Mark Rosenzweig And Mark Barrocas, SharkNinja
Originally Posted on Homeworldbusiness.com By Peter Giannetti On 8th Sep, 2020
The August 17 edition of HOMEWORLD BUSINESS® revealed the 15th annual “People To Watch” in housewares during the next 12 months.
Selected by HomeWorld Business editors, “People To Watch” represents a cross section of a diverse housewares business — from established to newly installed company leaders; from large to small operations, from big-box to specialty retailers; from trade show managers to celebrity endorsers.
The HomeWorld “People To Watch” are in the spotlight not only for how they might impact their respective organizations in the coming months, but also for how they might impact the overall housewares business.
Mark Rosenzweig, Founder, and Mark Barrocas, President, SharkNinja
CREDENTIALS: Mark Rosenzweig and Mark Barrocas have teamed to steer SharkNinja into a floor care and countertop kitchen appliance powerhouse with annual sales of around $2 billion. Rosenzweig founded Euro-Pro in 1994, and he scored a major breakthrough with Shark-branded steam cleaners and upright vacuum cleaners using what would become the company’s trademark formula of inventive, high-performance product at competitive pricepoints and backed by a vast TV ad spend showcasing infomercials. Barrocas arrived in 2009 with a deep corporate leadership background to support the surging growth of the company, which changed its name to SharkNinja in 2015 after an aggressive expansion using the same TV-driven approach into food prep and more recently cooking electrics under the Ninja brand. Barrocas previously was president of the WearGuard division of Aramark Uniform Services and before that of Broder Bros. sportswear.
WHAT TO WATCH: While Shark Ninja continues to advance its floor care program, including moves into robotic vacs, the kitchen electrics business has seen even more action in the past couple of years through the escalating rollout of the Ninja Foodi collection of multi-cookers, grills, air fryers, ovens and blenders. This has set the stage for an extension by SharkNinja into non-stick cookware under the Ninja Foodi brand, the approaching launch of which recently was previewed briefly on the SharkNinja website with few details. The company earlier signaled a potential cookware play by bringing in former Meyer Corp. managing director Darrin Johnston, whose LinkedIn profile indicates he joined SharkNinja in January as global general manager.
PERSPECTIVE: If the SharkNinja marketing history is a guide, expect the company to deploy an aggressive media strategy, led by infomercials, to support a Ninja Foodi cookware rollout, possibly in time for the 2020 holidays. — Peter Giannetti
2021 HomeWorld Business People To Watch (click on name for profile):
Janet Hayes, Crate & Barrel Holdings
Derek Miller, International Housewares Association
Samantha Rose, GIR (Get It Right)
Jay Zilinskas, Legacy Companies
Mark Tritton, Bed Bath & Beyond
Greg Cairo, Le Creuset of America
Pamela Stafford, Hestan Culinary