When Gilbert-based Slick Barrier appeared on ABC-TV’s "Shark Tank" in 2023, the company landed a $500,000 investment from entrepreneur Lori Greiner after pitching its patented clear coating designed to keep crawling pests — including those nasty Arizona bark scorpions — out of homes and businesses.
The company's "Shark Tank" apperance also caught Home Depot's attention, leading to a major distribution deal with the home improvement retail giant, which is now selling Slick Barrier's scorpion repelling product in more than 187 stores in Arizona and Texas.
“About two months after the show, Home Depot reached out to us. People were asking about the product and [Home Depot] wanted to see if they could carry it,” Aaron Gonzales, co-founder of Slick Barrier, told AZ Inno. “They had us work with one of their current vendors to help us get it ready and distribute it their stores.”
It took Slick Barrier about five months to build its inventory for distribution with Home Depot. It began shipping product in September 2023 to Home Depot's retail locations in Arizona, followed by shipments to Texas stores earlier this year. To date, the company has sold more than 4,000 units of its clear coating through Home Depot, Gonzales added.
“This our first full season of having the product in Home Depot. It’s a bit of a process to get ramped up to the point that you can supply the stores and then have proper backup,” he said. “That’s always one of those challenges of getting the product off the ground, especially working with a large distributor. And so far, so good. We’ve already had six reorders from Home Depot, so they’ve been restocking the product and everything is going pretty well.”
Nearly two years after appearing on "Shark Tank," Slick Barrier is still garnering buzz from the show.
“The exposure was just tremendous. I mean, you just can't beat that,” Gonzales said. “The show does a really good job pulling together a pretty wide audience and then it just keeps living on because you're on YouTube. They replay the shows. There's clips. So it's been tremendous. We can't say enough about how much that show has helped us.”
Company to ramp up expansion in Southwest
Gonzales cofounded Slick Barrier in 2018 with his childhood friend, Tony Gonzales. That same year, the co-founders launched Scorpion Repel, a pest control company that offered application of Slick Barrier — which dries smooth like glass — to homes.
In late 2022, Slick Barrier released its pest control products, which include water-based and solvent-based barriers, direct to consumers. The co-founders' other pest control business entity, Scorpion Repel, still operates separately.
The company has professionally installed its Slick Barrier product on more than 5,000 homes in the Valley. It aims to expand its professional installation service to Texas in the near future, Gonzales said.
“There's just a need for professional installers — whether it's for pest control companies, contractors, or if we have one of our own divisions or branches out there,” Gonzales said.
Slick Barrier has sold its clear coating online to customers in 48 states, but is targeting Nevada, California and Florida as its next potential markets for product expansion.
“We want to work with Home Depot, have them be our main distributor of the product and maybe even establish some service industries in those other states that'll help also push the do-it-yourself product and get this to where it's a standard barrier for pest control — something that a majority of people do just to keep things from getting in their homes,” Gonzales said.
What's more, the company is looking to develop additional products, such as a clear film that can be applied to furniture, creating a slick surface that pests are unable to crawl up.
“We want to get the Slick Barrier — the main product — out there to everybody, and then see what else we can do to help really change this industry that hasn't had any real innovation in it for 50 to 60 years,” Gonzales said.
