PhoneSoap had been selling for only a few months when Wesley LaPorte and Dan Barnes walked into the Shark Tank in 2015. They were already generating meaningful sales, but the company was still small enough that a national retail push could change its trajectory.
They asked for $300,000 in exchange for 7.5% of the company. Instead, they left with Lori Greiner’s $300,000 offer for 10%.
That deal became one of the more consequential consumer-product partnerships in Shark Tank history. PhoneSoap says it has now sold more than 4 million units, while the show has listed the company among its highest-grossing products, with $187 million in sales reported by 2023. The company has also moved well beyond the original phone sanitizer, adding products for larger devices, travel, homes and even air purification. (phonesoap.com)
The interesting part of the PhoneSoap story is not simply that the Shark Tank deal worked. It is how quickly the business changed once Greiner's retail and QVC expertise became part of the equation.
PhoneSoap was already selling $537,000 before Shark Tank
PhoneSoap began with a simple problem: smartphones were difficult to clean without potentially damaging the device.
The founders developed a box that used UV-C light to sanitize a phone while charging it. Before appearing on Shark Tank, they had already tested the concept through competitions and Kickstarter. Their 2012 Kickstarter campaign raised $63,000, more than three times its original $18,000 target. PhoneSoap says its first commercial year produced 22,349 units in sales. (phonesoap.com)
By the time the founders appeared on the show, the business had moved beyond an idea.
According to the figures discussed during their Shark Tank appearance, PhoneSoap had generated about $537,000 in sales in the roughly five months before the episode. It was also selling through 400 Staples stores, giving the Sharks evidence that consumers would actually pay for the product. (softwareacquisition.com)
That mattered because the central question facing PhoneSoap was not whether the technology could work. It was whether enough people would care about sanitizing something they carried everywhere.
Mark Cuban saw a potential commercial market, particularly in healthcare. He offered $300,000 for 20%, subject to changes including a faster sanitizing cycle and a lower production cost. Lori Greiner instead focused on PhoneSoap as a retail product she could take to QVC.
She initially offered $300,000 for 15%. The founders pushed back. Greiner dropped her equity demand to 10% if they accepted immediately.
They did. (inc.com)
Lori Greiner's QVC strategy changed the scale of the company
The value of the deal was not simply the $300,000.
Greiner had a distribution and television-shopping machine that matched the product unusually well. PhoneSoap was easy to demonstrate: put a phone inside, close the lid, activate the device and explain what the UV-C light was doing.
That made it a natural QVC product.
The result showed up quickly. When Shark Tank returned to PhoneSoap for an update in 2016, the company reported $4.9 million in sales during the year following its appearance. It had also grown to 12 employees. (slashgear.com)
That is a substantial jump from the $537,000 the company had reported before Shark Tank.
PhoneSoap also used the momentum to expand rather than simply selling more of the original unit. Its tablet-sized PhoneSoap XL raised more than $65,000 on Kickstarter in 2015 against a $30,000 goal. PhoneSoap 2 and PhoneSoap XL followed in 2016. (phonesoap.com)
The pattern was established early: take the original sanitizing concept and build adjacent products around it.
The company stopped being just a phone-sanitizer company
PhoneSoap's post-Shark Tank product development is one of the clearest signs that the business evolved.
PhoneSoap 3 followed, along with PhoneSoap Wireless and PhoneSoap Shine. In 2018, the company introduced PhoneSoap Go, a battery-powered version designed for travel. In 2019, it introduced HomeSoap, a larger product intended for things such as tablets, remote controls and other household items. (phonesoap.com)
Then the company moved beyond device sanitation altogether.
PhoneSoap launched AirSoap, a filterless air purifier, and later PhoneSoap Pro, a faster sanitizer. In 2024, it added a UV toothbrush sanitizer. Its current lineup also includes portable and larger-capacity products rather than relying on one flagship phone accessory. (phonesoap.com)
That expansion makes the business easier to understand as a consumer-health and sanitation brand rather than a single gadget company.
The original PhoneSoap solved a very specific problem. The later products apply the same underlying proposition to more objects and environments.
COVID-19 gave PhoneSoap a market moment it could not have manufactured
PhoneSoap's timing became particularly important in 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed hygiene and surface contamination into everyday conversation. A product designed specifically around disinfecting frequently handled objects suddenly had an obvious place in the consumer conversation.
PhoneSoap was already an established brand by then. It had spent years developing products, retail distribution and a recognizable proposition. The pandemic did not create the company, but it gave the category an extraordinary burst of relevance.
NBC reported that PhoneSoap had generated more than $150 million in sales since its Shark Tank appearance by 2021, citing the company. (nbcnews.com)
Later figures are even larger. Lori Greiner's own website lists $187 million in sales since the Shark Tank episode aired, while the show's 15th-season retrospective placed PhoneSoap 13th among Shark Tank's highest-grossing products at $187 million in sales. (lorigreiner.com)
Those numbers should be treated as reported lifetime sales rather than a current annual-revenue figure. Different sources have published different revenue estimates at different points, and PhoneSoap's own current site now emphasizes units sold rather than presenting a new lifetime-sales total.
PhoneSoap is still operating, but the business looks different from the one on Shark Tank
There is no question that PhoneSoap survived the difficult part of the startup journey.
The company's current website says it has sold more than 4 million units and has been in business for more than a decade. Its product pages continue to list the original PhoneSoap 3 alongside PhoneSoap Go and other sanitization products. (phonesoap.com)
The company has also expanded geographically. PhoneSoap says its products have reached more than 25 countries and are used in homes and institutional settings including schools, hospitals and gyms. (phonesoap.com)
That does not mean every number reported about the company is perfectly consistent.
For example, some third-party sources have published annual-revenue estimates that differ materially from one another, while PhoneSoap's own historical pages use different milestones depending on the year being discussed. The stronger figures are the ones tied directly to the company or to Shark Tank's own retrospective: $4.9 million in the year after the deal, more than $150 million in sales within seven years according to Greiner's site, and $187 million in reported sales by the show's 2023 retrospective. (slashgear.com)
The Shark Tank deal worked because PhoneSoap had a product made for demonstration
PhoneSoap's story is sometimes reduced to the pandemic, but the sequence started much earlier.
The company arrived on Shark Tank with proof of demand. It had raised money through Kickstarter, entered retail distribution and generated roughly half a million dollars in sales before the episode aired. Then it partnered with an investor whose main advantage was not manufacturing or engineering expertise, but the ability to turn an easily demonstrated product into a mass-market retail item.
The first post-show milestone says almost everything: $4.9 million in sales and 12 employees within about a year. (looper.com)
After that, PhoneSoap kept widening the category around its original idea.
Today, the phone sanitizer is still there. So are the familiar promises of UV-C sanitation and charging. But the company that walked into Shark Tank in 2015 was essentially selling one clever box. The company that emerged from the following decade built a broader sanitation brand around the same core technology.
That is the real PhoneSoap Shark Tank story. Lori Greiner did not merely provide $300,000. She helped put a product that was already proving itself in front of a much larger retail audience, and PhoneSoap used that exposure to build an entire product category around the original phone-sized box.
