The New Year's Resolution

Catching up with Amanda Latona Kuclo — her apparel line, her exclusive booty workout and her new Oxygen online challenge!

- Lara Mcglashan, MFA, CPT

AMANDA LATONA KUCLO IS BUSY. 

Really busy. Like hamster-wheel busy. She and husband Steve Kuclo spend nearly every weekend traveling and making appearances for All Max Nutrition, and in their “free time,” they plan and organize their annual Kuclo Classic National Qualifier bodybuilding and fitness show while jetting from expo to expo selling their retail line, Booty Queen Apparel — clothing designed to flatter and accentuate a woman’s curves. That’s exactly what you’d expect from a woman whose glutes are probably the most lauded in the industry.

So when the “Kucs,” as they refer to themselves, appeared on Shark Tank in April 2017 to help grow the Booty Queen business, their world — and website — nearly exploded. “That episode reached about 5 million people, and since then, the traffic to the website has been huge,” Latona Kuclo says. “That episode just re-aired last week, so I can only imagine what I am coming home to this weekend!”

Shark Bait

The Kuclos were already enjoying success with Booty Queen Apparel. “The good thing was that sales were great — but the bad thing was that sales were great,” Latona Kuclo says. “We couldn’t keep enough inventory, so when people went on the website to buy stuff, we were always out.”

The duo decided to submit their brand to Shark Tank, their favorite show, to get some advice — and, of course, some coin. “What we needed was help, not only with money for inventory but also with questions like, Where do we go from here? Who is the next person we should hire? How do we get a fulfillment center?” Latona Kuclo says. “Because legit — our fulfillment center was me sitting on the floor hand-filling each of our orders.”