Kittery skincare startup braces for ‘Shark Tank’ effect

Cold Current Kelp, an ocean farm and skincare company based in Kittery, will be featured on “Shark Tank,” where entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to celebrity investors in hopes they’ll buy in. The segment is scheduled to air on ABC in the season premiere, Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 10 p.m. Founded by Inga Potter and Krista Rosen in 2021, Cold Current Kelp grows, harvests, processes and produces skin care products from extract derived from sugar kelp raised offshore in Kittery. The partners filled out an online application for "Shark Tank" over a year ago. “Their team reached out to us this past spring, and we filmed our pitch at the end of June,” Potter told Mainebiz. The season was filmed in Atlanta at Tyler Perry Studios. “It was a surreal experience: our first-ever pitch to investors was on 'Shark Tank,'” said Potter. “Learning our numbers inside and out, refining our pitch, working with the production team and filming the episode was demanding and exciting. It was an incredible milestone for our company and an experience we'll never forget." Pitch prep How did they prepare for the pitch? “Mostly about knowing our numbers cold — we drilled every metric until we could recite it without hesitation — and practicing our pitch and presentation until it felt second nature,” she said. To prepare for the broadcast, the partners are “deep in an operational sprint right now — building inventory, making sure our website and fulfillment can handle a traffic spike and rolling out some social content in the lead-up to air date,” she said. That’s because of what’s known as the “Shark Tank" effect, according to sharktankblog.com. Companies appearing on the show typically see a spike in website traffic and sales. Company update Cold Current Kelp came about when the partners were studying potential uses of the seaweed. They experimented with making a skin care product using a “nontoxic green chemistry” method to extract what they have said are beneficial compounds in the kelp. The extract is blended with organic oils. Most recently, the company landed its first B2B ingredient deal, supplying a kelp-infused organic sunflower oil to a climate-conscious Canadian skincare company called Atmosphera, which is launching its brand in the U.S. this October, said Potter. The deal came about when the Canadian company’s director of sustainability reached out to Cold Current Kelp. “They were looking for U.S.-sourced seaweed ingredients, and our mission and values aligned closely,” said Potter. The Canadian company put in an initial order of two 55-gallon drums for its launch. “It's our first B2B relationship and the start of what we hope will be an ongoing partnership,” said Potter. “Going from making our facial oil in small batches to producing an ingredient in large drums was definitely a learning curve.” Cold Current Kelp received a $20,000 matching grant from the Maine Technology Institute to assist with the B2B project, including equipment to help scale production, third-party testing and clinical trials. Kittery operation Cold Current Kelp operates two 400-square-foot farms permitted by the Maine Department of Marine Resources and a manufacturing facility in a 1,059-square-foot lease at 37 Route 236. Partnerships and funding opportunities are helping the company grow, including the Rockland-based Island Institute and the Maine Technology Institute, plus funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Saltonstall-Kennedy grant program. They plan to create a small-scale pilot biorefinery to extract ingredients from seaweed to be sold to other manufacturers.