It started with a stink.
After one of Ben Kusin's usual smoke breaks and before an important work meeting, he stopped by a gas station for something to freshen up his clothes.
"He had a conversation with the clerk and he suggested Purell and breath mints, but he was worried about his clothes," his brother Eric Kusin says.
After a few minutes of getting nowhere, the clerk told him nothing he wanted was on the shelves. "I don't think what you're talking about has been invented yet," Eric recalls the clerk telling Ben.
So that's when Ben, son of the inventor of the world's smallest chocolate chip cookie, created Reviver, a smell-good swipe used to freshen clothes after a baby's spit-up, a smoke session or really anything else. Eric joined him for the business venture shortly after.
On Friday, the Dallas brothers will present their invention on national television to Shark Tank's famous entrepreneurs, or rather, sharks.
"A lot of times you smell yourself, you don't smell great," Eric says. "Nobody carries around sprays to make themselves smell better. You're not near a washing machine or a dry cleaner. You don't have a change of clothes, so for people on the go, which is how everybody lives their lives, I think it's a pretty cool product."
That was six years ago. And after Ben and Eric's mom was featured on Katie Couric's show's own Shark Tank segment for her small chocolate chip cookie company, she mentioned her sons' clothing swipes.
Shark Tank producers told the brothers to email their Yahoo! casting account with the product's information. They must have liked what they read because out of 45,000 people, the Kusin brothers were chosen to film.
They flew out to Los Angeles to film their hour-long segment in front of the sharks. "It's really an intimidating set," Eric said. "They open the doors and the investors are sitting there. You have a little set of all your products and you just go into your pitch. Your pitch is like a two-minute description of what your product is, why it's awesome, and then briefly, how you've done in business so far and why you want to partner with a shark and then it's kind of a free-for-all."
That free-for-all includes the sharks firing questions their way, something Eric said they prepared for diligently.
"When they start asking questions to you, you have no idea what's going on," he said. "It's rapid fire. You are just staying on your toes."
But like before, something must have worked because last Wednesday, producers called to say out of 160 filmed segments, theirs will air Friday.
Eric can't say much more about the filming, but after just appearing in this season's teaser, Reviver's website has gained abnormally large traffic.
The Kusin brothers' Shark Tank segment will air at 8 p.m. Friday on ABC.
