Product Update
Is The Natural Grip Still in Business? (2026 Update)
Is The Natural Grip from Shark Tank still around in 2026? The deal it made, the sharks who invested, and where to buy The Natural Grip today.
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The Natural Grip's own domain now serves an Indonesian betting platform, which tells you most of what you need to know before reading another word. Ashley Drake's gymnastics grip company from Season 6 shut down years ago, and what happened to the founder afterward is a better story than most Shark Tank failures get told.
The Short Answer
No, The Natural Grip is not still in business. The company closed in December 2018, roughly three years after its Shark Tank appearance. The website that once sold hand grips for gymnasts and lifters, thenaturalgrip.com, now redirects to an unrelated Indonesian gaming and lottery site with no connection to fitness equipment at all.
There is no current storefront, no Amazon listing, and no active social presence tied to the original brand. If you are looking to buy the grips today, the honest answer is you cannot, at least not from the company that made them.
The Shark Tank Pitch
Ashley Drake pitched The Natural Grip in Season 6, Episode 8, out of Louisville, Kentucky. She built the fitness apparel and accessories line around a specific gap in the market, grips for gymnasts and weightlifters that protected the hands without the bulk of standard gloves.
The pitch had real numbers behind it. Drake had brought in 178,000 dollars in sales in the year before she walked onto the show, and she asked the sharks for 100,000 dollars in exchange for 20 percent of the company.
The Deal That Got Done
Robert Herjavec made the deal, putting up the full 100,000 dollars Drake asked for but taking 25 percent of the company rather than the 20 percent on the table. That is a familiar shape for a Shark Tank agreement: the founder keeps the headline dollar figure, and the shark negotiates a bigger slice of ownership in return.
At the time, Drake left her position in the Army to run the company full time, betting that Herjavec's backing and the national TV exposure would be enough to scale a niche fitness product into a real business.
What Went Wrong After the Handshake
The deal closing on air was not the end of the story, it was the start of a harder chapter. Follow-up reporting on the company's post-show progress found that sales went stagnant not long after the initial spike from the episode, and marketing investment did not keep pace with what a niche fitness accessory needs to stay visible once the Shark Tank bump fades.
By December 2018, the company had stopped operating. That is a three-year run after the deal closed, which puts it ahead of plenty of on-air handshakes that never survive contact with actual manufacturing and distribution costs, but still short of the kind of staying power that makes a Shark Tank product a lasting brand.
Drake herself moved on to a different career track entirely. She now works as an Industrial Engineering Supervisor at UPS, a logistics and operations role that is a world away from running a direct-to-consumer fitness accessories company. That is a common outcome for Shark Tank founders whose companies do not make it: the entrepreneurial chapter closes, and a stable career picks up where it left off.
The Natural Grip net worth in 2026
There is no net worth to report for The Natural Grip in 2026 because the company does not exist anymore. It closed in 2018, and nothing has operated under that name since. Any site claiming to estimate a current net worth or revenue figure for the brand is either working from stale, pre-closure data or fabricating a number outright.
The only verifiable financial figures tied to this company are historical: the 178,000 dollars in trailing sales cited during the pitch and the 100,000 dollar investment Herjavec made for 25 percent equity in 2015. Neither of those numbers tells you anything about the business today, because there is no business today.
Where Things Stand Now
The Natural Grip pitched in Season 6 out of Louisville, asked for 100,000 dollars for 20 percent, and closed a deal with Robert Herjavec for that same 100,000 dollars at 25 percent. The company ran for roughly three more years before shutting down in December 2018.
If you landed on this page hoping to buy the grips, the search ends here with a clear no. The brand is gone, its old domain now hosts unrelated foreign gambling content, and its founder has since built a career in logistics rather than fitness retail. It is one of the more definitive closures in the Shark Tank archive.
Where to buy The Natural Grip
Still selling as of June 24, 2026. Check today's price and availability.
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See the full The Natural Grip deal breakdown and term sheet →
