After appearing on ABC's "Shark Tank" last Friday, Chicago startup Mella Pet Care has seen an influx of interest.
Now that it's got those new customers here, the focus at the company is on keeping them.
"We're focused on harnessing this audience — keeping them engaged and educating them about our products," co-founder and COO Ben Seidman told Chicago Inno. "To see the response, tens of thousands of people coming to our website, millions of views and all the orders coming in, is really exciting."
On the show, Mella Pet Care shared that it had $160,000 in sales after selling more than 2,500 devices in what Seidman described as a "soft launch."
The company wants to make getting your pet's temperature a little easier by offering a thermometer that takes temperature under the hind leg of a cat or dog. It also has other health-monitoring products for veterinarians and pet owners.
Mella Pet Care has both utility and design patents on its products, which have been distributed to about 1,300 clinics worldwide in the company's roughly two years of operation.
"We're creating new products that the market has never seen before, so education is really important. We're focused on creating content that helps pet parents understand why having a thermometer in their home is important in case of emergency," Seidman said. "We showed them that we are not only creating a thermometer but a whole ecosystem of devices that integrate with our software to lead the charge on the future of connected pet health care."
On "Shark Tank," Mella asked for $250,000 for a 2.5% stake in the company — for a $10 million company valuation. A deal was struck with Mark Cuban, adding an additional 3.5% in advisory shares after convincing him that there was nothing else like Mella Pet Care's product on the market currently.
Of course, there was grilling from the show's sharks — including asking about why sales were so low at this point in the company's history.
Shark Daniel Lubetzky called the company's valuation "crazy" before bowing out of consideration of a deal.
Seidman said it's all part of the "Shark Tank" experience.
"They are going to come at you and test you, but I think we held up against the tests and showed there's a ton of opportunity here," he said.
The company had raised a little over $2 million before appearing on the show.
