Product Update

Is Oru Kayak Still in Business? (2026 Update)

Is Oru Kayak from Shark Tank still around in 2026? The deal it made, the sharks who invested, and where to buy Oru Kayak today.

Shark Tank IndexUpdated July 6, 20266 min read

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Two founders walked into the Tank carrying something that looked like a sheet of plastic origami and unfolded it into a full-size boat. That was the moment Oru Kayak made its case on Season 5 of Shark Tank. A kayak that collapses flat, folds down into a carryable box, and then snaps back into a rigid vessel you can actually paddle. The pitch leaned on a simple frustration that anyone in a small apartment or a city without a garage understands instantly. Real kayaks are great until you have to store one or strap it to a car. Oru's answer was to make the boat itself fold away.

The team came in asking for 500,000 dollars in exchange for 12 percent of the company, out of San Francisco, California. It was a confident ask for a young product in a category most people associate with bulky gear and roof racks. The question hanging over the segment was whether a folding kayak could be more than a clever demo, and whether a shark would bite.

The deal that closed in the Tank

Oru Kayak left with a deal. Robert Herjavec invested 500,000 dollars, the full amount the founders had asked for, but the equity told a different story than the original pitch. The founders walked in offering 12 percent. The deal that actually closed gave up 25 percent of the company for that same 500,000 dollars.

That gap between the ask and the final terms is one of the most common patterns on the show. Founders set an opening number, the sharks push on valuation, and the entrepreneurs decide whether the money and the partner are worth giving up more of the business. In Oru's case, they took the trade. They got the capital they wanted and a shark in Herjavec who had the appetite to back a physical product with a genuinely novel design at its core. A folding boat is the kind of thing that either works on camera or falls apart, and theirs held up.

So is Oru Kayak still in business?

Yes. Oru Kayak is still in business and still selling today. The folding kayak that unfolded on the Shark Tank stage did not turn out to be a one-season novelty. It is an active brand with a real product line, which is more than a lot of Tank companies can say years after their episode airs.

You can buy directly from the company through its own website, where it runs its store and sells its boats and accessories. That matters for a product like this. A folding kayak benefits from being explained, shown in its packed and unpacked states, and sold with the kind of detail a brand controls on its own site rather than getting lost in a crowded marketplace listing. Oru has leaned into owning that storefront experience rather than relying on a third party to do the talking for it.

One thing worth noting for anyone hunting for the easiest checkout. Oru Kayak is not currently set up to sell through Amazon in the way many Shark Tank products do. If you are used to searching for a brand there and clicking buy, this is a case where going to the source is the move. The official website is where the catalog lives and where you will find the actual boats.

Why it has stuck around

The durability of a Shark Tank company usually comes down to whether the product solved a real problem or just performed well for the cameras. Oru sits firmly in the first group. The pain point it addressed, storage and transport, never went away. People who want to paddle still live in apartments, still drive small cars, and still do not want a rigid hull eating their living room. A boat that folds into a box answers all of that at once.

Getting Herjavec on board gave the company capital and a partner at a stage when a young hardware brand needs both. But the reason it is still selling more than a decade later is the product itself. The folding kayak was not a gimmick that needed a TV moment to survive. It was a genuine design solution, and the fact that the company is still standing and still shipping boats out of its own store is the clearest evidence that the idea had legs well beyond the Tank.

If you saw the episode and wondered whether that folding boat was real or just good television, the answer is that it was real, and it still is. Oru Kayak made its deal, kept building, and remains a company you can buy from right now.

Oru Kayak

Where to buy Oru Kayak

Still selling as of July 6, 2026. Check today's price and availability.

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See the full Oru Kayak deal breakdown and term sheet →

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