Warum die Gründer von Shark Tank im Jahr 2025 Probleme haben: „Die Prognose ist nicht gut“

***From Business Insider’s Katherine Li:***

Three years ago, Noah Silverman and Yuki Kinoshita’s Plufl — „the world’s first dog bed for humans“ — went viral on TikTok and landed them on „Shark Tank“.

Mark Cuban got a kick out of contorting his 6-foot-2 frame into the plush, doughnut-shaped bed and teamed up with fellow shark, Lori Greiner, to invest $200,000 in the company.

Like many ideas that take off on „Shark Tank,“ Silverman and Kinoshita promised to scale quickly and keep costs low by producing in China, where their $399 Plufls could be made for $140. By 2023, Plufl had logged $1 million in sales. Heading into this year, it was preparing to add up to $8 million in retail business.

But a year of steep tariffs and turbulent trade negotiations challenged that formula, sending Silverman and Kinoshita — and many other former „Shark Tank“ contestants — scrambling to rethink their supply chains.

As „Shark Tank“ began airing its 17th season last month on ABC, stories like Plufl’s were everywhere. Tariffs had been driving up costs and upending supply-chain playbooks, and consumer sentiment was down. Adding to the difficulty, distribution and product discovery models, like TikTok, have been shifting rapidly.

[Read more about the struggles Shark Tank founders are facing here. ](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tariffs-shark-tank-playbook-manufacturing-china-mark-cuban-2025-10?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=insider-entertainment-sub-comment)

Let’s be real most shark tank products are gimmicky and built for viral social media sales which usually fizzle out over a year or two.

Seems like the writer needed an angle on the tariff beat and came up with this. Lots of founders came up with business models that relied on cheap Chinese production, and tariffs are blowing up their costs.