Nick & Alessia Galekovic, entrepreneurs and inventors of the Beard Bib, talk about their experience on Shark Tank and provide tips for pitchers.

1. How/when did the idea come about?

When I first started growing facial hair I was so excited!! I now passed boyhood and have officially become a man! However, I quickly realized the lifelong journey ahead of facial hair grooming was going to be a very messy and time consuming task. Getting yelled at as a teenager, by my mother, and now as an adult, by my wife, I figured there had to be a better way than putting down a towel or t-shirt when trimming, but unfortunately there wasn’t.
So one day, after few glasses of wine, the idea just hit me!

I got my sketchbook out and started drawing the initial concept. After sketching I began cutting, gluing, and stapling any random material I could find to form the concept I had in my mind to make the prototype. After developing and using the product myself, it has become an essential tool that I frequently use. The Beard Bib allows men to Beard smarter not harder!

2. How did your appearance on Shark Tank come about?

As you may know Shark Tank is 7 seasons in and strong as ever! We were always HUGE fans of the show, even before our invention. As soon as we solidified our product we knew we wanted to be in the Tank. After doing some online research, there just so happened to be an Open Call in two cities, coming up. Miami was one of them!

January 15th, 2015, we arrived and waited, starting at 5:00am, outside the Miami Beach Convention for the doors to open. Seeing thousands of entrepreneurs that drove from all around the East coast, it was such an exciting and incredible feeling. After pitching and waiting a few weeks to hear back, we finally got THE call. We were one of the few selected to continue on a vigorous process of hopefully getting the chance to film. Then the anxiety really kicked in, as we waited to hear on if anything was going to happen next. Six months later, in June 2015 we received the exciting call, we were going to LA to film Shark Tank Season 7! During the process you were never guaranteed anything, that was the scary part. We were a constant nervous wreck, waiting to hear if we were going to be offered an airdate.

The most ironic part of this entire journey; we kept a “lucky penny” we found the day we auditioned, January 15, 2015. Kept it, taped it to a sticky note, and wrote the date, “January 15th 2015.” We are not one to believe in superstitions, but what a coincidence, we finally got the call!! Airdate for Beard King – January 15, 2016! Exactly 1 year from the time we started this entire journey!

3. Any advice for online sellers?

Be willing to learn something new everyday. As a startup business you are going to hear a lot of “No’s” and even have self doubt at times, but keep in mind success doesn’t happen overnight.

Be prepared to work 24/7. I would tell any new online entrepreneurs to keep pushing forward giving yourself the chance to accomplish short and long term goals. However know when to cut your losses short and move on to another idea if you don’t see any traction after an allotted amount of time. This stems back to the obligation of proof of concept.