Why Did Mix Bikini Go Out Of Business Despite Getting A Deal On Shark Tank? 

Mix Bikini is a reversible and convertible bikini tops and bottoms company. Frank Scozzafava and Adam DiSilvestro introduced the brand. As per the Shark Tank deal Mix Bikini’s net worth was $200,000 in 2012.

The founders of Mix Bikini appeared on Shark Tank season 3 and secured a deal of $50,000 in exchange for a 25% stake in the business from the shark named Barbara Cocoran.

After Shark Tank Mix Bikini became very popular and the business experienced incredible growth over the past years. Unfortunately, the business operations went down in 2018 and the product has not been available in the market since 2022.

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A Short Overview Of Mix Bikini

Mix Bikini was a product that enabled women to personalize their swimsuits by mixing and matching various sections. The mix match bikini was reversible offering a lot of options with only a few pieces. 

Moreover, the Mix Bikini website featured a viral model where users were able to make their designs by using eight interchangeable components. 

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How Was Mix Bikini Going Before Shark Tank? 

Frank Scozzafava and Adam DiSilvestro are the two men who made up their minds to explore the women’s swimsuit market. We can not deny that as soon as the summer comes, people start to show off their bikini bodies that they spent all winter long working on perfecting.

Scozzafava as well as DiSilvestro understood that it is a good thing to have a lot of bathing suit options. Hence they thought of creating an original brand of Bikinis allowing them to mix and match various bathing suit styles and prints.

The Mix Bikini company allows for nearly 500 distinct bikini combinations in total. This idea for the line seemed to be a hit with the women who had made purchases from them, but Scozzafava and DiSilvestro wanted to take their brand to a whole distinct level.

They were looking for a partner who has vast knowledge in marketing and business as they required someone with more experience to guide them in the right way. 

Hence they chose the Shark Tank stage and presented Mix Bikini on Shark Tank with the hope of securing a deal from the sharks.

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How Was The Mix Bikini Shark Tank Pitch? 

The two founders of Mix Bikini came up on Shark Tank intending to get an investment of $50k in exchange for a 5% stake in their business.

They started to explain where they came up with the idea from. 

According to them, women love their swimwear but that is the worst thing when they go to a beach and find someone wearing the same swimwear just like her.

Mix Bikini here comes in to solve the issue. Each of the pieces of the company is sold individually which is why the more pieces a woman purchases from the company, the more bikini options she will have. It is the first interchangeable swimsuit line.

You may place an order for a custom Mix bikini very easily. If you go to the website of the company you will find a list of steps that will let you choose the type of top you want, then you may mix and match all the different prints and colours to go with it.

You may apply the same procedure for the bottoms. The most interesting thing is that whenever the customer wants to change her bikini look she does not need to purchase a whole new bikini set.

She has to buy only the piece that she wants to change into her bikini. Robert Herjavec wanted to know about their current sales. Scozzafava and DiSilvestro admitted that they had not made that many sales at that time but that was only because they just made a soft launch for the business not too long ago.

Nevertheless, since opening, they have made a few sales. Barbara Cocoran then asked about the original price of the bikinis so that she could get a clear picture of what type of money they would be able to make in future.

The selling price of each part of the bikini was $9.99. That is why if you are going to buy an entire bikini you need to spend $40 to $50.

The founders said that Mix Bikini was an exclusive online store but they would not keep their business that way. They were planning to build kiosks in the future that would be placed in mall centres so that women could get a chance to touch and feel the products before purchasing. 

They also said that they had to spend nearly $25k to set up one kiosk and they did not have that money at that time. 

Daymond John pointed out that if they were looking for $50k in return for 5% they are estimating the brand at $1 million. Scozzafava confirmed that, but DiSilvestero said that no, they wanted to give up 10% of the business.

After hearing this, the sharks got confused as they already wrote down that the asking price was 5% and not 10%.

According to John, it was quite absurd to estimate their business at half a million dollars as they had not made any real sales yet. 

After that, Kevin O’Leary pointed out that it might just be easier to license this idea to other big-name firms so that they could just sit back and collect a check.

Scozzafava said that yes, that was one way they could supervise the business, but there were a lot of different probabilities.

Herjavec was frustrated and told them to choose only one way to make their business successful. The founders said that they came on Shark Tank to get suggestions and were searching for guidance. 

Mark Cuban shook his head and told them that they were searching for businesses with a plan on Shark Tank, not businesses that required a way set for them.

The founders claimed that the women who have tried the Mix Bikini loved it which meant that the company was going to be the next hottest thing in the market.

Most interestingly they had already $500k to invest in the company. The sharks did not understand what to do with this information as the businesses generally come to them for funds to start their business.

