Local entrepreneur and founder of Repaint Studios, Billie Asmus, made an appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank earlier this month, securing a deal with Shark Barbara Corcoran, and Chip and Joanna Gaines of TLC’s “Fixer Upper.”
Asmus pitched her Repaint Tray, a reusable, three-piece paint system designed to combat waste. Asmus tells RadioOnTheGo News several people in her support circle encouraged her to try out for the show with her Shark Tank-type product.
“And I swear if I had a dollar for every time somebody said, ‘you need to be on Shark Tank,’ I wouldn’t need Shark Tank. ah So basically I just thought, okay, you know, I’m going to see if they have any more open casting calls. And sure enough, there was the very last one for their season of casting calls in Kansas City. And I thought that’s totally doable. That’s drivable. I don’t have to buy a plane ticket. So I decided to go and I figured worst case scenario, I drove the four hours and nothing happens. Lo and behold at the casting call, the casting producer that I pitched to, he knew who I was. And that’s such a wild story on how that happened, but he loved my story. He loved the product. And he immediately wrote a big giant yes on the top of my application and pushed me forward.”
Asmus says there’s a lot of preparation involved when pitching to the Sharks.
“It’s a lot of practicing your pitch and making sure that you know your numbers. So when you are actually in the tank that you can communicate all of that properly. So I was practicing my pitch at least once or twice a day and just making sure that I had it down before I found myself in the tank.”
In 2021, Asmus invented the Repaint Tray while running a small business refinishing and refurbishing furniture and first made a splash at the 2023 “Into the Blue: Lowe’s Product Pitch Event” in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her invention received the coveted Gold Ticket and the largest purchase order in the Lowe’s Paint Department category.
You can listen to our full interview with Billie Asmus under the newsmaker podcasts and on RadioOnTheGo’s YouTube channel.
