Marble Falls couple lands ‘Shark Tank’ spot with hat rack
Chelsea and John Giles of Marble Falls will appear on the hit ABC reality TV series ‘Shark Tank’ to pitch their patented, minimalist hat rack, DomeDock. Staff photo by Dakota Morrissiey
Chelsea and John Giles of Marble Falls will appear on the popular ABC reality TV series “Shark Tank” in March to pitch their minimalist hat rack, DomeDock. The couple spent the past six years improving their product, and if everything goes according to plan, they could get the deal of a lifetime from the larger-than-life cast of CEOs and industry titans that host the show.
The Gileses’ segment will air at 7 p.m. Friday, March 14. It has already been filmed, but the couple was sworn to secrecy about the results.
“Shark Tank” features business owners, inventors, and entrepreneuers pitching their products and concepts to a group of hard-nosed, big-business tycoons who may or may not make offers to buy them out or partner with them in the venture. The Sharks include Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban as well as Daymond John, Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Robert Herjavec, and Lori Greiner.
“The whole thing, the whole story of DomeDock, has just felt totally unbelievable,” Chelsea told DailyTrib.com on Friday, Feb. 28. “It’s totally changed our lives.”
The couple started DomeDock as a side project while living in Lubbock in 2019. John made the first versions by hand as a solution to his own problem of having too many ball caps and no place to store them. Chelsea initially sold the hat racks at weekend community markets, but demand quickly grew and they expanded to Etsy, an online website for selling handmade items.
“Basically, it’s our solution to trying to make the most efficient way to store ball caps,” John said. “They just sold like hot cakes. It was great.”
The budding business began to boom in 2020, and the couple shifted into high gear, securing a patent for their design, launching a website, and running a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign to develop a unique plastic injection mold to start making their hat racks en masse. By 2022, DomeDock was thriving, and the Gileses were able to leave their day jobs and work for themselves full time.
“We decided that if we were running this business online, we could live anywhere, so we thought, ‘Let’s find the prettiest place we can find’,” Chelsea said.
That prettiest place was Marble Falls, which they discovered on a series of weekend trips across the Hill Country.
The Giles family moved to the city about three years ago and now attend church at LifeFamily Marble Falls, where a watch party is planned for their “Shark Tank” segment. Their children go to school at Faith Academy of Marble Falls, just down the road.
“I feel like so much of the community has just had their arms open, and we just felt so welcome immediately,” Chelsea said.
Their appearance on “Shark Tank” was not set in stone, even after they made their pitch. The couple answered an open casting call in May 2024 and made it to an actual meeting with the Sharks last September, but they didn’t hear back about a potential air date until recently.
“We had almost given up hope (about appearing on the televised version of the show),” John said. “We went nuts last Friday (Feb. 21) when they emailed us (confirming that the segment would air).”
The Gileses watched the “Shark Tank” series throughout the development of DomeDock, and now they’ll be a part of the show’s 16-year history.
“I always thought we could do that. I could see us up there,” Chelsea said. “But to actually be in it is very surreal.”