AnyTongs is still selling its signature kitchen gadget in 2026. The company’s website is live, its products are listed for sale, and its current lineup includes one-, two-, four-, six- and eight-pack options. A single AnyTongs is listed at $12.99, while the company currently sells a two-pack for $19.99. (anytongs.com)
That makes one part of the usual “whatever happened?” story straightforward: AnyTongs did not disappear after Shark Tank.
The more interesting question is what happened to the deal that Tog Samphel accepted on television.
Samphel entered Season 14 of Shark Tank asking for $150,000 in exchange for 20% of AnyTongs. Daymond John ultimately offered the same $150,000 for 49%, and Samphel accepted. (sharktankblog.com)
Early reporting suggested the deal might not have closed. Later accounts said it did. And Samphel's own current materials now describe the Daymond John deal as part of the company's history.
So the post-Shark Tank story is less dramatic than a simple “deal fell apart” headline suggests, but there is still a genuine gap between what can be independently verified and what has been reported about the business.
AnyTongs started with a clothespin, tape and plastic forks
The product came from a very ordinary kitchen problem.
Samphel's mother would entertain guests and sometimes needed more tongs than she had available. Her workaround was to tape plastic utensils to clothespins, creating makeshift tongs.
Samphel eventually turned that improvised solution into a product: a compact hinged device that holds two ordinary flatware handles and lets them function like tongs.
The idea was simple enough to test through Kickstarter. In 2021, Samphel set a $10,000 goal and raised roughly $33,000, according to Montclair State University, while the university's earlier account of the campaign puts the total at about $34,000. The difference appears to reflect rounding or how the campaign proceeds were described, so $33,000-$34,000 is the safer figure rather than pretending there is a precise disagreement. (montclair.edu)
That Kickstarter campaign also helped get the product in front of Shark Tank producers.
Samphel was not a conventional full-time kitchen-gadget entrepreneur. He had spent years working in digital product design and user experience, including at AOL and other major companies. He eventually completed his degree at Montclair State University in 2022, more than a decade after leaving college to work. (montclair.edu)
The $150,000 Shark Tank offer came with a 49% price
When AnyTongs reached the Tank, Samphel was asking for $150,000 for 20%, implying a $750,000 valuation.
The pitch exposed the central problem with the business: the product was clever, but the economics and manufacturing were still being worked out.
Samphel had experienced manufacturing delays after his Kickstarter campaign, including problems associated with the pandemic. By the time of his Shark Tank appearance, he said he had made only about $7,000 in profit. (looper.com)
Daymond John nevertheless saw enough potential to make an offer.
His proposal was $150,000 for 49% of the company.
Samphel accepted.
Montclair State University reported shortly after the episode aired that Samphel was working with John on the business, including development of a new version of AnyTongs. A later university magazine article said the two were working on product strategy and potential licensing and retail opportunities. (montclair.edu)
That is significant because it is a contemporary institutional source, not a later Shark Tank recap website reconstructing events years afterward.
The claim that the Daymond John deal “never closed” is not as settled as it looks
This is where many AnyTongs updates become unreliable.
A Shark Tank Blog update published in 2024 said there was no evidence the Daymond John deal had closed. The author pointed to Samphel taking a job at Walmart Data Ventures in August 2023 and inferred that the Shark Tank agreement had not gone through. That same update reported that AnyTongs had reached $1 million in lifetime sales as of April 2024. (sharktankblog.com)
Other later publications repeated the idea that the deal never materialized.
But there is contrary evidence.
Samphel's own current case study describes AnyTongs as having landed a deal with Daymond John and says the company continued growing after the episode. It gives figures of 3,162 orders and $82,771 in Shopify sales during 2023, and says lifetime revenue had exceeded $220,000 across multiple channels in 2024-25. (design.togsamphel.com)
Those revenue figures are difficult to reconcile with the older Shark Tank Blog claim of $1 million in lifetime sales. Because these are company-originated figures, they should not automatically be treated as independently audited financial results. But they are still direct evidence from Samphel rather than an aggregator guessing from the company's visibility.
There is another important detail: Montclair State University's 2024 magazine article explicitly says Samphel was working with Daymond John on product strategy and possible licensing and retail deals. (montclair.edu)
That makes a blanket statement that “the deal definitely never closed” too strong.
The most defensible conclusion is narrower: the exact financial closing of the televised deal has not been independently documented in a way that resolves the conflicting reports. Samphel's own current account treats the John partnership as real, while an earlier third-party update inferred that the deal did not close.
AnyTongs did not become a major retail breakout
Whatever happened behind the investment paperwork, AnyTongs did not turn into one of the conspicuous mass-market Shark Tank success stories.
There is no need to invent a dramatic collapse, either.
The company is still operating its own online store. The current site lists multiple products, including the $12.99 single, $19.99 two-pack, $29.99 four-pack, $39.99 six-pack and $49.99 eight-pack. (anytongs.com)
The product itself also remains essentially true to the original proposition: insert suitable flat-handled utensils into the device and turn them into tongs. The company markets it for cooking, serving, grilling and situations where having another pair of clean tongs is useful. (anytongs.com)
There is evidence of an active customer base, too. The current product pages show more than 160 customer reviews, with the majority rated five stars. (anytongs.com)
But those numbers do not tell us how large the business is. The company does not publicly disclose current annual revenue, profit, employee count or retail distribution in a way that would support a confident estimate of its present scale.
LinkedIn lists Anytongs as a privately held company with 2-10 employees, headquartered in Montclair, New Jersey, and founded in 2021. (linkedin.com)
That points to a small operating business rather than a consumer-goods company that exploded into national retail.
The “AnyTongs is dead” story doesn't fit the evidence
As of 2026, the simplest claim is also the one best supported by primary evidence: AnyTongs is still in business.
Its official website is functioning, products are available, the company accepts orders, and its contact page still provides dedicated general, wholesale and customer-support addresses. (anytongs.com)
What remains unclear is the size and trajectory of the company.
Samphel's own current case study says AnyTongs has generated more than $220,000 in lifetime revenue across channels. Older third-party reporting cited a much higher $1 million lifetime-sales figure in 2024. Those figures cannot both be accepted as settled fact without additional financial documentation, and the company has not published enough detail to resolve the discrepancy. (design.togsamphel.com)
The same caution applies to the Daymond John investment.
What we know is that John offered $150,000 for 49% on television and Samphel accepted. We also know that contemporary reporting from Samphel's university described the two working together afterward. What we do not have is a publicly disclosed closing document or financial filing that settles every detail of the transaction.
That is a more useful answer than declaring the deal either a confirmed success or a confirmed failure.
AnyTongs remains a small physical-product business built around a clever idea that got a national television platform. The Shark Tank appearance appears to have provided meaningful exposure, and the product is still being sold years later. But there is little evidence that it became the large retail business the original pitch hoped it could become.
For now, the most accurate AnyTongs Shark Tank update is not that the company vanished, nor that it became a blockbuster.
It survived. It still sells the product. And the full financial story behind its Shark Tank deal remains less publicly documented than the confident updates online would have you believe.
