What Happened To Hold Your Haunches After Shark Tank?

Erin Bickley and Jenny Greer, two entrepreneurial friends from Macon, Georgia, appeared on Season 5 of "Shark Tank" to pitch their shapewear for women. They came up with the idea after unsuccessfully trying to find shaping garments that would help their lower body area appear tighter. Frustrated with the lack of products that suit their needs, the duo invented their own compressing leggings that hold everything up and together, aptly naming them Hold Your Haunches.

After handing out samples of their shaping pants, Bickley and Greer were met with mixed reactions. While the female Sharks, Lori Greiner and Barbara Corcoran, were impressed by the sturdiness of the product, some of the male investors had a different point of view. Kevin O'Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful, stated that Hold Your Haunches can be classified as false advertising as it would make women look different than they actually do.

With all of the male Sharks backing out of Hold Your Haunches because they couldn't see the product's appeal, Greiner and Corcoran decided to prove a point by investing in the shapewear.

The Macon-based duo sought an investment of $75,000 in exchange for a 20% equity stake in Hold Your Haunches. At the time of filming, which was in 2014, the company had a total of $280,000 in sales since 2010, with a profit of $50,000 within the last year.

Erin Bickley and Jenny Greer pitched their Hold Your Haunches leggings as having a fully integrated shapewear liner that provides smoothing and slimming support to women of all ages and shapes. The friends explained that it cost them $18 to make the product in Asia, which they sold for $69 wholesale and $139 retail. However, even before getting to the numbers, the male Sharks were out. Mark Cuban said that shapewear simply wasn't his area of investment, while Robert Herjavec didn't find himself knowledgeable enough on the field to make a deal.

Kevin O'Leary, on the other hand, called the product fraudulent, implying that women who wear shapewear are falsely advertising themselves to men. The narrative caused Lori Greiner and Barbara Corcoran to call the male Sharks out for never investing in female products. They both decided to prove their point by going into business with Bickley and Greer, offering them $75,000 for a 40% company stake with an additional $100,000 credit line to help fulfill the purchase orders. The Hold Your Haunches inventors accepted the offer with open arms, despite it not being what they initially bargained for.

After their "Shark Tank" pitch and an investment from the female investors, Erin Bickley and Jenny Greer's shapewear quickly gained traction. According to an interview the entrepreneurial pair did with The Macon Telegraph, their business bloomed as soon as the segment aired. They shared that their sales tripled in the first month alone and that the behind-shaping leggings sold out within the first three days post-air.

"We did close to $2 million in sales in 2015," Bickley shared. While their product was doing well in stores, online sales were the main source of their income, so the Hold Your Haunches owners decided to focus on that. "Probably 90 percent of our business is online," Bickley shared, adding that the shapewear leggings don't give off the best impression to an in-store customer by just hanging on the rack.

She also noted that Lori Greiner and Barbara Corcoran ultimately owned less than 40% of the company as they continued their negotiations off-camera. "We received very little money, but we got what we wanted, which was a partnership with two women. They can just open doors much faster than we ever could," Bickley said of their partnership. Corcoran was also more than satisfied with her investment, saying that Bickley and Greer were easy to work with. "Erin and Jenny are natural-born entrepreneurs. They are not only creative, but they know how to execute on their dreams," she shared with The Macon Telegraph in an email.

In the years following their "Shark Tank" appearance, Erin Bickley and Jenny Greer expanded their Hold Your Haunches merchandise. When the duo pitched on the reality show, they had two styles of pants — the legging and the bootcut. They later introduced a shorter version of the legging, the capri, as well as a knee-length, shaping skirt. A spaghetti-strapped tank top, a long-sleeve top, and a shawl were also available for purchase.

However, most of the reviews on Amazon are for the different styles of leggings, and they're quite mixed. As for the capris, some claimed they were way too hard to get into and that even sizing up didn't do the trick, while others didn't like the overall fit of the style. The standard leggings were even less popular, with customers stating that the quality was off and that they were simply not worth the money. The bootcut pants also didn't get much love, but some customers did like the way the style looked on them.

While Bickley and Greer claimed to have solved the problem of shapewear pants that fit all women and can be worn from day to night, people who purchased them weren't as convinced, which could have led to the demise of Hold Your Haunches.

Despite their initial success and a reported net worth of $1 million, per GAG, Hold Your Haunches seems to have gone out of business. Their official website can't be reached, and their social media hasn't been updated in some time. The last photo they posted on Instagram was in 2020, while the Twitter account previously linked to their IG has rebranded and has made no mention of the company or its products as of late. The Facebook page they used has been deleted, and an Amazon search for Hold Your Haunches products lists generic shapewear leggings that don't seem to be from the company.

According to Gazette Review, the company's website was active in January 2023, and Erin Bickley and Jenny Greer announced a bathing suit line at the time. Sometime between then and the time of this writing, the site went down, but the inventor duo never released an official closing statement or announced a rebrand. Even though at one point it seemed Bickley and Greer's shaping garments might become one of the most successful products from the show, they're currently nowhere to be found. While it isn't clear whether the company went bust, going dark without a word surely isn't the best business move.