SharkNinja — the company behind the Shark and Ninja home goods brands — sees TikTok as a late-night infomercial.
The company has been around since the '90s, but has spent the past two decades specifically expanding its product catalog and finding new channels of marketing. Leading the way in this responsibility is CEO Mark Barrocas, who joined the company as president in 2008.
At the time, SharkNinja (then called Euro-Pro) had a small number of products and was primarily known as a brand for items sold through long-form late-night infomercials. After that, the company was mainly known for its Shark vacuum cleaners.
“In 2009, we launched the Ninja brand, and from there we focused on identifying known and unknown consumer problems and building a technology and innovation company that could solve those problems. We started rebuilding the business,” Baroccas said on the Modern Retail Podcast. Currently, SharkNinja is divided into 31 different product categories and sold in 26 markets around the world.
According to Barrocas, the key to SharkNinja's growth is its focus on constantly innovating its home products. “We take a very geeky approach to product development,” he said.
Additionally, the company has been able to keep up with the times in terms of marketing. While SharkNinja still makes late-night commercials, and they'll never go away as long as terrestrial television continues to exist, the brand has found a new channel: his TikTok. “We have significantly strengthened our social media team over the past few years. We have products like Ninja Creamy, which has over 1 billion impressions on TikTok,” he said.
The focus on new channels to find new attention won't stop anytime soon. “We continue to think about investing more in social media, investing more in partnerships, investing more in events,” Baroccas said.
Here are some highlights of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
SharkNinja product development strategy
“We have a very maniacal approach to product development, and we pay close attention to every detail of our products.The first thing I want to say is that we created our mission statement in 2010. The idea was to “positively impact people's everyday lives in every home around the world.” And I think that relentless focus on providing consumers with five-star products continues to drive everything we do today. ”
TikTok is the new late-night infomercial
“Back in 2008, we were running all our ads as long-form TV, 30-minute infomercials, and people were seeing Shark and Ninja products late at night and on Saturdays and Sunday mornings. This is because every brand needs to find a unique way to position itself to consumers. And for us, long-form infomercials are the best way to demonstrate a product and engage consumers. It gave us the ability to really articulate the difference. If you think about today, the biggest advertising vehicle available to us today is social media. We've significantly strengthened our social media team over the year, with products like Ninja Creami receiving over 1 billion impressions on TikTok. Our Shark FlexStyle hair dryer has received over 700 million impressions on TikTok. Masu.”
SharkNinja's holiday performance
“We didn't see any discounts over last year's levels. I think that was a big concern for people about how promotional the holiday season was going to be. And for us, we had a very large investment in new product development. We invested heavily in marketing and advertising. And we were very happy coming out of the holiday season. And we feel our inventory is at a good level and our New products (like the Ninja Thirsti home beverage maker, and the Shark CarpetXpert, which we first introduced for carpet extraction and spot and steam cleaning) performed very well. As you know, the Ninja wood-fired oven. This was the first holiday season for us and outdoor ovens. So this was an opportunity for us to really present a lot of new ideas to consumers, and I think that resonated. Masu.”
