Tree T Pee is still in business more than a decade after Johnny Georges walked into the Shark Tank set asking for $150,000 for 20% of his company. The official Tree T Pee website is active, lists the product for sale, provides a phone number for orders, and identifies the product as part of GSI Supply, Inc. (treetpee.com)
That much is straightforward.
The harder question is how big Tree T Pee became after the emotional 2013 pitch. Search results today routinely attach valuations of $50 million or $100 million to the company, along with claims of millions in annual revenue and international expansion. Some of those figures are repeated so often that they can look like established financial facts.
They aren't.
The public evidence supports a much more modest, but still interesting, conclusion: Tree T Pee survived, continued selling its core agricultural product, and retained the backing of guest Shark John Paul DeJoria. But the company's current revenue and valuation are not publicly documented well enough to treat the most dramatic numbers as settled fact.
Johnny Georges sold Tree T Pee for $4.50, with only about $1 left over
When Georges appeared on Shark Tank, Tree T Pee was a simple agricultural product with a deliberately thin margin.
The cone-shaped device sits around the base of a young tree and concentrates water and nutrients around the root zone. It was developed from the Georges family's experience in Florida citrus irrigation. Johnny's father, Rick Georges, had developed the earlier version for frost protection, while Johnny adapted the concept into the water-containment product sold today. (treetpee.com)
The numbers Georges brought into the Tank were striking. He told the Sharks that each Tree T Pee cost $2.95 to make and sold for $4.50, leaving roughly $1 of profit per unit. ABC News reported those same figures after the episode. (abcnews.com)
The low margin was precisely what bothered Kevin O'Leary and Mark Cuban. Why sell something for $4.50 when the market might tolerate a substantially higher price?
Georges' answer was essentially that he was selling to farmers, not trying to extract the maximum possible margin from them.
That philosophy became the defining feature of the pitch. Guest Shark John Paul DeJoria offered exactly what Georges had requested: $150,000 for 20% of Tree T Pee.
The deal is not merely a frequently repeated Shark Tank recap. DeJoria himself confirmed the investment in a 2023 Forbes interview, which describes his $150,000 investment for 20% of the Florida irrigation company. (forbes.com)
The Shark Tank appearance produced a genuine sales shock
The immediate aftermath was real, and the numbers came from Georges himself.
In an interview with ABC News published in April 2014, Georges said more than 56,000 emails arrived in his inbox in the day after the episode aired. He also said thousands of Tree T Pee units were sold that night. (abcnews.com)
That exposure also pushed the product beyond its original Florida customer base. ABC reported that Georges was traveling around the country demonstrating the system to farmers and had landed a deal with Home Depot. (abcnews.com)
The underlying business was still recognizably the same one, though. Tree T Pee was not transformed into a software company or turned into a mass-market consumer brand. Its basic proposition remained agricultural water and nutrient containment, with frost protection as another benefit.
The company's own current website still describes the product as a cone-shaped containment system for trees between one and five years old, manufactured in the United States from 100% recycled plastics. (shop.treetpee.com)
Tree T Pee is still operating, and its own website is the clearest evidence
This is where some of the older "whatever happened" stories become misleading.
Tree T Pee has not disappeared.
Its official site currently identifies the business as GSI Supply, Inc., says GSI was established by Johnny Georges on March 2, 2005, and continues to describe Georges and DeJoria as partners following the Shark Tank deal. (treetpee.com)
The site also has a functioning product section and directs customers to call (863) 993-5335 to order. Its listed business address is now in High Springs, Florida. (shop.treetpee.com)
That is stronger evidence of an operating business than a third-party "last known in business" date or a recycled Shark Tank database entry.
The company's site also maintains an "In the News" section containing earlier coverage of Tree T Pee and its development. (treetpee.com)
So if the question is simply, Is Tree T Pee still in business? the answer is yes, based on the company's current web presence and active ordering information.
The famous $100 million Tree T Pee valuation is not something the public record establishes
This is the part worth treating carefully.
A number of recent websites claim Tree T Pee is now worth $50 million or $100 million. Others repeat an estimated annual revenue figure of around $5 million, generally tracing it back to older business-directory or Shark Tank-focused reporting.
But Tree T Pee is privately held, and there is no public financial filing establishing a $100 million valuation.
That distinction matters.
A company accepting $150,000 for 20% on television implied a $750,000 valuation at the time of the deal. Forbes confirms the $150,000-for-20% investment. (forbes.com)
By contrast, the frequently cited $100 million figure appears in secondary sources as an estimate. It is not supported by a disclosed funding round, acquisition price, audited financial statement, or other public transaction that would allow the valuation to be independently checked.
The same problem applies to claims that Tree T Pee currently generates substantially more than $5 million a year. There are websites that repeat the $5 million figure, but the company itself does not publish current revenue figures on its website.
So the responsible update is not that Tree T Pee is a $100 million company.
It is that claims of a $100 million valuation exist, but the figure is unverified from primary financial evidence.
The product has changed less than the story around it
There is something revealing about Tree T Pee's current website.
The product being sold today is still essentially the same idea Georges took into the Tank: a recycled-plastic cone that captures water and nutrients around young trees. The company continues to position it around water conservation, tree growth and frost protection. (treetpee.com)
The company's own history says Johnny saw the water-saving potential in his father's frost-protection design and developed the version now known as Tree T Pee. It also says the system can reduce the amount of fertilizer and irrigation energy required because resources are concentrated around the tree rather than spread across surrounding ground. (treetpee.com)
That makes Tree T Pee an unusual Shark Tank survivor. Its long-term story is not primarily about launching dozens of new products or chasing a spectacular technology valuation.
It is about continuing to sell a fairly simple piece of agricultural equipment.
John Paul DeJoria is still part of the documented Tree T Pee story
The other important piece of the update is the Shark himself.
DeJoria's investment was not an on-air promise that vanished after filming. In 2023, a decade after the episode, Forbes still described Tree T Pee as one of DeJoria's investments and specifically identified his $150,000-for-20% deal. (forbes.com)
Tree T Pee's own history likewise continues to refer to DeJoria as Johnny Georges' partner. (treetpee.com)
That gives the deal considerably more credibility than many Shark Tank stories where the televised agreement is later reported to have fallen apart.
What is less clear is exactly how large the business became under that partnership. The public record does not provide enough recent financial information to reconstruct Tree T Pee's present valuation or annual sales with confidence.
And that is the real update.
Tree T Pee did not vanish after Shark Tank. It is still selling its core product, its official website is active, and John Paul DeJoria's investment is independently documented years later. What cannot be verified from the available public evidence is the internet's much larger claim that the company is now worth $100 million.
For a business that started with a $4.50 plastic cone and a founder who refused to raise the price simply to make more money from farmers, that distinction is worth keeping.
