StormBag on Shark Tank: The Full Story Behind the Pitch
On October 6, 2023, a father-son team from Chico, California walked into the Shark Tank and asked for $200,000 in exchange for 10% of their flood-protection company. Forty-five minutes of taping later — edited down to about ten minutes of broadcast — Maurice and Miles Huffman had two competing offers, an emotional moment that brought the room to silence, and a national audience watching a sandless sandbag swell to 33 pounds inside a glass aquarium. This is the full story of Shark Tank Season 15, Episode 2, what really happened with the deal, and where StormBag is today.
The pitch: $200,000 for 10%
Maurice Huffman has been running Swiss-Link Trading, a military surplus business in Chico, for decades. StormBag started as a side product — a sandless sandbag built around crosslinked polyacrylamide, a polymer that absorbs roughly 300 times its weight in fresh water. For years it sold quietly to government buyers and emergency-management contacts. Then Miles Huffman, Maurice's son and a graphic designer by training, joined the family business and posted a TikTok of a dry one-pound bag growing into a 33-pound flood barrier. The video crossed seven million views. ABC came calling.
The Huffmans entered the Tank seeking $200,000 for 10% equity, valuing StormBag at $2 million. Miles ran the demonstration — a dry bag dropped into an aquarium, expanding in front of five Sharks. The mechanics are simple: each bag weighs about a pound dry, absorbs roughly four gallons of fresh water in three to five minutes, and ends up in the 30–35 pound range. Stack them on a two-mil poly sheet against a doorway and you have the same anchored-poly barrier that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recommends in its 2022 Flood Fight Handbook, minus the truck full of sand.
The Paradise story
The pitch turned when Miles described why he had joined the business in the first place. The Huffmans are from Paradise, California. In November 2018, the Camp Fire burned the town to the ground in a matter of hours. The family lost their homes. Their employees lost their homes. The warehouse survived, but the community around it did not. Miles came home to help rebuild — and to help his father turn a niche surplus product into a real consumer brand.
The Sharks went quiet. It is the moment the episode is remembered for, and it is the reason StormBag's story plays differently than most flood-protection pitches: this is a company that exists because its founders watched a natural disaster take everything from their neighbors.
The negotiation
Kevin O'Leary moved first on the numbers. With $90,000 in trailing-twelve-month sales and a $5.50 retail price against roughly $2 in unit cost, he questioned the $2 million valuation and dropped out. Daniel Lubetzky and Daymond John huddled and offered $200,000 for 40%. Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner countered together at $200,000 for 30%, with Mark adding that the product needed repackaging for new applications and a higher price point. The Huffmans accepted Mark and Lori on air.
What viewers do not see on broadcast is what happens next: a months-long due-diligence process before any Shark Tank deal formally closes. The Huffmans spoke to KRCR News in Chico shortly after the episode aired and described being completely overwhelmed by orders. They sold out their stock the weekend the episode premiered. They later told Action News Now they ultimately walked away from the formal close to keep building the company on their own terms — a path several Shark Tank companies have taken when post-show momentum lets them grow without giving up equity.
Two and a half years later, that decision looks correct. Daniel Lubetzky, who lost the deal in the Tank, posted on Facebook in September 2025: "We lost the StormBag deal after a tough negotiation, but Lori and Mark closed it. Now @stormbag.co is one of the most innovative businesses out there." He's right about the trajectory, even if the deal mechanics were more complicated than a single broadcast minute can show.
What changed after the episode aired
The Shark Tank effect is real and short-lived for most companies. For StormBag, it set the floor. In Q4 2023, the company secured testing or endorsement relationships with FEMA, the National Guard, and the Department of Homeland Security — including pre-show evaluations by the FEMA-published U.S. Fire Administration sandbag program study that documented sandless sandbag performance against traditional sandbag walls.
The product line expanded from loose bag packs to engineered door kits — Single-Door, Double-Door, Single-Wide Garage, and Double-Wide Garage configurations that pair the bags with the right plastic sheeting and tape to seal an opening using the Army Corps' anchored-poly method. A homeowner who watched the Shark Tank episode in 2023 and wanted to protect their garage had to do their own math on bag count and source their own poly. That same homeowner today can buy a Single-Wide Garage Kit for $149.99 and have everything they need to seal a 13-foot-wide opening.
