@ Cow Wow Cereal Milk: An Udder Fail

Cow Wow Cereal Milk is a drink for kids which tastes like the leftover milk at the bottom of the cereal bowl. Chris Pouy and Tiffany Panhilason came into the Shark Tank seeking a whopping $250,000 for 10% of their company which has only grossed $20,000. But their poor evaluation was only the first of many mistakes to come.

Chris and Tiffany thought of their big idea after visiting a yogurt store and wondering why yogurt comes in so many different flavors, whereas milk only comes in three (chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry). So they set out to create a new line of milk flavors which are made to taste like that leftover milk everyone loves to slurp out of the bottom of their cereal bowls. Like most entrepreneurs, they looked at their specific industry, which is the flavored-milk case is a $1.5 billion one, and figured that all they need is to have 1% of it to be super rich.


After passing out sample flavors for each Shark to taste, Chris tried highlighting the fact that there were no artificial flavors, and each unit only contained 20 grams of sugar and 170 calories. Unfortunately for them, this backfired as the Sharks all agreed that 170 calories was a lot for children living in a country where obesity is a "huge problem". And even though Chris explained that a regular cup of milk contains 14 grams of sugar, the Sharks were scared off and were not all that interested. This only became worse when Chris let the cat out of the bag by telling the Sharks that flavored milk was already disallowed in schools due to the high sugar and calorie issue. Disclosing this was basically equivalent to asking the Sharks NOT to invest in their business, as all the Sharks dropped out one after another.

This pitch was rather disastrous to be quite frank, as the entrepreneurs failed to deliver a smooth presentation or a strategic analysis, and demonstrated their inability to know what to say and when to say it. Furthermore, the product has no differentiating factors or unique proposition that would enable them to withstand competition, and the marketing dollars necessary to retain the coveted fridge space in any grocery store would be infinite.

It was somewhat surprising to see that neither Chris or Tiffany seemed down or upset after each Shark dropped out. Not only that, but if you just watched the footage of them walking out of the Tank, you would think that they got a deal as there were nothing but smiles and high-fives! There are two possible conclusions to be drawn for here:

1) Chris and Tiffany do not let failures get in their way of achieving success, and even after they heard the Sharks' doubts, they remain confident and strongly believe in their business.

2) Chris and Tiffany knew from the get-go that they would walk out empty-handed, and just applied on Shark Tank to get quick and effective exposure for their business and Cow Wow Cereal Milk.

What's your conclusion?