3M Called It Trash. Now It's Worth Billions. (Aaron Krause & Scrub Daddy)

When 3M bought Aaron Krause’s buffing pad company, they looked at his smiley-faced sponge invention, called it "trash," and left it out of the deal. They made a huge mistake.

In this episode of Uncorked with Bill Green, we sit down with Aaron Krause, the chaotic genius behind Scrub Daddy - the most successful product in Shark Tank history. This isn't just a story about a sponge; it’s a masterclass in resilience, accidental invention, and proving the haters wrong.

Aaron reveals the untold stories you didn't see on TV: how he almost got banned from QVC before he even started, the "fake" controversy with Lori Greiner that was cut from his Shark Tank episode, and how a box labeled "SCRAP" turned into a billion-dollar global empire.

🍷 In this episode, you’ll discover:

• The "Black Sheep" Origin: Why Aaron’s doctor parents were devastated he became a car detailer (and how he proved them wrong).

• The 3M Mistake: How the manufacturing giant bought his company but rejected the Scrub Daddy patent as worthless.

• The QVC Disaster: The nightmare 4:00 AM broadcast where Aaron "blew it" and almost lost everything—before selling 80,000 sponges in 8 minutes.

• Shark Tank Secrets: What really happened with Lori Greiner and Kevin O’Leary that the producers cut from the final edit.

• Serial Invention: A look at Aaron’s newest game-changers, from the Barbecue Daddy to a revolutionary hockey stick used by the NHL.

If you are an entrepreneur, an inventor, or just love a good underdog story, you cannot miss this interview.

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Welcome to Uncorked Wine Business and Life with Bill Green. I’m Jerrold Colton. We are at beautiful Saddlehill Winery with, as always, a special guest. This one is known not necessarily completely by his name, but he is actually known worldwide. It’s my pleasure to welcome Aaron Krause, who’s more known by another name. So a little mystique here. It was about 2014, and I was watching Shark Tank. I’m a Shark Tank guy. This guy comes in—and I think you said, "I'm from Philly"—and he’s pitching this thing. I’m like, oh geez, that one’s been used. Of course it’s been used; I took it out of our sink.

I’m really proud to have you on the show. The founder of Scrub Daddy. You’ve just had an amazing career with over 50 patents and trademarks to your name. The company has sold over a billion dollars since being on Shark Tank. You’re in 72 countries, and it’s just an amazing story. It’s the American dream.

The Mindset of an Inventor

It is a lot of work. You called me a serial entrepreneur, but I usually refer to myself as an inventor before I say entrepreneur because I’m very passionate about creating products and solving issues. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid, taking things apart and putting them back together.

Early Inventions: The Light Switch Pulley

The first invention was a story I’ve told a bunch of times. I wanted to turn my lights off from my bed when I was a kid because my dad was too cheap to turn the heat up. He would have the heat go down at night, so the house would be freezing. I’d be under my covers trying to use ESP to make the light go off because I’d be in bed reading. Then I’d have to get out, get cold, and turn the light off.

So I sat in bed one night thinking, I have to figure out how to make my light switch turn off. The next day I went and rigged up a bunch of wheel casters and dental floss, because that was the longest rope I could find. I made a pulley system to turn my lights on and off. I remember that as a pivotal moment in my life because it was the first time I realized I can literally create something and change my world. Maybe I can change the world around me and change other people’s worlds.

The Lesson of the Pop-Out Cup Holder

The next time, I invented a cup holder in cars. The reason I invented it was because I used to be detailing cars. They had these cup holders where a lot of food and stuff would get caught in the bottom, and it was really a pain in the butt to get to the bottom of them. My idea was you could press something on the dash, it would pop out, and you could put it in, but it would also hide away so it would be really easy to clean.

I never acted on it. The next year I was cleaning someone’s Toyota and I hit something and my cup holder popped out. I was like, never again. The next time I have an idea, I’m going to make it. And I did.

