The Basics
- Company: PMS Bites
- Owner: Tania Green
- Product: Specialty snacks for women, designed to treat PMS symptoms
- Asking Price: $50,000 for 20% equity
- Final Deal: No Deal
- Season/Episode: Season 7, Episode 29
PMS Bites: Healthy Snacks for Women
Tania Green saw a need for a healthy alternative to the sugary, unhealthy snacks that women tend to crave as part of PMS symptoms. With more than 150 different PMS symptoms, women experience a range of aches, pains, and cravings during their particular time-of-the-month. The snacks available to them are limited and counterproductive, with sugar and fat leading to more bloating, more cravings, and discomfort. Tania knew from personal experience that she tended to crave sugar and salt the most, but she also knew she had a solution.
So she set out to create a vegan, gluten-free, and wholesome snack product – PMS Bites – branded and marketed exclusively toward women.
PMS Bites On Shark Tank
While most contestants launch into their product with minimal acting, Tania has a talent for playing it up. She takes center stage and sighs, her face visibly pained and her pretty eyes dulled by fatigue. “Hi Sharks,” she says, grimly. “I’m Tania, I’m from Boston, and I’m seeking $50,000 for 20% of my company.” She looks pointedly at the sharks. “I know. I don’t look excited to be here at all. I am on the inside,” she says. And here the act begins to show. “It’s just that my back is killing me, I’m so bloated this dress may pop off, and I’m exceptionally hot,” she says, and fans herself with both hands. “That’s right, Sharks. I’m talking about PMS.”
Tanya lists off some disturbing statistics, informing the sharks (and the viewers at home) that a shocking 90% of women suffer from one or more of 150 known symptoms of PMS. According to Tanya, those symptoms can last an average of 7-10 days out of each month. “Thank about that number, Mr. Wonderful,” she says, addressing the most diabolical shark, Kevin O’Leary. “That’s a third of your year where you’d be even crankier than usual.”
On stage right, beside Tanya, is a table of pretty and delicious-looking snack treats with names like Coconutty, All Kinds of Nuts, and Plain Crazy. These delectable snacks are bite-sized, healthy, and contain a blend of herbs and nutritional supplements that can be effective in treating PMS symptoms – particularly bloating, cramping, and irritability.
Tania hands out samples of the delicious bite-sized treats, explaining that the main ingredients are dates, almond butter, and gluten-free oats.
Running the Numbers
While the sharks chow down on tasty samples, Tania dives into the financial details of her business.
- Total sales to date: $13,400.07 “Every penny counts, Mark”
- Revenue streams: Independent retailers, Equinox gyms
- Time in business: 7 months
- Wholesale price: $4.50
- Retail cost: $7.00
- Cost of production: $1.55
- Profit margin: 66%
The sharks, clearly doing math in their heads, smell blood in the water. “Why isn’t it selling?” says Cuban. Mr. Wonderful himself pipes up from this throne of despair. “You’re the princess of small numbers,” he says.
Tania fights back. She says it’s not an issue with the product, but rather, with funding. She makes them, packages them, and delivers them herself on her bike. As someone who experienced debilitating PMS herself, Tania is passionate about the product. But Kevin is quick to point out that the product isn’t medicinal – it contains no actual medicine or pharmaceutical benefits, just a blend of herbs which could easily have no effect at all. “It’s just a bon-bon, right?”
Kevin also takes issue with the fact that she’s called the product PMS Bites, and marketed them exclusively toward women – thus eliminating half her potential market (excluding men and children). Tania counters that if she’d called them Tania’s Vegan Cookies, she wouldn’t even be standing in front of them today. The PMS angle is a marketing play, and one that clearly works.
Tania wraps up her defense by stating that she has prior experience leading marketing departments and branding departments for major companies – so she knows she can do the work – but she was never passionate about “selling someone else’s dream.” This is her dream, it works for her, and she knows other women will love it.
PMS Bites are made with dates, almond butter, and gluten-free oats.
The Bidding
Lori Greiner repackages Kevin’s earlier point in a prettier box, stating that her marketing demographic is just too narrow to be a safe investment. She gets why she markets exclusively to women, but she’s not comfortable with cutting out men and children from the potential customer base. She’s the first to drop out.
Robert Herjavec chimes in next, saying that he loves the marketing slogan and disagrees with Lori. He sees the value in her marketing strategy, and thinks she stands out as unique in the crowded healthy snacks market. But sadly, the numbers are just too small. He’s out.
Barbara, likewise, doesn’t get a sense that Tania is really selling her product, doesn’t see the drive or ambition needed to generate big revenue and huge sales numbers. “I hear the words, but not the music,” she says, and drops out.
Kevin reiterates his earlier message, stating that Tania is the “princess of small numbers, but needs to be the queen of sales.” He doesn’t see that happening, so unsurprisingly, he’s out.
Mark Cuban drops out with some good advice and insightful analysis of Tania’s failings so far: he says the product should be heavily branded online, using social media as its main weapon of promotion. The product is a product marketed for women, and women are huge users of social media – so this product has viral potential. Where is that angle? Tania is missing that opportunity, clearly, and her misguided marketing focus makes Cuban hesitant about the entire business.
“You made a strategic mistake in focusing on retail,” says Cuban. “It’s inconceivable to me that you didn’t focus your marketing efforts online, in the viral arena. To do this, it would need to be an investment – not tuition. And it feels like tuition. So for those reasons, I’m out,” says Cuban.
Tania walks away with no deal – but her head held high, vowing to work harder than ever.
Final Deal: None
PMS Bites After Shark Tank – Where Are They Now?
Tania Green left the sharks without a deal, but the experience made a lasting impression on her. She took the lessons learned on Shark Tank with her, and following the show’s air date, has been more determined than ever to make her brand a success.
Fascinatingly, her appearance on Shark Tank was not the last time she saw a shark. On vacation in Miami, after the show filmed, Green happened to run into shark Kevin O’Leary at a hotel pool bar. “I sent him a round of drinks with a note, which said, ‘Mr. Wonderful, it was such a pleasure pitching in front of you last season. You’re the best one. Please enjoy this round of drinks on me. Sincerely, the Princess of Small Numbers,'” she says. “He was like, ‘Did I really tell you that you were the princess of small numbers?’
(Apparently, he has no memory of his own reaction to Tania’s product, which is fitting, given that he most likely goes into a fugue state during filming. It wouldn’t surprise this reporter if Kevin O’Leary routinely forgets the scathing, soul-crippling remarks he makes to contestants who pitch their life’s work on the show.)
While PMS Bites are still available and the website is still up and running -with product available to sell – Tania says she is no longer trying to grow the business or expand marketing. She’s happy simply with where the product stands today.
The PMS Bites Instagram has a few thousand followers, but her social media presence has failed to generate the viral buzz Mark Cuban had hoped for.
“I see [the company] as my baby,” she says. “I hustled, I fought, I scratched for it, I really did. I can say to my grandkids that I was in Forbes [as part of a Shark Tank article]. It was really fun. I would totally do it again.”
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is strictly informational; Seo Insights is not affiliated with PMS Bites, SharkTank, or any of its subsidiaries.
