What Happened To Chubby Buttons From Shark Tank Season 14?

Improvements in device portability and the efficacy of touch screens over the years have caused an unfortunate casualty in personal electronics — tangible buttons. While perhaps a bit more unwieldy than a touch interface, tangible, specialized buttons are much easier to use in certain circumstances, and depending on who you ask, they're more pleasant to look at and interact with. It's for this reason that Mike Cherkezian and Justin Barad developed Chubby Buttons, the wearable phone remote. Just strap it to your wrist, and you can use its large, tactile buttons to control your music on a Bluetooth-enabled mobile device. Or — thanks to the layer of tiny suction cups on the back — you can stick it anywhere you like.

As part of the 14th season of the entrepreneurial reality show "Shark Tank," Cherkezian and Barad brought their creation before the Sharks. Asking for $250,000 in exchange for 8 percent of their company, they billed their creation as a handy device for those who want to control their phones in situations where fiddling with touch interfaces may not be safe, like jogging, hiking, or riding a motorcycle. Working with both Apple and Android phones, Chubby Buttons proved to be a fairly popular invention, bringing in over $1 million in several years, and Cherkezian and Barad hoped the Sharks would help them take things higher. Unfortunately, while the Sharks were interested in the product, they weren't quite interested enough to invest, and the creators went home empty-handed.

Thankfully, while Cherkezian and Barad couldn't secure additional funding from the Sharks, that didn't put the kibosh on their entrepreneurial spirit. Similar to rejected pitches like Rocketbook from Season 8, Chubby Buttons is still going strong today, with the device still readily available and selling fairly consistently on its official website.

On the device's store page, 241 users have rated it as 4 1/2 stars, with motorcycle riders, in particular, praising it for helping them quickly and easily control their music on their phone without needing to put themselves in danger. One reviewer said that they actually suffered a fall from their bike, but thanks to its sturdy design, their Chubby Buttons made it through completely undamaged. The reviews for Chubby Buttons on Amazon are equally impressive, with 1,000+ users giving the contraption a whopping 4.4 stars.

Besides the device's appearance on Shark Tank, which got it quite a bit of positive press despite the lack of a deal with the Sharks, Chubby Buttons has also made appearances in several print publications, including Entrepreneur, Ski Magazine, and Motorcycle Mojo, with each publication singing the device's praises and naming as a must-buy for their respective enthusiasts.

Per Barad's LinkedIn page, he and Cherkezian have sold over 25,000 Chubby Buttons units, generating over $2 million in lifetime sales. In other words, while they might not have been able to get the Sharks to invest, at the rate Chubby Buttons is moving up in the world, it may have been the Sharks' loss.

"Shark Tank" is available on Prime Video.