Wine Balloon Entrepreneur, Eric Corti and his wife enjoy drinking wine. The Corti’s are not heavy drinkers, making it difficult to maintain a bottle of wine fresh. Eric came up with a solution to dismantle a blood pressure cuff and attach a balloon to it. He put the device in the bottle opening and pressurized it. This created a perfect seal and the wine now stays fresh.
His wife tested it, and their bottle stayed fresh long enough to enjoy the full bottle. He knew he had an excellent product, and they decided to invest money into making this vision into a real business. The Wine Balloon now sells online in many stores in the future.
He was offered $600,000 at which time he negotiated for a percentage of the future proceeds. Mark Cuban backed up and said he was out, leaving the deal at $500,000 with only Lori’s money and he still hesitated when she decided to go back in with Cuban, but this time their offer was $400,000.
This made for anxious moments on TV as Eric hesitated as the deal went down. Finally, an agreement happened, at least on the set of Shark Tank. Still, every deal goes through Due Diligence and The Wine Balloon is no exception to that rule. With only a patent applied for, it faced scrutiny, when compared to other products.
For this reason, it’s my understanding that this deal has not completed according to a tweet from @wineballoon last night and just confirmed this morning.
I tweeted last night that I would have taken the $500,000, jumped on the $600,000 and walked from the $400,000. All of the offers turned out to be a moot point given that there is no deal as of yet and at this point, I highly doubt to see one.
That doesn’t mean its game over at this point, he’s likely sold quite a few since the show aired. He’s also going to have a new opportunity to go on other shows and keep doing his pitch, which ultimately, may mean he ends up making more money on the deal or finds another company that’s interested in buying the product he has.
The Wine Balloon offers potential, and Eric Corti seems like a great guy. His experience on Shark Tank should prepare him for future negotiations. He will do well.
That does sound interesting 🙂
Sharon
http://sharon-moms-madhouse.com/
Having the opportunity to showcase his product on a national stage he is undoubtedly expected to have, at the very least, short term success. Fallout from the show, like this blog, will continue that success to a degree and if enough wine aficionados agree about the product’s viability the possibility to exceed $600k exists. Good luck!
Thanks for the updates, sounds like a great show and an interesting product!
Have a Super Weekend.
Good that he kept his rights to the product. Selling out for $400K was stupid based on the numbers
Wow, I didn’t see that coming. I thought the whole concept was brilliant.
Sounds like a useful invention! ; )
Sounds to me like he has a great product.
Your post got me interested. thx
good luck with the invention
This is cool…what a great idea!!
He might want to just wait until the patent is approved, which would give him a stronger bargining position.
Interesting story. Don’t accept any deal you could not live with.
I just rewatched this episode, and I think the “say yes now” type deals that have become a signature of Mark Cuban, along with the fact that they arbitrarily dropped their offer by 200K was pretty mean. Yes, the guy should have jumped on the deal right away, but that’s a real nasty way to do business. I was happy to see that the deal didn’t go through on this post….I think the inventor would have been very upset to see his creation make a fortune and have no piece of it. They should have offered him a 1% royalty taking that would only be in effect once their initial investment (well, buyout price) had been recouped.
Eric’s invention was on “invention hunters” tonight and Lifetime Brands signed a deal with him.
I saw that! I wonder which was taped first- Shark Tank or that show?
Yeah he made a deal with Lifetime Brand and the hosts of the Invention Hunters Show changed the name of the product to Air Cork. The patent was brought up so I don’t know if that’s going to come back and bite them in the but again! At the end of the show they normally give an approximate time that the product will be released and they didn’t do that this time so I hope that’s not a bad sign!
Well they are revamping the website- and that happened right after the show aired. I think that’s a good sign…..
I would of taken the $40k for the stake in the company to license. If two sharks want to buy out your company as a whole, it means you have a great product, why on earth would you give up your future by being so short sighted in the short term.
“They stole his future” is exactly right.
Great concept but the balloons don’t hold up. I’m going back to nitrogen, it has never failed me. At $5 for a replacement balloon (probably made in China) my left over wine is to good to let it be spoiled by failing balloons.