How To Fight Fakes On Amazon

One entrepreneur’s tale of his time in Amazon Purgatory— and how he finally fought back.

- Jeff Bercovici

In the late fall of 2017, Kevin Williams and Glenn Archer strode onto the set of shark tank. They’d been selling their Brush Hero, a water-powered hose attachment with a spinning brush head that cleans cars and outdoor equipment, since 2015. Archer, a trim F-16 pilot turned corporate executive, had provided the idea for the product and much of the funding. Williams, a onetime Caribbean dive boat captain and serial startup guy, handled operations, a role that included assembling the first batch of products in his basement in Arlington, Virginia, with an assist from his 70-something mother.

At that time, their annual sales were hitting almost $3 million, and the per-unit profit on their $40 product was hefty. The Sharks were impressed, but, realizing there were similar items on the market, they started challenging the $5 million valuation the co-founders sought for their company, RGK Innovations.

“You’re kind of in a race,” Mark Cuban told them, “because you want to get out there as quickly as possible before other people replicate you. That’s tough.” He declined to offer terms.

They left without a deal. Still, after the episode aired in January 2018, Williams and Archer quickly experienced what many Shark Tank hopefuls have learned: Almost any appearance on the show yields a tangible bump in sales. Americans don’t buy much outdoor equipment in January, but Brush Hero’s sales on the day of the broadcast spiked more than 500-fold, and subsequent rebroadcasts brought fresh surges. Almost as quickly, though, they discovered the downside of all that attention.