The Shark Tank Hair Tie That Started in a Scuba Shop: Rip Tie's Origin Story

I'm going to tell you a story that starts with a minimum wage job at a scuba shop in paradise. It ends... well, it doesn't end. But it takes a pretty wild turn on March 11th at 10/9c on ABC

Tune in to watch this hair tie take on Shark Tank!

Paradise Has Its Problems

Picture this: you're living in Guam. Warm water, incredible coral reefs, the kind of blue ocean you see in screensavers. I was working at a scuba shop, which sounds like an absolute dream, and in so many ways, it was.

But if you have long hair? Saltwater is your nemesis.

After every dive, I'd spend what felt like hours in the shower working through knots, tangles, and damage. I tried different hairstyles- braids, pigtails, buns. I tried neoprene mask straps and scuba headbands. Nothing worked. The end of every dive was the same: a complete matted mess. 

I did what any slightly stubborn person would do: I decided to fix it myself.

I started playing around with elastics. Testing different materials, different designs, different ways of wrapping and securing. I went through two full iterations before I landed on something that actually worked. A unique hair tie that wraps around the ponytail, keeping hair all in one direction, preventing tangling. 

I made a few for friends. They loved them. I tucked the idea away and moved on with my life... for a while.

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How I Built a Hair Tie Business From My Second Bedroom

Me, standing in the "warehouse", pregnant and overwhelmed

Fast forward to 2022, I was in graduate school, needed income, and kept coming back to this little hair tie idea that people genuinely seemed to love. I had $2,000 left from a work bonus, and I decided to see if I could sell some hair ties.

I formed the LLC myself after researching how to do it. I bought elastic so I could make the hair tie and mailing label stickers, a basic printer, and mailers so I could ship them out. I built the website on a free Shopify template. Designed the logo on Canva. Asked friends to film simple videos of me using the product.

 

The first order ever!

Then I launched, not with a big PR push or an influencer campaign. I went where my people were: niche Facebook groups. Women Who Scuba. Girls Who Surf. The communities of women who knew exactly what I was talking about when I described the post-dive detangle nightmare.

The response was immediate. Orders started coming in. I was making every single one by hand in my second bedroom, packing them myself, answering every customer email myself. It wasn't glamorous. But it was working.

The business grew alongside my family. I got married, Then I had to move the "warehouse" out of my second bedroom to make room for a baby.

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When You Realize It's Bigger Than You Thought

Here's the thing about building a product for yourself: you can be blind to how many other people share your problem.

I thought Rip Tie was for women in the ocean. Surfers. Divers. That was my world, so that was my market. Then the emails started coming. A horseback rider wrote to say it solved her biggest frustration. Women in jiu-jitsu reached out. Athletes. Nurses. Hikers. And then, the one that stopped me cold, a firefighter.

She described the reality of her job. Heavy gear, helmets, hoods, long shifts, high-pressure environments. She told me Rip Tie kept her hair secure and manageable through all of it. Then she wrote a sentence I'll never forget: she called it a lifesaver.

I sat there staring at my screen. I had built this thing because I was tired of detangling my hair after diving. I never imagined it would reach someone doing one of the toughest jobs in the world.

Today, over 500,000 Rip Ties have been sold. Firefighters and horseback riders and scuba divers and other adventurers have found us. 

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How Rip Tie Got on Shark Tank

In early 2025 the company was on the brink of disaster. We had scaled rapidly in 2024, but with more sales came more problems.  I added too many people to our team, and we were struggling with profitability. By 2025 we were almost out of money. I had to scale back the team, which was really hard. 

The Shark Tank opportunity came to me the way a lot of good things do: through a friend. She forwarded me a post about Cakes, a brand that had grown to be worth $100M in the years after their Shark Tank appearance. That got my attention. The costs of everything had been steadily rising, and Rip Tie was struggling to grow. I thought that if I could get on the show and get one of the experts on my team, the company had a real shot at succeeding.

People had been telling me that I should go on Shark Tank since I started Rip Tie, but the thought of being on TV in front of 10 million people was really scary. I wasn't sure that I would be able to answer all of the questions; I was worried I would mess up or freeze.

But now I was a mother. And when you're a mom, something shifts. Opportunities that might have felt too risky or too uncomfortable start to look different. You stop asking what if I look dumb and start asking what am I willing to do to support my family.

I saw there was an open casting call at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas in January  2025. My husband thought I was a little crazy, but I always believed that Rip Tie was a company worth taking risks for. (Plus, my mom lives in Vegas so I didn't have to pay for a hotel room or rental car).

The week before the casting call I enlisted my friends to help me- shoutout to Shezza Socks, Skunk Skin, and Libarere-  and made them listen to my pitch over and over again until it was perfect. I flew into Vegas the night before, nervous and excited.

I showed up at the Venetian at 8:30am when the line opened. There were already so many people there! I got my wristband and joined the line.  What happened next was one of the most unexpectedly joyful experiences of my entrepreneurial journey. The line was full of founders. They represented all kinds of products, all kinds of stories, all kinds of energy. Meeting them and chatting with them was so inspiring.  

 

After standing in the first line, I was told to come back at 3:30 PM.  I spent the next hours practicing in the parking garage in my mom's car. Running the pitch, answering imaginary questions, shaking out the nerves.

I finally got to pitch around 5:30pm.

And something clicked. Suddenly, I wasn't nervous anymore. I had practiced the pitch so many times it just rolled off my tongue perfectly. I felt energy and excitement. I only had 60 seconds to impress the producers, and when I was done, I thought, I nailed that.

I walked out of that audition knowing I had done my best. I called my family and friends immediately. And I knew, even if I never got a callback, that it had been worth it just to go and have the experience and the conversations.

(I got the callback.)

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Rip Tie's episode airs Wednesday, March 11 at 10/9c on ABC — and streams the next day on Hulu.

I'm not going to tell you what happened in the Tank. You'll have to tune in for that.

What I will tell you is this: Rip Tie was built on a real problem, real customers, and a lot of unglamorous, roll-up-your-sleeves work. Whatever happens next, that foundation isn't going anywhere.

And the story? It's just getting started.

This is Part 1 of the Road to Shark Tank series. Read Part 2: The Night Before Filming →