SharkNinja’s core beliefs have been the chief force behind our ability to identify, challenge, and reinvigorate categories and markets others have left behind. It is our mission to breathe new life into these categories. Our “show, don’t tell” approach has given consumers the power to demand more – and we have forever changed the way that brands engage with retail channels and their customer bases.

Mark Rosenzweig and his parents founded Euro-Pro in Montreal in 1994. Nearly three decades later, that family-inspired business known today as SharkNinja is delivering its iconic Shark and Ninja household brands to consumers worldwide.

Building the Foundation

Mark focused intently on R&D in order to solve consumer challenges left unaddressed by other products in the market. He started with the premise that consumers are the heroes of their households: resourceful, innovative problem-solvers who deserve more from brands.

Declining markets were a sign of this lack of innovation and consumers suffered. As a result, Mark turned his attention to one declining market in particular—household cleaning—and put this ethos to the test.

Mark watched how consumers were using household products, and how they modified or tried to make do to meet their needs. This became his main inspiration for developing steam cleaners and upright vacuum cleaners as a better way to clean around the house.

Since then, SharkNinja has not deviated from a simple truth: when a consumer puts their trust in a brand, the brand owes it to them to continue innovating.

Operationalizing Innovation

Spurred by consumer trust and customer satisfaction, Mark felt the opportunity was right to expand into new channels and bring innovative Shark® and Ninja® products to more customers. The brand was positioned to revive and disrupt more categories and challenge strong legacy brands that led for decades.

In 2008, the team grew, as Mark Rosenzweig (Mark R.) brought Mark Barrocas (Mark B.) on board to help him achieve his mission. The company expanded beyond household cleaning, establishing the Ninja kitchen appliances brand. This diversification was a pivotal moment in the company’s history, and it would put the company’s customer-first mantra to the test.

The company based its product development strategy on having a deep understanding of the consumer. Identifying consumer problems, or where current solutions were falling short, was the innovation gap to address. This thinking helped revive a declining household cleaning market and showed consumers a better way to clean. The company took this theory to the kitchen and the declining food processor market.

For Mark B., this would be the name of the game, continuing to find opportunities to delight consumers across different areas of the household, knowing they would reward the brand with loyalty. This captures the essence of the Mark and Mark era at the company – operationalizing innovation.

This approach positioned the company to take on legacy household brands. Why? There was a great equalizer at the time—consumer reviews—and the era of consumer empowerment was truly underway. Mark R. and Mark B. knew that if the company delivered extraordinary value, consumers would advocate effectively for the brand. Consumers inspired the company’s products and consumers would spread the word.

Consistent customer support allowed the company to stay true to its beliefs from a marketing perspective. Using infomercials and direct TV to build a retail brand? Not only did SharkNinja squash the notion that this wasn’t possible, they continued to give consumers more power than ever, staying strong during negotiations with big retailers to protect the affordability, accessibility, and quality of Shark and Ninja products.

Mark and Mark focused on two big jobs. The first was to create affordable, accessible innovation for consumers. The second was to create demand for their products at retail—while protecting the premium nature of the brands. By avoiding overelaborate marketing campaigns designed only to drive consumers to discounted products, the company doubled down on its belief that consumers are smart and should be treated with respect. Product performance would be the main source of truth for marketing—the same truth that the company was founded on fifteen years earlier. This philosophy resulted in the nation’s biggest retail brands finding new ways to highlight Shark and Ninja products.

Solving one consumer problem at a time, the company went from upright vacuum cleaners, to multi-functional food processors, to craft coffee makers in 2014.

To maintain its unrelenting consumer focus, and to protect each consumer-built brand, the household appliance manufacturer originally known as Euro-Pro was renamed SharkNinja in 2015. This also resulted in the distinction between Shark Cleaning and Ninja Kitchen brands.

Globalization: Scaling the future

With over 2,000 patents worldwide, SharkNinja is just as much a phenomenal engineering organization as it is a ubiquitous household goods brand.

In 2017, the SharkNinja team felt well positioned to expand beyond the North American market and serve more consumers around the globe. Having identified, challenged, and owned multiple declining markets in North America, the time was right for expansion in a way that preserved the brand’s customer-centric ethos.

Late in 2017, Mark and Mark decided to sell a majority stake in the company.  They maintained operational control and continued to drive strategy, while accelerating growth and expansion into new product categories around the globe.

This meant that Shark Cleaning and Ninja Kitchen could drive innovation and preserve brand affinity, while consumers globally (including China, the second largest small appliance market in the world), could benefit from its portfolio of products. This move was consistent with the company’s history: identify a category with an innovation gap and resurrect it to spur interest, competition, and quality for consumers.

SharkNinja now occupies top market share for vacuum cleaners in the United Kingdom and has successfully expanded into Germany and France. Asia-Pacific growth will explode with the launch of the Shark brand in the China market.

Today, a new era of smart innovation—from the Ninja with FreshVac Technology, to the Shark ION Robot Cleaning System, to the Ninja Foodi—is inspired by Mark Rosenzweig’s original consumer-obsessed ethos.

Mark Rosenzweig, the founder of SharkNinja, continues his original desire to positively impact people’s lives in every home around the world.  He remains involved with the company in an advisory and consultative role.

At its core, SharkNinja still behaves like a startup. The difference is that it is a multi-billion-dollar consumer brand with the backing and support of a global market leader. SharkNinja knows there is only one way to keep playing the game. Continue to put great products into market and keep solving new problems for customers as they surface.