Lori Greiner

Lori Greiner is an American inventor, entrepreneur and television personality best known as an investor on the business reality series "Shark Tank" and for her long-running career as a creator and seller of consumer products. Nicknamed the "Queen of QVC," she has built a reputation for identifying and marketing retail products with mass appeal.

Early life

Greiner was born in 1969 in Chicago, Illinois. She studied at Loyola University Chicago, where she developed interests in communications and the arts. Early in her career she worked while developing ideas for consumer products, and she launched her business after designing and patenting an organizational product, taking on financial risk to bring her first invention to market.

Career

Greiner's breakthrough came with the success of her early retail inventions, which she sold through television shopping and traditional retail channels. She became a prominent presence on the home-shopping network QVC, where she hosted programming and sold a wide range of products over many years. She holds numerous patents and has been credited with creating and launching hundreds of products across categories including household goods, organization, beauty and electronics accessories.

Her public profile grew substantially when she joined "Shark Tank," the American adaptation of the international business-pitch franchise, as a recurring investor. On the program she evaluates pitches from entrepreneurs and invests her own capital in companies she believes can succeed at retail. She has been associated with several high-profile product investments that went on to achieve strong commercial sales, reinforcing her image as an investor with a particular instinct for consumer goods. Among the businesses she has backed are household and storage products as well as wellness items, and she has frequently emphasized her ability to assess quickly whether a product is a "hero" with broad appeal or a more limited proposition.

In addition to her television and investing work, Greiner has hosted her own retail-focused programming and has appeared regularly on home-shopping broadcasts presenting products to large audiences. Her career has been built on a combination of invention, marketing and direct selling, and she is often pointed to as an example of an entrepreneur who turned a single early product into a broad portfolio.

Recent work

Greiner has continued to appear on "Shark Tank" and to mentor entrepreneurs, often emphasizing practical retail strategy, packaging and the importance of distinguishing between products with broad appeal and those with narrower markets. She has written a book about her approach to inventing and selling products and has remained active in promoting and developing consumer goods. Through her television work and business ventures she has become one of the more recognizable figures in the field of product invention and direct-to-consumer retail.