Nubrella did not get the $200,000 Shark Tank investment it appeared to win on television. Alan Kaufman accepted a deal with Daymond John and Kevin Harrington for 51% of the company, but the agreement was never completed. Kaufman later told reporters that the Sharks walked away, and court records document his version of what happened next.
That distinction matters because Nubrella’s Shark Tank story is often repeated as though the deal closed and the company simply failed afterward. The record is more complicated.
By 2016, Kaufman was still developing and selling redesigned versions of the wearable umbrella. Inc. reported that he had sold more than 17,000 Nubrellas worldwide, including more than 700 of his latest version. (inc.com)
Today, the evidence points to a business that is no longer active. Florida corporate records list Nubrella Enterprises LLC as inactive following an administrative dissolution filed in September 2023. (search.sunbiz.org)
Nubrella asked for $200,000 after already putting more than $900,000 into the product
When Alan Kaufman appeared on the first season of Shark Tank, Nubrella was not a prototype looking for its first customer.
Kaufman was seeking $200,000 for 25% of the company, implying an $800,000 valuation. According to contemporary accounts of the pitch, he had already put more than $900,000 of his own money into developing the product. He had also sold roughly 3,000 units before appearing on the show. (sharktankblog.com)
The product was unusual enough to attract attention immediately. Nubrella was worn like a backpack, with a canopy that extended around the user's upper body. The point was straightforward: keep both hands free while staying protected from rain and wind.
The product also had intellectual-property protection. Kaufman's wearable umbrella patent was eventually granted as U.S. Patent No. 8,944,300, assigned to Nubrella Enterprises LLC. (patents.google.com)
But the Sharks were not convinced by the original valuation.
Barbara Corcoran and Robert Herjavec passed. Kevin Harrington offered $200,000 for 65%. Kaufman pushed back. Daymond John then joined Harrington, and the two eventually offered $200,000 for 51%.
Kaufman accepted.
On television, that looked like the beginning of Nubrella's big expansion.
It wasn't.
The $200,000 Shark Tank deal never actually closed
This is the most important part of the Nubrella Shark Tank update.
The televised agreement was not the same thing as a completed investment.
Kaufman's later lawsuit against the producers of Shark Tank described what happened after filming. The federal court's 2017 order records his allegations that he accepted the $200,000 offer for 51%, but that the investment was never completed. The court also records that a later on-air distribution arrangement involving Sharper Image was never carried out. (govinfo.gov)
Kaufman was particularly unhappy with the way the subsequent episode presented the relationship.
In a 2016 interview with the Boston Globe, he alleged that the Sharks had simply walked away from the proposed investment after the original episode. He also disputed the impression created by a later episode that the Sharks were actively helping Nubrella expand its distribution. Sony Pictures declined to comment to the Globe. (bostonglobe.com)
The distinction between Kaufman's allegations and established court findings is important here. The federal case was ultimately dismissed because of the dispute-resolution provisions in Kaufman's participation agreement; the court did not rule that his allegations about the Shark Tank deal were true or false. (docs.justia.com)
There was, however, a concrete financial outcome: the court's account says the parties reached a $20,000 settlement over the earlier dispute. (govinfo.gov)
So the safest description is simple: Nubrella's $200,000 Shark Tank deal was accepted on camera but did not become a completed investment.
Nubrella kept going without the Sharks
The failed deal did not immediately kill the company.
Kaufman went back to the product.
That turned out to be a much longer process than the Shark Tank episode suggested. In 2016, Inc. reported that Kaufman had spent years modifying the Nubrella design. The new version weighed about three pounds, used UV-reflective material and sold for $68. (inc.com)
Kaufman told Inc. that he had sold more than 17,000 units worldwide across the product's earlier versions. The newest version alone had moved more than 700 units since its launch several months earlier. (inc.com)
That is a useful corrective to the idea that Nubrella simply disappeared after Shark Tank.
It didn't.
The company continued to develop the invention, seek customers and use the enormous exposure generated by television appearances. Kaufman also appeared in other media coverage, including a 2016 CBS Boston report about the product. (cbsnews.com)
The challenge was not whether Nubrella could be manufactured. It was whether enough people wanted to wear one.
