HANG EASE EPISODE,BUSINESS ENTREPRENEUR, ASKED FOR ACCEPTED OFFER, SHARK,BUSINESS STATUS & More

Entrepreneurs find inspiration for their innovative ideas from many sources, for Ryan Landis, from Plano, Texas, a third-grade school project gave him the idea for a time, and money, saving idea that eventually led him on the road to Shark Tank.

HangEase Before Shark Tank

It looks like Hang-Ease Officially started to appear in Walmart Stores back in 2006 which would seem like a very good thing at first as far as the Sharks might be concerned.

But then again, in bringing a new product to market, 8 years is considered a very long time without making substantial progress within this market.

Eight-year-old Ryan was like most normal boys, in that he would pull his shirts right off of a hanger, and in the process, either the hanger or the shirt would be damaged. The school project, which was named ‘Invention Convention’ asked students to go through their own homes, find a problem, and invent a solution to that problem. Ryan experimented on the hangers in his own closet and eventually developed a hanger with a unique hinge in the middle. The hinge would allow the hanger to fold up when downwards pressure was applied to it, thereby saving clothes and the hanger itself from any damage.

Ryan presented his completed project at an exhibition at the school and luck shone on the fortunate young inventor, in the form of a school friend’s mom, who also happened to run a business that had contacts with large retailers. She managed to assist young Ryan in getting his invention stocked in the retail giant Walmart in 2006, and sales were reasonably successful.

Shark Tank Summery

EPISODE	Season 5 Episode 27
BUSINESS	Kid’s Collapsible Hanger
ENTREPRENEUR	Ryan Landis
ASKED FOR	$80,000 For 30%
ACCEPTED OFFER	$80,000 For 30%
SHARK	Mark Cuban And Lori Greiner
BUSINESS STATUS	Out Of Business

HangEase Now in 2018 – The After Shark Tank Update

Despite the positive result that Ryan achieved from his appearance on the show, things have not gone smoothly for the HangEase business since then.

Although the HangEase segment was first aired in May 2014, the company website appears not to have been updated since that time. Ryan thanks visitors to the site for their encouragement and positive reactions to the show, but he also assures them he is working hard to bring HangEase to customers soon. There is no way to buy his product from the website itself.

I headed over to Amazon to see if I could find HangEase products there, and although I did not find any, I did find a large variety of other similar products, from a number of other companies. Although Ryan claimed that his product did not have competitors, during his appearance on Shark Tank, it’s very clear that there are a wealth of competing products to HangEase, now in 2018.

Although I could find no information regarding the HangEase business, Ryan himself or the final result of negotiations between HangEase and the sharks, the lack of an obvious sales outlet for HangEase products strongly suggests that the deal with Lori Greiner and Mark Cuban did not survive the final negotiations. The wealth of similar products available, some of which appear to be fundamentally identical, in design and function at least, would indicate that there has at some time, been a problem with the utility patent, and the areas it covered legally.

I contacted HangEase to see if I could find out any information regarding the deal struck with Mark and Lori, but received no response. The HangEase Facebook page closed sometime in 2015, and the business appears to have no other social media pages. The lack of any kind of web presence for the company points to a business that is suffering more than a simple postponement of activities, it suggests that the company has closed without any intention to return.

As is so often the case, a clever product and an innovative entrepreneur were not enough to attract a shark partner for the HangEase business, and even if the exact reasons for the failure of any deal struck on the show are unknown, I would doubt that Ryan Landis is hanging around waiting for a more effective patent, instead, the innovative entrepreneur is far more likely to be working on his next clever idea.

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