Nail Pak Went From ‘Shark Tank’ Pitch to QVC Sales in Just One Day
‘Shark Tank’ nail polish product Nail Pak impressed Lori Greiner so much, she told Barbara Lampugnale she’d have it on QVC the very next day.
April 15 2021, Published 3:23 p.m. ET
Barbara Lampugnale set off a Shark Tank bidding war with her Nail Pak nail polish kits. And thanks to the success of that product—an all-in-one solution for changing nail polish anywhere—this mother of six has a reported net worth of $850,000.
Lori Greiner and Kevin O’Leary both wanted in on Nail Pak in that Season 3 episode, but Greiner won the partnership with Lampugnale. Greiner got a 40 percent stake in exchange for $50,000—after promising to take Nail Pak on QVC the following day.
Sure enough, Greiner hawked Nail Pak on QVC the very next morning, as Lampugnale told Authority Magazine in 2019. And 2Paragraphs reported the Nail Pak products sold out on the home-shopping channel after customers bought up all 10,000 bottles.
Lampugnale didn’t have an easy time getting onto ‘Shark Tank.’
In the magazine interview, Lampugnale said she wanted to try out for Shark Tank’s first season, but those episodes had already taped by that point. She set her sights on Season 2, but the casting director found out she didn’t have any product available and turned her down. So, when that same casting director called back during the Season 3 tryouts, Lampugnale made a little fib and claimed that she had product already.
“I replied, ‘Of course,’” she recalled. “This was a bit of a stretch of the truth [since] all I had were the prototypes. When I hung up with her, I called my parents, who floated a loan so that I could have product to show the producers in six weeks. We produced 10,000 bottles in a few short weeks at a crazy cost. … To quote the old adage, ‘Fake it till you make it’ was my mantra for the next few years.”
The former flight attendant hit another speed bump the morning of her Shark Tank rehearsal when the show’s attorneys contacted her about an issue with her IRS paperwork. So she called the IRS, but the representative on the other end of the line initially refused to help.
“Shark Tank was only in Season 3 and not well-known at this time, but I explained to the woman on the phone that this was a life-changing opportunity that I had and absolutely needed this to be cleared up,” Lampugnale said. “After what felt like an eternity, in reality about 30 minutes, she was able to get her boss on the phone and help clear it up.”
Lampugnale made a deal with Ulta Beauty and later rebranded her company.
ABC later offered a video update on Nail Pak. Greiner told viewers that she and Lampugnale had already sold 50,000 bottles and made $750,000 in sales. In the clip, the duo struck a deal with Ulta Beauty for Nail Pak to be sold at the cosmetic retailer’s 500 locations and on its website.
“I don’t know where I’d be without Shark Tank,” Lampugnale said at the time. “Quite literally, it’s more than just a TV show. It is sincerely something that has made my dreams come true.”
These days, Nail Pak no longer appears on the Ulta Beauty website and isn't available on the QVC website, but Lampugnale sells similar all-in-one manicure kits—these ones called Grace to the Rescue—on her company website. That company, once called Duality Cosmetics, is now Grace Nail Company.
“I think the name itself will resonate with people more, and we are working on new color lines,” she told Authority Magazine.