Amanda Freund’s appearance on Shark Tank ended in a deal

By Colleen Gundlach

When a phone call comes from a television producer who tells you to get on a plane and come to Los Angeles, you generally don’t hesitate. Neither did Amanda Freund, co-owner of CowPots at Freund’s Farm in East Canaan. She received airline tickets from Sony Studios two weeks before the date her appearance on TV’s Shark Tank was scheduled to be filmed. There was no hesitation at that point. She began intensive preparation for her appearance, which would include transporting an inflatable cow and coordinating logistics for bags of potting soil and live plants to be delivered to Hollywood.

CowPots are an environmentally-friendly way of growing plants in pots made of cow manure. When the plants are ready to be put into the ground, the pots go in as well, providing additional fertilizer to the growing roots. “Believe it or not,” says Freund, “each cow on a dairy farm produces an amount of manure equal to the amount of milk she produces.” Since every dairy farmer has an abundance of manure, Matthew Freund, Amanda’s father, began thinking 18 years ago about a responsible way to utilize this. After a lot of research, he and a local retired engineer developed a pilot machine to produce cow manure plant pots. After a lot of hard work and brilliant marketing, the rest is history. Today they have added a valuable product to their farm and CowPots have become known nationally.

As for her trip to LA, Amanda Freund says, “Anyone can enter to be on the show. I just went to the Shark Tank website and filled out a basic web form. I really didn’t expect anyone to call. I thought it was a far-fetched idea.” But within a week, she received a phone call from the Shark Tank production team. After a 30-minute interview, Freund was assigned a schedule of weekly meetings she was to have with the casting team. Each week going forward she was assigned a new project to complete, providing more information about the CowPots business. Throughout last July and August, she was actively engaged with the team in California. Even then, Freund did not know for sure that she would be chosen to appear. “At no point did I know for sure,” she said.

Freund received airline tickets from the production company just two weeks before the date for filming. “It was not a glamorous trip,” she said. “It was strictly business.” 

When she arrived at the airport she was met by a driver who drove her to a hotel near the highway so she could drop off her luggage, then she was shuttled to Sony Studios. There she met the hair and makeup crew. Her only exposure to the Sharks was during the actual filming of the CowPots segment. “We were definitely not wined and dined,” she said. “It was all very efficient.”

The Sharks were impressed with the concept of using manure to produce the plant pots, but what really moved Shark Kevin O’Leary into proposing a deal was when Freund introduced her new use for the manure packaging for shipping wine bottles. This is a prototype that has recently come to fruition at the Freund farm and promises to be their new product of the future.

This was not the first time that CowPots had been featured on national television. Back in 2006, Mike Rowe came to East Canaan to film a segment of his Discovery Channel program, Dirty Jobs. It was the very first year that CowPots went on the market, and Rowe was right up to his knees in manure to show how the pots are produced. In addition, CowPots have been featured on the Today Show and on Martha Stewart’s show in the past. 

“A lot has changed in the past 19 years,” said Freund. “At the time CowPots was on Dirty Jobs, we weren’t prepared for the national surge in interest in the product. This time, with Shark Tank, we are so much more mindful of the impact the show would have, and we were prepared.”

While Freund and O’Leary admittedly made a handshake deal on Shark Tank for a $200,000 investment by O’Leary in return for 20% equity in the CowPots business, Freund reports that she later decided not to take advantage of the offer, preferring instead to keep total control of CowPots here in East Canaan. The marketing exposure and national name recognition, however, are excellent. They are worth their weight in cow manure.

To watch a video and learn more about CowPots go to https://youtu.be/hQCxU8TQAnA