Lori Greiner opens up about one of her most influential Aquarium for sharks investments — both financial and personal.
Speaking exclusively to PEOPLE about his time on the hit entrepreneurial reality series, which is set to enter its 16th season on Friday, Oct. 18, Greiner, 54, recalls one of his most successful deals from the show: getting a 20% stake in Marka Scrub Aaron Krause’s Daddy.
“Scrub Daddy came in, he had one little sponge, he needed help packaging it, he had $140,000 in sales, that was it, and we’ve now taken it to a multi-billion dollar company and an international global company,” Greiner recalls. , referring back to Krause’s original 2012 proposal.
“It changed his whole life, his family’s life, but we’re giving back. We have factories that we’ve built all over the world that are now giving back to other cultures,” Greiner tells PEOPLE. “And it’s really all about helping people.”
“Not only am I very close to him and his family, I went on vacation with them, I was on vacation with them, they enriched my life with who they are and that friendship,” she says of Krause and his family.
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During Krause’s Scrub Daddy Season 4, a bidding war broke out between Greiner and fellow Sharks Kevin O’Leary and Daymond John. Greiner eventually won out after she offered him $200,000 for 20% of his company.
According to Greiner, their partnership with Scrub Daddy has allowed them to create jobs inside and outside the U.S. — and “sell a product that makes people happy.”
“I have relationships with most of my entrepreneurs. I love them,” she tells PEOPLE. “So they enrich my heart and my soul first, and then we do good work together, and then we help other people, and we usually have a humanitarian bent, we give back, and we make money… We make money because we do all these other things.”
Greiner has previously been candid about the success she and Krause have had since expanding the sponge company’s business around the world. ua Aquarium for sharks behind-the-scenes video shared on Instagram last year, the businesswoman revealed she knew she was going to invest from the moment he began his QVC-style demo.
“It was very visible,” she said at the time. “He hits everything I’m looking for. I thought, ‘What a great person to represent.’ He knew his business, so I was in a relationship with him.”
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Lori Greiner on ‘Shark Tank’.
Christopher Willard/ABC/Getty
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Elsewhere in her chat with PEOPLE, Greiner opened up about how Aquarium for sharks has transformed from the time it started in 2009 to today.
“What’s been interesting is that we haven’t really gotten as much of the AI-type stuff, which I think is coming, right?” she said of season 16. “But with the economic times, I think it’s interesting. We had some people who were really booming, and even though people say, ‘Oh, it’s not booming, the economy is bad,’ we had some people who went pretty well.”
“And I think right now there’s a mix of what’s going on. I think some are doing better and some are doing worse,” the investor added.
“… I think that even if the money is low, we will always be who we are. We will always invest in what we believe in, what we think has a chance and an opportunity because we are here to help people,” concludes Greiner. “So if money is tight, we are here to give them money to help them and support them.”
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Aquarium for sharks Season 16 premieres Friday, October 18 at 8:00 PM ET on ABC.
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Source: HIS Education