Fifteen-year-old Carson Grill is just starting his first year of high school, but unlike most of his classmates, he already runs his own business. Carson and his father, Jason Grill, are co-founders and CEOs of Touch Up Cup, a company that sells paint storage containers.
The father-son duo from Cincinnati attracted investors on ABC’s Shark Tank, which aired Friday.
“I invented the patented paint touch-up cup, the most innovative solution to all paint storage problems,” Carson told Sharks in the episode. “The Touch Up Cup has an airtight silicone seal that keeps paint fresh for over 10 years.”
When Carson and his father first came up with the idea for the Touch Up Cup, they noticed that the paint and paint buckets they carried with them to renovate the house were rusting over time. So they created the Touch Up Cup to hold the paint.
The Touch Up Cup is a 13 oz plastic cup. dye. It has a stainless steel spring that mixes the paint and removes clumps when you shake the cup, Carson says. “I just shake and paint.”
Despite his advanced age, Carson impressed the Sharks by leading the field and answering all their questions.
“We have a [manufacturing] strategic partnership in Nashville, Tennessee that handles all of our assembly and packaging, [and] our EDI [electronic data interchange] order entry,” Carson told Sharks. “Now we are about 70 percent online, 30 percent retail,” as far as sales are concerned.
“EDI? I didn’t know about it until my fifth year at Toms,” said Shark guest and Toms founder Blake Mykosky.
Carson told the Sharks that the Touch Up Cup is sold in 4,000 outlets across the country and has generated about $220,000 in sales over the past two years. According to Carson, the company’s sales will reach $400,000 by 2020.
In terms of unit cost, the Touch Up Cup costs $0.90 to manufacture and retails between $3.99 and $4.99, Carson added.
“Usually in Shark Tank when you bring your son, usually the father proposes, the son does some demonstrations and then they leave because things are hard at Shark Tank. away,” Sharks Kevin O’Leary said.
“We run this business 50/50,” replies Jason, who works full-time in sales of medical products. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Carson achieved a lot as a teenager – he even had four patents: a patent for a utility model of a touch-up cup and three patents for the design of three additional containers for storing cupcakes, one hundred. According to him, the freshness of cookies and donuts.
Post time: Apr-28-2023