Family Expectations and the First Business

I started out washing cars when I was very young. I came from a two-doctor family, both mother and father. That’s a very disheartening story for my parents who expected me to be a professional doctor or lawyer. My older sister is one of the top judges in the country. She’s in the 3rd Circuit federal appeals court, nominated by Obama. My younger sister went to Cornell and Duke, and she’s a PhD. I’m definitely the black sheep of the family.

When I graduated, at my graduation dinner, my dad said to me, "So I spent $100,000 on your college education, son. What do you think you’re going to do with your life?" I had taken some business classes, but I actually majored in psychology. I told him I’m actually going to start my own business. He asked what kind. I said, "Well, I’ve been washing cars since I was a kid. I’m going to start a car washing business." My mom is bawling, crying her eyes out. My grandma goes, "Just disown him."

My dad said, "You have until the end of the summer to make it an actual business and move out of my garage. However much money you can save up and show me in your bank account, I’ll match it as a loan at two points higher than the bank because you’re a bad credit risk." That’s what I did. I saved eight grand, showed it to my dad, he loaned me eight grand, and I started a detailing business.

Growing Up in a Medical Family

Interestingly enough, I have two parents who are doctors. Growing up at the dinner table, they used to have conversations in a language that I couldn’t understand. My dad would be like, "Oh, well, he has a myocardial infarction in the left ventricle." I’d ask, "Is the patient okay?" They’d say, "No, he expired." I was like, "What is it? Like milk? No, he’s dead." That’s how they talk about patients. One time they were having this heated argument about the insurance takeover in the U.S. In a heated moment, my dad turned to the three children and said, "I forbid any of you to go into the field of medicine." So I wasn’t going to be a doctor.

The Transition to Urethane Foam Pads

I started a detailing shop, and we were buffing and polishing cars. In 1992, they started experimenting using polyester urethane foam as opposed to these hairy wool pads. The wool pads, if you’re not an absolute expert and you load it up with too much chemical, you can burn the paint off the car. That can cost you a whole new paint job, which could be thousands of dollars. We learned that lesson a couple of times.

They started experimenting with urethane foam, which has resilience and can be textured. It seemed much more forgiving. I started out saying I want to be an early adopter. I bought some of these pads and tried them, and they worked pretty darn good until the day that I caught five of my employees drunk out of their minds. They were pouring out their Coke cans and filling them with vodka.

I went around at 24 years old and fired all these people. I thought I was the big boss saying, "You’re fired." After everyone left, I realized there was no one to do the cars, so it was me. I’m back on the line polishing the cars, and I’m using this new pad.

The Broken Mirror Incident

Now, I had been used to the wool pads. When they spin, centrifugal force brings them out to an edge. You can take that edge and get into door handles and under mirrors. This pad was just a piece of foam, and they were die cutting the circle and slapping a piece of Velcro on the top. It has this hard, exposed plastic plate on the back.

I was trying to do a great job and get underneath the mirror of this Mercedes. I hit the plate against the mirror, it made this grinding sound, and I jumped and broke the mirror off the car. It was heated and lighted—I think you could watch cable on it. It cost $800 for a new mirror. I was livid. I said it’s not my fault; it’s the pad’s fault. The pad should have been cut with edges on it. It should have had a recess in the back.

Navigating Patent Law

I searched around, asked a bunch of distributors, and no one ever heard of it. I tried stupidly to make my own patent. That’s a lesson in itself. I literally went to the patent office, got a bunch of patents on buffing pads, and then tried to write my own patent, which was promptly rejected in a language that I didn’t understand.

I ended up going to my old high school principal's husband, Norman Lehrer. He was a patent attorney in Cherry Hill right here on Evesham and White Horse Road. Norman was the absolute best. I showed him my rejection letter. He was flipping through the pages, and with every page he flipped, he got angrier and angrier. At the end, he threw it down and said, "Let me ask you a question. If you had a toothache, would you take a drill and start drilling your tooth?" I said no.

He said, "What makes you think you could write a patent? This is the most specific kind of law that you have ever dreamed of. I didn’t just go to law school. I had to go to patent law school and then spend years as a patent examiner. Here’s my recommendation. I write a letter to the patent office and beg them to rescind your application, pretend they never saw it, and then I’ll write you an actual patent."