However the founders of Mix Bikini were not looking for funds, they were for expertise in the marketing industry.

Scozzafava enlisted the various ways in which they could take Mix Bikini but John argued that they were not as easy as they seemed to be. He had a good knowledge of it as he has a clothing brand.

It was not at all an easy feat to get the name of a brand out there. That is why he left the deal.

After that, Scozzafava became agitated with the other male Sharks in the tank while he was trying to make them believe that this was a product worth investing in and that it was going to be the next hottest thing.

Barbara believed that taking this company to a kiosk would not be a good idea at all as there were a lot of different parts and pieces that would get interesting.

However, she did not think that there was a chance that this business could be successful. That is why she chose to give them an offer. Cochran was ready to invest $50k in exchange for a 25% stake in the business.

The founders quickly accepted the deal before she changed her mind as no other sharks were interested in investing in Mix Bikini.

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Mix Bikini Shark Tank Update

Finally, the founders of Mix Bikini secured a deal with Barbara. They rented out a nightclub for an evening to celebrate that.

There, they threw one of the biggest parties the city has ever witnessed. Barbara was present there as a guest of honour.

After a while, the champagne ran out and the bills began to roll in. At that time she felt that she had lost her funds in the company. The website of the company crashed after the Mix Bikini Shark Tank episode was aired. 

They took a week to settle the problem which led to an approximate loss of $200,000 in sales. Barbara was compelled to cut her losses.

As a result, Adam and Frank bailed out on the firm. Fortunately, Kelsey Duffy, one of their creative partners was able to save the business by rebranding it as Versakini. She started to work with a former Project Runway designer, on bikinis named Amanda Perna.

The company did well for many years. The prices were indeed relatively higher than Mix Bikini but the concept was the same and consumers liked the product. It generated $8 million in revenue in 2018.

But it did not last long. The company did not have any products for sale by early 2022 although the website is still there. They have left their social media pages and they have not been updated since January 2018.

As of now, the website of the company is not online any more. The domain itself works still but it is not connected to a Shopify store any more.

As per the LinkedIn profile of Kelsey, the company went out of business officially in 2018 and she has worked various jobs since then.

She served as the Marketing Director at Aiden Image from February 2018 to March 2019 and later worked as a Director of Communications and Digital Engagement at Page Society from July 2019 to November 2019. She has been working as a Web and Design Consultant for The Rockefeller Foundation since 2020.

Frank and Adam started to do other things after leaving the firm. The former built a new company named Scootaway, a scooter ride-share program that’s controlled via smartphone. The latter began with DiSO’S, an Italian Food Truck in the New York area that offers a variety of sandwiches. But as of 2023, Scootaway is not active in business any more.

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Why Did Mix Bikini Go Out Of Business?

As soon as the founders threw a massive party to get a deal on Shark Tank, things took a turn for Mix Bikini.  The founders of the company expected that the Shark Tank exposure would increase their sales on the website as this generally occurs to companies after appearing on Shark Tank.

Nevertheless, the website of Mix Bikini crashed soon after their episode was aired and they were unable to fix it for a whole week. When Mix Bikini was up and started to run again it was too late.

They encountered an approximate loss of $200,000 in sales. Cocoran accepted that she had lost her funds while Scozzafava and DiSilvestro lost their business. 

They faced the worst time as they spent a huge amount of money on the party and faced a massive technical problem. 

In an interview, Barbara said nothing bad about Scozzafava. She said that Frank was a natural-born entrepreneur. According to Barbara, the problem was in the concept that was unable to catch the people.

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What Is Next for the Mix Bikini Entrepreneurs?

When Mix Bikini went out of business, the original creative partner of the business, Kelsey Duffy was able to recover the concept and introduced a new company named Versakini.

She made a collaboration with Project Runway designer Amanda Perna on the new brand. It was a similar concept.  It allowed the customers to mix and match pieces to create one-of-a-kind bikinis.

When Versakini was first launched, it started to do well. They had generated more than $8 million in revenue in 2018. Unfortunately, Versakini did not last long and as of 2023, the website is down.

The social media pages of the firm have not been updated in years. As per LinkedIn, Duffy Versakini went out of business in 2018 and she currently works for Alden Image as a marketing director.

Frank Scozzafava now serves as the VP of Business Development for Lierda Science and Technology Group Co. Ltd. in New York as per his LinkedIn.

Adam DiSilvestro went on to establish Disos Italian Food Truck and is a co-founder of the New York Food Truck Association as per his LinkedIn.

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Final Opinion

Mix Bikini did not become successful despite getting a deal on Shark Tank from Barbara Cocoran. Although Mix Bikini did not work out, it seems that the entrepreneurs dusted themselves off and engaged themselves in other exciting ventures. We love to see that type of spirit.

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