Everyone who wears reading glasses has done it. You take them off, set them down somewhere, and spend the next ten minutes hunting for them while they sit on your head.
Rick Hopper got tired of it, bent a paperclip, stuck a magnet on it, and eventually walked into the Shark Tank with a pitch that ended with him giving away 65% of his company. That sounds like a terrible trade. It turned out to be one of the better-known success stories the show has produced.
This post covers what ReadeREST actually is, what happened in the Tank, how the sales numbers stack up, and why a straight answer on “net worth” is harder to find than most websites let on.
Where ReadeREST came from
Hopper started needing reading glasses after he turned 40, and he kept losing, scratching and dropping them. In 2010 he made his own fix out of paperclips and magnets, according to Wikipedia’s entry on the company. People kept asking about it. Friends, family and strangers all wanted one.
He ran a patent search, found the idea was already patented by someone else, and found out the patent was for sale. He ended up with the rights.
Before ReadeREST, Hopper had spent nearly a decade building a separate product business called TrimQuick before renaming and pivoting it into what became ReadeREST in 2011. Over the following year he worked farmers’ markets and gun, golf and quilt shows to figure out who actually wanted the thing.
By the time he applied to the show, he was assembling each unit by hand and had made nearly 100,000 holders himself, generating roughly $65,000 in total sales. That is a real business, but a small one.
The pitch
ReadeREST appeared in Season 3, Episode 6, which aired on February 24, 2012. Hopper was working under the name SpecSecure by ReadeREST at the time, and he was based in Fullerton, California, according to Sony’s press release for the follow-up episode.
He made an entrance. He tripped on the way in to show what his product was for, a move Invision magazine called a pratfall. His friends had all told him not to do it.
The numbers:
| Hopper’s ask | $150,000 for 15% |
| Implied valuation | $1,000,000 |
| Lori Greiner’s offer | $150,000 for 65% |
| Implied valuation | about $230,000 |
| Other Sharks | Passed |
Mark Cuban, Daymond John, and Kevin O’Leary all passed. Greiner came back with the 65% counter and told him she’d make him a millionaire. He took it.
The gap between those two valuations is the whole story. Hopper asked for a million-dollar company. Greiner’s offer valued it at under a quarter of that. What he got in exchange was access to QVC, where she had spent years selling products.
What happened after the episode
The QVC debut did what she said it would. The product sold out within five minutes. Shark Tank Blog’s preview of the follow-up segment says more than $100,000 worth went in those first five minutes.
That follow-up segment aired within weeks of the original episode. By then Hopper had sold about $1.4 million of product, and he and Greiner were projecting more than $6 million in sales for 2012. Note the word projecting. A lot of sites repeat the $6 million as if it were a final number for the year. It wasn’t. It was a forecast made a few weeks in.
The later numbers I could find:
- 2018: more than $8 million in total sales since the show, according to Business Insider.
- Amazon alone: over 3 million units sold through Amazon, per product listing data — a concrete unit figure that’s consistent with the lifetime sales claims.
- As of Greiner’s current site: over $37 million in lifetime sales since the episode aired. A separate report from Yahoo Entertainment puts it at $27 million, without a specific date. Those two are measuring different points in time, not contradicting each other.
The $37 million figure is the highest credible claim, but it comes from the Shark’s own promotional page, so read it as the company’s number and not an audited one.
The product has also grown past the original clip. Looper’s write-up lists four styles of holder — stainless steel, black, and two Swarovski versions — plus a line of reading glasses. The same article says it has been sold at Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond and Ace Hardware. Bed Bath & Beyond has since gone out of business, so don’t expect to find it there.
ReadeREST net worth: what we can actually say
This is the section you probably came for, so here is the direct answer. There is no verified net worth for ReadeREST or for Rick Hopper. The company is private and doesn’t publish financials.
Plenty of sites will give you a figure anyway. I found estimates of $4 million, $12 million and $20 million, none with a credible source. One page described ReadeREST as a reading app that pitched in Season 11. It isn’t, and it didn’t. Those pages are written to match the search, not to report anything.
Here is what you can reason from, and where it stops:
- Sales are not valuation. $37 million in lifetime sales is revenue spread over about fourteen years. It says nothing about profit, debt, or what a buyer would pay.
- The split matters. Under the 2012 terms, Greiner owns 65% and Hopper owns 35%. I found no public record of that changing, though it also isn’t something companies are required to announce.
- Hopper has other income. He is a serial entrepreneur with nearly a decade of product business behind him before ReadeREST, and he hosts a podcast, so anything attributed to him personally mixes in more than this one product.
If someone hands you a precise number, ask where it came from. For a private company like this one, the honest answer is almost always that nobody outside it knows.
Was 65% too much to give up?
It’s the question everyone asks, and the arithmetic favors Hopper.
Before the show he had about $65,000 in lifetime sales and a product he was assembling himself. Afterward it was on QVC, in big-box retail, and on its way to millions in sales. Thirty-five percent of that company is worth far more than 100% of what he started with, even if you only trust the lowest figures above.
It also wasn’t a one-off. Greiner took 58% of Cordaroys for $200,000, per Shark Tank Blog’s list of the show’s biggest earners, and that company reached $195 million in lifetime sales. She tends to ask for a lot and then do a lot of the selling.
The caveat is that we only see the winners. For every founder who gave up a majority stake and thrived, there are others where the deal never closed or the partner went quiet. ReadeREST worked partly because the product suited her channel — something you can explain in three seconds on camera, demonstrated live.
What other founders can take from it
Fit beats percentage. A product that you can explain in ten seconds on camera belongs on QVC, and Hopper’s pitch was literally a demonstration. If your product needs a long explanation, ask whether the channel you’re pitching can actually carry it.
A cheap fix can still be a real business. The idea wasn’t complicated. What he did was test it on actual customers for a year before he ever got near a TV studio, and assemble nearly 100,000 units by hand before deciding he needed outside help.
Check the number behind the headline. When you read about a success story, find out whether a figure is a result, a projection or a marketing claim. Plenty of the sales numbers floating around for this one were never confirmed by anyone outside the company.
FAQs
Who owns ReadeREST today?
Under the 2012 deal, Lori Greiner took 65% and Rick Hopper kept 35%. I couldn’t find any public record of a change. The company is private, so a change wouldn’t necessarily be reported.
Is ReadeREST still in business?
It appears to be. The website is still listed at readerest.com, and it shows up as a sponsor on Hopper’s podcast, Not The Rick Hopper Show. Check the site directly for current stock and pricing.
Where can you buy genuine ReadeREST holders?
The safest route is the company’s own site. It has also sold through QVC, Amazon and various big-box stores over the years, but retail availability changes, so confirm before you go looking in a store.
How much has ReadeREST made?
Reported lifetime sales run from over $8 million as of 2018 to a claimed $37 million-plus on Greiner’s site. Revenue isn’t profit, and neither number is audited.
Did Lori Greiner keep her promise to make him a millionaire?
There’s no public confirmation of his personal finances. The company clearly did well, and Looper calls it one of the show’s bigger successes, but whether he crossed a million personally isn’t something that has been documented.
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