That is a harder consumer problem.
The product itself changed substantially after Shark Tank
There was another reason the original Shark Tank episode became increasingly misleading.
The Nubrella being sold after the show was not necessarily the same product viewers remembered from 2010.
Kaufman's 2017 federal lawsuit specifically alleged that he had returned to the design table in 2012 and made substantial changes. Those changes increased production costs and pushed the retail price above the $29.99 price discussed during the original episode. (govinfo.gov)
That created an awkward mismatch between television reruns and the actual business.
A viewer could see the old episode, hear the $29.99 price and then look for the product years later only to find a redesigned, more expensive version.
Kaufman argued that this damaged the company's reputation and sales. Those claims were part of his lawsuit and should be treated as his allegations rather than established findings. (govinfo.gov)
But the underlying product changes are documented in the court record.
Nubrella later became Canope, but the business did not become a mass-market brand
Secondary reporting says the product was eventually marketed under the name Canope, while Nubrella's underlying company and intellectual property remained tied to Kaufman's business.
The rebranding is one of the areas where online Shark Tank databases become unreliable. Some describe Canope as though it were a separate successor company; others continue to call everything Nubrella. The available evidence does not support treating the rebrand as the creation of a major new business.
What is clearer is that Kaufman continued selling the product for years after Shark Tank.
Shark Tank Blog reported in 2021 that the business was still selling through its website and Amazon and cited annual revenue of approximately $1 million. (sharktankblog.com)
That figure should be treated as a reported historical figure, not independently verified financial data. There are no public financial statements establishing Nubrella's exact revenue, profitability or valuation.
It also should not be confused with the company's value.
A business doing $1 million in annual revenue is not automatically worth $1 million. Without information about margins, liabilities, inventory, intellectual property and cash flow, a precise valuation would be speculation.
Nubrella is not an active business today, based on the strongest public record
This is where the current Nubrella Shark Tank update becomes considerably less ambiguous.
Florida's official corporate database lists Nubrella Enterprises, LLC as inactive. The record shows an administrative dissolution filed on September 22, 2023. (search.sunbiz.org)
That does not, by itself, tell us exactly when product sales stopped. It does not establish what happened to every patent, design, piece of inventory or other asset. And it does not prove that no individual could ever revive the brand under another entity.
It does establish that the Nubrella Enterprises LLC business entity is no longer active in Florida.
That is a much stronger basis for saying Nubrella is no longer operating than simply relying on a Shark Tank update website that labels the company "out of business."
The intellectual-property record also shows that Nubrella's technology had a real development history. A later international wearable-umbrella application lists Kaufman as inventor and Nubrella Enterprises LLC as the applicant, while the U.S. patent associated with the redesigned wearable umbrella was granted in 2015. (patents.google.com)
What is not publicly established is a current market value for those assets.
That is why the frequently repeated online claims that Nubrella is worth $1 million, $1.5 million or $2 million should be treated as estimates rather than facts.
The real Nubrella story is not that Shark Tank killed the company
Nubrella's post-Shark Tank history is more interesting than the usual "deal fell through, business failed" version.
Kaufman went into the Tank having already spent more than $900,000 on an unconventional product. He left with a deal that looked like a major breakthrough: $200,000 from Daymond John and Kevin Harrington for 51%.
That money never became the foundation of the business.
Instead, Kaufman continued on his own, redesigned the product, sold thousands more units and kept trying to turn an eccentric invention into a durable consumer category. By 2016, Inc. could report more than 17,000 lifetime units sold. By 2021, secondary reporting put annual revenue at roughly $1 million. (inc.com)
The company ultimately did not become the mass-market umbrella challenger Kaufman imagined.
And the most defensible answer to "Whatever happened to Nubrella after Shark Tank?" is not that it vanished immediately after the cameras stopped rolling. It survived the failed Shark deal for years, kept evolving, and continued selling without the Sharks. The legal entity behind it is now inactive, and there is no reliable public evidence of an operating Nubrella business today. (search.sunbiz.org)
The Shark Tank deal was the television ending. The real ending took much longer.