What the Sharks got right (and what they got wrong)
Mark Cuban's note about repackaging for new applications was directionally correct — the kit lineup is exactly that. His push to charge more was also correct. The original $5.50 retail price the Sharks saw was unsustainable given the per-unit cost; today's loose-pack pricing reflects what the product actually costs to make at small batch sizes, and the kit pricing reflects the real value of an out-of-the-box flood barrier system rather than a commodity bag.
Where the Sharks were wrong was the addressable market. Kevin called it a niche product. The U.S. has had at least one billion-dollar flood disaster every year since 1980 according to NOAA's Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, and the trend line is steepening. The flood-protection category is not niche — it is structurally underserved, and the traditional sandbag has not meaningfully evolved in a century. That is the gap StormBag fills.
How StormBag actually works
Each StormBag is an empty woven bag containing a measured charge of crosslinked polyacrylamide powder. Submerged in fresh water — a hose, a sink, a bathtub, a kiddie pool — the polymer absorbs water and turns into a dense hydrogel inside the bag. A dry bag weighs about one pound. A hydrated bag weighs roughly 33 pounds and holds its shape against moving water.
One important caveat to know up front: StormBag cannot be hydrated in salt water, but will work to repel salt water once they are hydrated with fresh water. Coastal homeowners preparing for storm surge should hydrate with fresh water before the surge arrives. Once expanded, the bags hold their volume and act as a flood barrier against salt water — they just cannot do the initial absorption from a salt-water source. We cover this in detail in our coastal storm surge guide.
For the actual barrier-building method — pyramid stacking, poly anchoring, and how bag count scales with door width — see our sandbag math guide or run the StormBag Storm Protection Planner for a guided recommendation.
StormBag today
StormBag is still owned and operated by Maurice and Miles Huffman out of Chico. The product line covers four engineered door kits, three loose-bag tiers (10-pack, 25-pack, and 250-bag bulk), and a wholesale program for emergency-management agencies and municipalities. The flood-watch tooling on the site — free real-time flood alerts by ZIP code — is something none of the Sharks asked about and none of the post-show coverage mentions, but it is arguably the most useful free thing on the site. It is plumbed into the National Weather Service feed and triggers when a watch, warning, or advisory is issued for a user's location.
Where to buy the Shark Tank product
If you found StormBag through the episode and want to actually protect a home, the door kits are the right starting point. Each is sized to a standard opening and includes the right amount of plastic sheeting:
- Single-Door Kit — 5 bags, 6'×10' poly sheet, covers a 4'-wide doorway. $69.99.
- Double-Door Kit — 10 bags, 10'×10' poly sheet, covers a 7'-wide opening. $109.99.
- Single-Wide Garage Kit — 15 bags, 14'×12' poly sheet, covers a 13'-wide garage door. $149.99.
- Double-Wide Garage Kit — 25 bags, 22'×12' poly sheet, covers a 21'-wide double garage. $239.99.
For non-standard openings or freestanding low walls, loose 10-, 25-, and 250-bag packs are available.
Frequently asked questions
What season and episode was StormBag on Shark Tank?
Season 15, Episode 2, which aired on ABC on October 6, 2023. The Sharks in that episode were Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Kevin O'Leary, Daymond John, and guest Shark Daniel Lubetzky.
Did StormBag get a deal on Shark Tank?
Yes — on air. Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner agreed to $200,000 for 30% equity, beating a competing offer from Daymond John and Daniel Lubetzky at $200,000 for 40%. The Huffmans later opted not to formally close the deal post-show and built the company on their own.
Who invented StormBag?
Maurice Huffman invented StormBag more than a decade before the Shark Tank appearance. His son Miles Huffman joined the business after the 2018 Camp Fire devastated their hometown of Paradise, California, and helped grow the consumer side of the brand.
Is StormBag FEMA approved?
FEMA does not formally "approve" individual products, but StormBag has been independently evaluated in the FEMA-published U.S. Fire Administration sandbag program study, which documented sandless sandbag performance against traditional sandbag walls. Full detail in our FEMA-approval explainer.
Where can I buy the sandless sandbag from Shark Tank?
Directly from stormbag.co. The door kits ship the same day for orders before 1 PM PT.