We did that. Norman got me a patent on this buffing pad made out of urethane foam. I spent eight months trying to figure out how to make it. Eventually, I found a way using some band saws and drill presses. We literally made the first one to test in our shop, and it was a miracle. People in my shop said this is the best buffing pad I ever used.

Building the Buffing Pad Business

We put some ads in trade magazines, and within three months we were selling all over the country. Within six months, it was selling around the world. I sold the car washing business and started making buffing pads. From that, I started inventing lots of ideas.

I ended up inventing and patenting the first indicator line that tells you when the pad is worn out. There was no equipment in the world that can make it, so I didn't just have to come up with the idea; I had to build robotic machinery. By the time I was done, I’d built all these automated machines and robots, and I was also the only one who knew how to fix them. I’d spend half the day being the president and CEO, and the other half fixing broken machines.

The Origins of the Scrub Daddy Material

My hands were covered in oil and grease, and I couldn't get it off. The only thing I found that worked a little bit was something called Gojo or Lava soap. It’s like lotion with rocks, and it feels disgusting. I was looking for a better way to clean them. I started experimenting with foam. I contacted all the foam companies in the world and said, "Send me the roughest, toughest foam that you have."

A company in Germany sent me this piece of foam, and it was amazing. It scrubbed my hands better than anything I’ve ever used. I could do it even without soap, but now I can use my regular soap and this is what’s doing the scrubbing for me. It even takes paint off your hands, and it leaves your hands feeling really nice.

The problem was I had it cut into a rectangular piece like a normal sponge. This is really uncomfortable to try and scrub your hands with. So I cut a circle, and that was great. I cut this to fit my hand for cleaning my hands. It did great, except that I wanted to go around my fingers, so I cut a hole. Then I wanted to get underneath my fingernails, so I cut some ridges. But this was kind of weird to do it with. If you cut two holes, it’s really easy to deal with. The next thing you know, this has two eyes, no mouth, and some hair.

We sat around thinking, I can’t be the only one that has dirty hands. We should sell this as a hand scrubber. We named it Scrub Daddy and patented it without the mouth. We started trying to sell it around 2007, but nobody wanted an expensive piece of German-engineered polymer for $4 to clean their dirty hands. They all would rather just go home with dirty hands.

Rejection by 3M and Shelving the Idea

Right at that time, I got two patents on the first double-sided reversible automatic centering buffing pad. It eliminated the whole problem that I had from the beginning with the backing plate. I was about to destroy the market. One of the people that we were destroying was a company called 3M. They owned the buffing pad industry. They came down and said, "We want to buy your company."

They did a valuation. They said, "You have a patent on an apron. Not interested. You have a brush that cleans the buffing pads. Discounted that. You have a stupid sponge for cleaning your hands called Scrub Daddy. No interest in that. By the way, you have no sales in it, and we’re not going to buy it." I said, "Then I’m not going to give it to you." They said, "That’s fine. Carve all these items out of the deal. They belong to you."

I started a new company called Innovative Accessory Products. 3M became a customer; they buy the aprons and the brushes to this day. Scrub Daddy was sitting in a box. I thought it was a piece of junk. We took a hundred samples that we had made that no one wanted, put them in a box, and I labeled it "scrap." Scrub Daddys were sitting in a box for five years, from 2008 until 2011.

Rediscovering the Sponge: The Lawn Furniture Incident

The catalyst was my wife. She was nagging me to clean the lawn furniture. She said, "Spring is coming and the lawn furniture looks like it’s got mold all over it." I took a traditional sponge, green on one side, and started scrubbing. It was ripping the paint off, and she was screaming, "You’re ruining it!" I thought, shoot, I can’t use this. I’ve got a box of those trash sponges that are rough. I wonder if they would work and not scratch.

