Skateboarding, surfing and skiing are ideal action sports for adrenaline junkies but doing them at night is dangerous. Garret and Dakota Porter created Action Glow to tackle this problem. The product is an LED lighting system that makes riding at night much safer. Founders Garret and Dakota swam with the Sharks and got a deal with Robert Herjavec. As of 2023, Action Glow is worth an estimated $600,000.
About the Founders
Garret and Dakota Porter are adventurous brothers from Grand Traverse County, Michigan. Dakota is the eldest sibling and is three years older than Garret. They both have business-related degrees from Northwestern Michigan College.
Even as a child, Dakota was fond of action sports and in particular enjoyed longboarding, surfing, and snowboarding. He passed this passion on to his little brother. They were very enthusiastic about these hobbies, and Dakota wanted to start a business when he was still a teenager.
Founding Action Glow
As a student, Dakota invented an LED lighting system that can be attached to most action sports equipment. He was 16 at the time, and Garret was just 13. Because they were young, the Porter brothers were inexperienced entrepreneurs but their parents supported them.
In 2012, they launched Action Glow under 45th Parallel Lighting, LLC. Dakota is the CEO and Garret serves as the COO. Initially, they were looking to expand into sports stores and later went with a direct-to-consumer approach.
In the beginning, Dakota was in charge of managing the website, while Garret took care of sales and strategy. They launched an IndieGoGo campaign, hoping to raise $8,800 but only managed to get $2,690.
Getting on Shark Tank
Action Glow has been around for over a decade and the founders always wanted to appear on the show. The aspiring entrepreneurs believed it could help them reach a much wider audience and lower the cost to acquire customers.
They applied multiple times to get onto Shark Tank but got rejected on three occasions by producers. Thankfully they didn’t give up and the brothers finally got accepted with $130,000 in lifetime sales.
After Shark Tank
Their episode aired on 18 November 2022 and Dakota and Garret got a huge increase in orders. From one night alone, they made over $60,000 in revenue. This was double the revenue from 2021! Action Glow is a relatively simple product that people buy to look cool. The challenging part is maintaining sales after the hype from Shark Tank dies down.
Shark Tank fans can purchase the patented LED lights through its website and Amazon. On their website, the LED surfboard retails for $169. Over time, the business has expanded its range to include kayaks, longboards and wakeboards. In the future, they plan to launch an apparel clothing line and get into retail.
One of their bestsellers globally is the LED Snowboard Lighting Kit. It has a 4.1-star rating from 32 customer reviews on Amazon. Negative reviews highlighted how the tape didn’t last long. The company is using viral marketing to attract customers and is now worth an estimated $600,000. Hopefully the deal with Robert closes, he does have a reputation for pulling out after the show.
