Tower Paddle Boards Shark Tank Update

Tower Paddle Boards Shark Tank Pitch

Stephan Aarstol is a corporate working guy and self-proclaimed geek who turned his side hobby of paddle boarding into a paddleboard company called Tower Paddle Boards.

Tower Paddle Boards has sold $100k of products in its first four months. Last month accounted for $35k of revenue. Generally, paddle boards cost $1200 to $1600 while Stephan has found a way to undercut the market with $600 paddle boards while maintaining a profit.

Tower Paddle Boards provides a better value board than what the current market offers by focusing on direct-to-consumer sales through it's website.

Stephan has also been able to leap frog over current marketing costs required by competitors to acquire customers by using his internet marketing skills to rank in the top three out of four results for a google search of "best paddle board."

What skills Stephan has in search engine optimization he lacks in effective communication. To Stephan's credit, his brain is probably stuck in a loop wondering if "paddle board" or "paddleboard" is correct. After reviewing some research here

Fortunately for Stephan, Mark speaks geek. After all the sharks but Mark go out, Mark reveals his interest in Tower Paddle Boards and Stephan's skillset for all future endeavors. Stephan and Mark are on the same page and make a deal.

Tower Paddle Boards After Shark Tank

Stephan Aarstol had never heard of Shark Tank when he got a call from a producer asking him to be on the show. Stephan and Mark Cuban finalized their deal three months after filming, and Stephan communicates with Mark weekly through email and has enjoyed the partnership. Tower Paddle Boards is still in business in 2022, and Mark Cuban has called it one of his most successful Shark Tank investments.

Tower Paddle Boards got an update on season 4, episode 3, where Stephan said Tower Paddle has gone from $100k to $800k of lifetime sales since Shark Tank and is on track to do $1.5 million for the year. Tower Paddle Boards was also on Beyond The Tank.

In 2013, Tower Paddle Boards was running low on cash to meet its rapid expansion, and Mark provided a $300k line of credit to fund growth. Stephan planned to grow Tower Paddle Boards before branching into his other products.

In 2014 Stephan gave a video Interview with Shark Tank Blog on YouTube, here

Stephen equates the value of the 50k website visits a month he receives through high google ranking to spending $250k in advertising. Stephan also was happy to give ABC a 5% equity option in his company because if they exercised it, they would be incentivized to air his show often.

In 2016 Tower Paddle Boards sold $365k worth of boards on Amazon in one day and finished the year with around $10 million in revenue. Stephan expanded into another business for wooden sunglasses at the website, sunglassesbytower.com

All of these new websites are carbon copies of what worked on the towerpaddleboards.com

Stephan has been on several podcasts and most recently at the time of this writing Stephan was on The Me-Suite podcast in 2021, here

Stephan noticed most employees show up for their eight-hour shift and look the part but underperform, while Stephan would complete his work efficiently and leave early. As a test with Tower Paddle Boards, Stephan implemented an 8 am to 1 pm work day for the same pay, given that productivity was maintained or improved. The team successfully found ways to improve production efficiency, and revenue doubled that year. Stephan wrote a book called The 5-Hour Work Day (derived from the idea of The 4-hour Work Week), which he included with every paddle board sold to serve as a talking point, which picked up some press and generated new customers.

In 2017, after two years of shortened days, employee productivity faded, and four out of their nine employees left. They perhaps found their time at work less enjoyable and got accustomed to the lifestyle provided by the extra free time. Stephan was selling $4.5 million of their $7.5 million through Amazon but stopped because Amazon was taking a large cut of the profits, and with fewer employees, Stephan needed to downsize sales. He reimplemented full days except for summers.

To diversify the company and utilize its location near the beach, they created a venue space in San Diego to host weddings and events while selling and showcasing Tower Paddle Boards. In 2019 revenue fell to $2 million, and a $500k accounting error led to a loss for the year. They nearly defaulted on one of their bank loans.

In 2020 revenues were declining, and with the fear of the company going under during covid, Stephan eliminated 5-hour days. Fortunately, in 2020, revenue doubled. In 2021 Stephen offered the 5-hour work day between August and November only if annual revenues increase, although it's an ever-changing experiment.

In 2021 Tower Paddle Boards dropped its price and made $6 million in revenue, all direct-to-consumer. At one point, it was Stephan and another person running the company. Stephan aims to maintain a high-energy, passionate company culture with the six people now at Tower Paddle Boards.

In 2018, Stephan started a site to find direct-to-consumer brands, nomiddleman.com

Stephan suggests people implement unexpected constraints to force themselves to think of new ways to increase productivity, such as tying one arm behind your back for the day.