It was 50 degrees out. I didn’t feel like working in a bucket of cold water, so I made a bucket of soapy hot water. I took this rock-hard sponge that we had designed to clean our hands in cold water and dunked it into the hot water. It went completely soft. It changed form instantly and became this soft, pliable foam. I took it out and started scrubbing with it. The longer it was out in the air and the colder it got, it started crystallizing in my hand. The harder it got, the better it scrubbed.

Every time I dunked it back in the warm water, everything rinsed out of it. I did all the lawn furniture, and it looked brand new. In good conscience, I couldn’t throw this thing out. It looked brand new, so I left it at my sink.

Adapting the Design for the Kitchen

My dad taught me a lot of things, but one of the main things was that in the Krause family, the men do the dishes. I married a girl who’s a great cook, and our deal is that she cooks and I do the dishes. I love doing dishes; it’s therapeutic. I’m doing the dishes with a traditional sponge, and I look across and see this thing looking at me with two eyes and hair, no mouth.

I put it in cold water, and it rips through the burned-on tomato sauce in two seconds. Then I warm it up, it gets soft, and I can fit it into areas. I put my inventor hat on and started looking for failure points. I looked around and realized everything is round: pots, plates, pans, casserole dishes, muffin tins, bowls. We’re using rectangular sponges with corners. This is stupid.

I found that I’m holding the sponge on the outside, but if I put my fingers in the eyes, I can go all the way into the bottom of a mug. I just did the sides and the bottom at the same time. Why hold onto a sponge if the sponge can hold onto you? If I have a smile on this thing, I could clean the silverware. I grabbed a steak knife, cut a smile in it, put the dirty spoon in, squeezed, and pulled. It was clean on both sides. I knew immediately I was going to the office the next day to change the entire package, make a smile face, patent the smile face, and go into the sponge business.

Grassroots Marketing and In-Store Demos

We spent the rest of 2011 creating packaging and logos. You know what color the package of Scrub Daddy is? It’s orange because of two things: the Flyers and Syracuse University. I came up with this bright orange packaging based off the colors the Flyers used that year. I was trying to get this into stores, but I couldn’t get past the receptionist. Bed Bath & Beyond wouldn’t take my call.

I remembered that we have friends in the neighborhood who own some supermarkets. I called up my friend Shawn Ravitz at Ravitz ShopRite and showed it to him. He said, "I don’t want to ruin your dreams, but it’s never going to sell." I asked if I could put it on the shelves to see. I spent a couple of weekends just standing in the aisle watching people grab the same sponge they’ve been using for years. Shawn said, "If you want this to sell, set up a little booth here in the store."

I built a little booth with hot and cold water. I got a little heater underneath one and had ice in the other. I would grab people as they walked by. Every person I did a demo for bought one or two. Shawn came to me and said, "You got to go do this in every one of my stores. I’ve never sold so many sponges in my life." My weekends were ruined. I was going to Ravitz stores, missing my Eagles games, and doing sponge demos all day.

Before we go on, let’s try this Ravitz ShopRite wine. This is a 2023 Pinot Noir. It’s unusually good. I’m not a huge Noir fan because it’s a little dry for me, but I would drink that again.

The QVC Breakthrough

So, I’m doing these demos and getting really good at it, but I realized this model wasn’t sustainable. In 2011, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a story about me. The title was "He’s the Daddy of the Scrub Daddy." The phone started ringing off the hook. A broker called and asked if I ever thought about selling on QVC. He said, "I can get you a meeting with the buyer." QVC is in West Chester, right down the street. I tried to get a meeting myself, but the online form got rejected in hours. I called the broker back and said go ahead.

They said they liked it and wanted me to be the on-air person. I went through the class, which is really just to weed out who can’t go on air. My day finally came at 6:00 in the morning. I was scared crazy. It was a six-minute show, and I blew it. I let the host talk. I didn’t know how to interject. The broker came around the corner screaming, "You blew it! They’re shipping everything back. You’re done." I thought I had lost my shot to be famous.

I left there dejected. I was on a soccer field watching my kids, literally crying. My phone rang, and it was the broker. He said, "The strangest thing just happened. I just got a call from the buyer and the producer. They wished you had more time to talk. They really liked your energy and they’re going to give you one more show."

