A Placentia-based clothing-maker has gone prime time.
Thompson Tee Inc. was featured on last Friday’s episode of “Shark Tank,” the reality television series that profiles budding entrepreneurs.
The company created a T-shirt line to help people with axillary hyperhidrosis, or excessive underarm sweating. Co-founders Billy Thompson and Randy Choi both suffer from excessive sweating and spent their adult lives trying to find ways to cope, Thompson said. Choi tried surgery for cranial sweating, which is excessive sweating around the head. Thompson said he rejected surgery for his underarm sweating because he felt there were too many side effects.
They started designing a product in the 1990s. But it took more than a decade to find the right product: an ultra-thin polymer film compound, Thompson said. They officially launched the company with a website in 2012. They sell two lines of T-shirts: an original fit for $25 and a slim-fit with spandex for $30.
Thompson serves as president of the company. Choi, who has two decades of experience in the textile industry, is vice president.
Last year the company hit its goal of $4 million in revenue, Thompson said. Its revenue had doubled every year since 2013, he added. Prior to “Shark Tank,” it had not received any outside funding. He said that’s because the investment offers the company got required them to move production overseas. They declined, since keeping manufacturing in the U.S. was important.
They started by putting in $10,000 each from savings and reinvested the money they made back into the company, Thompson said.
The Business Journal went to press before the company could disclose the outcome of the show.
Pet Food Funding
A Los Alamitos company that makes and sells natural and organic pet food received a “significant” investment from L Catterton, a venture capital and private equity firm in Greenwich, Conn.
The exact amount that JustFoodForDogs raised in the funding couldn’t be disclosed, founder Shawn Buckley said.
The company said it will use the funds for additional locations in Orange County, including Huntington Beach.
It already has eight stores total in OC and Los Angeles and was planning a ninth location in Del Mar—scheduled to open in September—before it got the funding, Buckley said.
He founded the company in 2010, setting out to make dog food healthier. It started with one location on Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach, making 2,000 pounds of food a month. Now it makes 200,000 pounds a month, he said. The company said it has 100 staff members; two are full-time veterinarians formulating custom diets for sick dogs.
Two months ago, he closed the Newport Beach location and moved that store to Costa Mesa, growing from 1,400 square feet to 2,400 square feet.
Each store provides classes. The company gives away its recipes for free at the classes and online, something Buckley was told early on by his IP law firm not to do, he said.
Half of the current locations have kitchens. The other half are pantries that are connected to veterinarian hospitals.
Angel Investments Up
Irvine-based Tech Coast Angels invested more than $14 million in a total of 55 companies last year. The Orange County chapter invested $4.4 million of that, said John Harbison, chairman emeritus of the parent angel group, which had six exits last year, bringing the total to 68 overall.
Ninety-one percent of the deals last year were seed or Series A rounds. Sixty-two percent were initial investments, up from 35% in 2015. The increase in new and early-stage companies reflected “a wide berth of opportunities” last year, according to the Tech Coast Angels’ report.
The report goes on to caution that such investment activity may be similar to “experiencing an Indian summer,” as this cycle appears to be drawing to a close.
Tech Coast Angels has more than 300 members. It’s the largest angel investor group in the U.S., comprised of five regional networks: Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, and the Central Coast, encompassing San Fernando Valley, Ventura County and Santa Barbara.
The parent group also just announced two new membership tiers: virtual and affiliate. The former enables angel investors outside of Southern California to participate in investments. The latter was created for family offices, corporate VC groups, foundations, nonprofits and VC funds to invest. Those can be within or outside Southern California.
Octane Attracts Chinese Investors
A dozen investors from Shanghai Creation Investment visited Orange County recently—a trip facilitated by Octane and the Irvine office of K&L Gates. Octane is a technology innovation accelerator.
Two companies that have gone through Octane’s accelerator, known as LaunchPad, presented to those investors: Irvine-based Harbor MedTech Inc. and Redlands-based Oxygen Mobility.
Octane Chief Executive Bill Carpou said, “It’s still early, but there have been requests for due diligence,” adding that he considers it significant that Octane has “built a channel into China and opened the flow of capital for investment in OC companies.”
Octane also made inroads to Canada recently, adding investor OMERS, short for Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, to its portal, a platform matching startups with investors and growth advisers.
