q: On Shark Tank, you appear to invest less often than some of the other sharks? Why is that?
Kevin: It may appear this way, but it’s not true. Of the 122 segments we filmed, only about half have aired on TV so far. I’ve made 11 deals, which I think makes me either #1 or #2 in terms of investment. But the important thing to note is that I’m there to make money on good opportunities, not to make good TV, so I’ll only invest when I think it’s a good investment.
Q: How realistic are the Shark Tank negotiations?
Kevin: They’re dead-on. The show is filmed live without scripts or cue cards. We don’t know what the product is until the inventor tells us about it, so what you’re seeing is our real reactions and real discussions.
Q: Based on your experience working with inventors, how could many of them better prepare to have productive, successful business discussions with you and/or other industry leaders?
Kevin: Practice presenting your invention, and record yourself doing it so you can review it and make improvements. Do this again and again until you feel very comfortable presenting your product and hitting your key talking points. Also, don’t make a personal appeal for money—make a business appeal that will make me want to invest. This should include a good executive summary, relevant information like the size of the market, and to my earlier point, evidence of a successful track record.
Q: Have you ever invented anything, and if so, what?
Kevin: I invented one thing. And it cost me a lot of money because I got too close to it. At the height of the cigar boom, I invented a cigar-shaped lighter. It had a lighter on one end, and a cutter on the other end. It also had a lot of issues with the manufacturing, which became safety issues I had to address. In the end, I got clobbered by that invention.
Q: What’s your favorite invention of all time and why?
Kevin: The Flowbee home haircutting system. It started when a carpenter inventor right off the street—he didn’t look anything like the typical inventor I’d imagined—told me he had been vacuuming sawdust from his hair one day when he thought of adding recessed cutting blades that would cut hair evenly and remove it. He told me he named it the Flowbee because it sounded like a bee buzzing. Everyone laughed at the idea, but we went on to make millions and millions on it everywhere we launched it.