I went to the next show, met the host, and told her it was probably my last time. She said, "You know what I’m going to do, Aaron? I’m going to go 'Wow, wow, wow,' and you do your thing." I went into a full-on Shark Tank pitch. We sold out in three or four minutes. They put me on again, doubled the inventory, and we sold out in minutes. Then they put me on a Saturday morning, and I think we sold 80,000 sponges in eight minutes.

Applying for Shark Tank

I came home and told my wife, forget entrepreneurship, I was supposed to be a TV star. We were watching Shark Tank, and I watched two guys get eviscerated by Mr. Wonderful. I told my wife, "I could go on Shark Tank and kill the sharks." She said, "Oh look, there’s a website."

I submitted online. I was coaching ice hockey one day, and my phone rang. It was the producer from Shark Tank. That led into two and a half months of vetting. I had to hide it; everything is very secretive. Finally, they flew me out to LA to do an audition in front of 20 execs from Sony and ABC. Clay Newbill and Mark Burnett were standing on the side. I launched into my pitch, and the room erupted in applause. Mark Burnett said, "Aaron, that was incredible. Can you do that again tomorrow when you film with the sharks?"

A Toast with Mouton Rothschild

Before we get to the filming, we have to toast with this 1982 Mouton Rothschild. Look at the body and color of that. You can just kind of taste the soil. That is to be savored.

Inside the Shark Tank Pitch

Shark Tank is highly produced and highly edited, so it is the most real reality show ever. What you see is pretty much what happened. You have one chance to walk in and do your whole show. I was in there for an hour and a half. I’m an hour out from going on the show, and the producer comes in and says, "We’re going to swap out one of the sharks for this new girl, Lori, and she’s going to take Barbara’s seat." I hadn’t prepared for this person at all.

Within two minutes, they asked where I was selling. I mentioned QVC. A slams the door shut. Lori goes, "You know what, Aaron? Your pitch was flawless, but I saw you do something no one else is going to see. You use two different sponges and two different weights. I think the whole thing is fake." I told her to come down and try it. She dipped it in the water, and the sharks were screaming, "Lori, is it working?" She said, "Oh my God, it’s magic." That moment validated the product.

There was another moment where I told Kevin O'Leary he’s out. I was the first entrepreneur in the history of the show to tell one of the sharks they were out. He made a disrespectful offer, and I just started laughing. I said, "I’m just going to enjoy this moment. And you’re out." He sunk in his chair. They cut that entire scene.

Negotiating the Deal with Lori Greiner

I did the deal with Lori. She didn’t want to go out because of QVC, and she’s an inventor and product person like me. We negotiated to a deal that I was comfortable with. We had one argument at the very beginning. She wanted me to do an infomercial. I explained I didn’t want to do that; I wanted to go up against the biggest companies in the world like 3M and Procter & Gamble. She agreed to do it my way.

New Inventions: BBQ and Bathroom Cleaning

I haven’t stopped inventing. I just got my third patent on a new barbecue brush called Barbecue Daddy. I had eaten a metal bristle from a grill brush once, and I said we can never have this again. I invented a brush using our Scour Daddy Steel material. It steam cleaned the grill in one second. We sold 250,000 units at Home Depot last season. Costco is putting it in all their stores next year.

I’m just about to launch one of my biggest projects. I have eight patents on a dissolving toilet scrubbing system. You take a wand, attach an effervescing, disinfecting puck, scrub the toilet, and when you’re done, you put it in a basket that hangs on the side so it dissolves and treats the water.

Innovating in Ice Hockey

Lastly, I’m really passionate about ice hockey. I invested in and now own TOVI Hockey. We make a stick with a perforated blade that has no wind resistance. I now have orders from the Winnipeg Jets, Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers, and Calgary Flames. I’m excited to start another company and take another one to the moon. We’re not done yet.

Conclusion

Thank you so much, Aaron Krause, for being our guest. On behalf of Bill Green and myself, Jerrold Colton, thanks forwatching. We’ll catch you next time on Uncorked.