John and Chelsea Pinto walked off the Shark Tank set in 2018 with nothing. Robert Herjavec was the only Shark to make an offer – $300,000 for 36% equity. The Pintos wouldn’t go above 20%. They walked.
It turned out to be the right call as Boom Boom is now valued at $15 million based on a crowdfunding campaign in 2024.
The Shark Tank Bump
BoomBoom was doing $754,000 in sales when they filmed. The exposure shifted the needle – web traffic spiked, Amazon rankings climbed, and wholesale enquiries started coming in from retailers who’d seen the episode.
John had spent the early years handing out samples at bars in LA and selling through Instagram DMs. Shark Tank accelerated what was already working. What’s worth noting is that he refused to manufacture offshore despite pressure to cut costs – everything was made in California. He argued that volume would bring costs down without compromising quality.
Retail Expansion
By October 2020, BoomBoom was in over 6,000 US stores including Walmart, CVS, and Albertsons. That number has since grown to 13,000 retail doors nationwide – with a 2024 crowdfunding raise specifically earmarked to fund 4,000 additional outlets on top of that.
The brand now claims the number one spot for nasal sticks on Amazon by both rating and review count – a meaningful benchmark in a category where most of the competition is still medicinal and clinical-looking.
The Real Revenue Numbers
BoomBoom’s Wefunder crowdfunding filing, which contains audited financials, shows the company had revenues of $4.26 million in 2023. In 2024 that jumped to $13.4 million – more than triple in a single year. Gross margin held steady at around 50% across both years. As of February 2025, the company reported cash on hand of just under $6 million and was averaging $3.27 million in monthly revenue.
TikTok Changed Everything
The jump from $4 million to $13 million in one year didn’t happen by accident. BoomBoom leaned heavily into TikTok Shop, building a creator sampling programme that now has over 3,500 active partners producing more than 800 tagged videos every day. Some of those creators earn tens of thousands per month promoting the product.
The genius of this for BoomBoom specifically is that nasal inhalers are a highly demonstrable product. You watch someone inhale it and immediately understand what it does. TikTok’s short-form video format is perfectly suited to that kind of product reveal. The brand went from $250,000 in TikTok-attributed revenue to over $4 million, representing 4x year-over-year growth on the platform alone before the broader revenue surge.
Product Line Growth
The original five-scent inhaler range expanded into roll-on essential oils, combination packs, and a full CBD line – gummies, tinctures, and a CBD-infused inhaler. The CBD pivot gave the brand a second conversation with the wellness market at exactly the right time, though the core nasal stick remains the product driving the bulk of revenue and repeat purchases.
The Real Challenge
The numbers are impressive, but BoomBoom is still fighting a cultural battle that no amount of retail distribution fully solves. John has admitted publicly that at trade shows, 10–15% of people get awkward about trying a nasal inhaler in front of strangers. In the US, anything near your nose carries baggage – illness, drugs. That stigma is the brand’s biggest long-term competitor.
His goal is for BoomBoom to become the Kleenex of nasal sticks – a category-defining brand in a space that doesn’t really exist yet in Western culture. The 13,000 retail doors and $13 million revenue year suggest the category is starting to form. Whether BoomBoom owns it long-term depends on whether the habit sticks.
Was Walking Away the Right Move?
Herjavec’s 36% ask looks significantly worse in hindsight. For $300,000, he would have owned more than a third of a brand now doing over $13 million a year with 50% gross margins and $6 million in cash. The Pintos still own the company outright and have raised capital on their own terms through crowdfunding. Sometimes the best Shark Tank outcome is proving the Sharks wrong.
