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Out lesbian Stephanie Boone takes her business Wondercide on tonight’s “Shark Tank”

Tonight on Shark Tank, out lesbian entrepreneur Stephanie Boone will appear with her natural product line Wondercide and hopefully hook one of the sharks to help with the expansion of her pesticide-free pest control items. Based in Austin, Texas, Wondercide was inspired by Stephanie’s late dog, Luna, who had allergic reactions to vet-prescribed flea and tick medications. After finding out there weren’t any safe pet products that could help ward off insects, Stephanie decided to create her own, and Wondercide has been thriving ever since.

We spoke with Stephanie about her business and what we can expect to see when she heads into the tank with business partner, Laura Alter, tonight on ABC.

AfterEllen.com: What made you want to go on Shark Tank?

Stephanie Boone: It’s something that my business partner and I, for the last couple of years, when we talk to people about Wondercide, we always hear from friends and family and our customers and people out and about, “Oh my gosh, this would be amazing for Shark Tank!” And so we finally decided to apply and this season alone I think there were over 40,000 applicants for Season 7, which is the one we’ll be on, and 120 companies were selected. And I think maybe 90 or 100 of those will actually air, so our chance to be on the show was .03 percent. … But the really interesting and sort of amazing event hat occurred is that Luna, my Akita Husky and the reason I started the company, she was 16 and a half and actually passed on March 24th last year, and within hours of that happening, we got the phone call from Shark Tank. And so it was hard, it was a really emotional time, but I knew it was something that was so important to our mission and to her legacy, to move forward with that process. And so when it got really tough-because there were a lot of hurdles and it took a lot of time to go through the process-but she was always sort of the driving force to help us through.

AE: Can you talk a little bit about how Luna inspired the creation of Wondercide?

SB: I was at a period in my life where I was really happy at my firm and doing really well professionally. My wife and I had just bought our first home, and we were doing all the adult things you’re supposed to do on the checklist-you know, having the yard done, having pest control come on a routine basis. So we were doing that with our new house and with our dogs and cats we were using vet prescribed flea and tick medication. And Luna started to have really severe skin irritation or hot spots, just constantly chewing on herself. We did allergy testing, and we couldn’t figure out what it was; the vet didn’t know what it was. And then she started having little seizures, and the vet didn’t know what it was. And finally, the vet we took her to did some liver and kidney testing and found she was having liver and kidney failure, which they thought was a result of either single use of the flea and tick medication or a combination fo the product used on the yard and her flea and tick medication. That sort of rocked my world; I didn’t understand how we were doing all the things we were supposed to do, and we were making our child sick.

So I started researching and learned that we’re basically all just sort of blindly poisoning our kids and our homes, whether it’s our two-legged kids or our four-legged kids, and our properties. So it sort of lit a fire in me I couldn’t turn away from. I didn’t really have a plan; I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I was just sort of overwhelmed with this information. The vets recommended that we put Luna down, and she had a good long life, and it wasn’t an option for me. It just couldn’t be that way. So I left my firm and did everything I could to detox her, detox our homes and our lives, and that’s when we started learning about organic and organic gardening and eliminating all of the chemicals.

And I just sort of kept going and I started a website, initially, that was just information-based to let parents know, “Hey, we’re all poisoning our animals-you should know this.” And so many people started contacting me saying, “Yeah, that’s great, we know, but what are we supposed to do about it?” And so really I became a mad scientist. I put some shelves up in my garage and started tinkering with things, and fixing things and within a few months I had several formulations that I put in little sample bottles and passed out to everyone I knew. And then picked the dtop three or four of the best ones and took them to a lab to be tested, and the one that had the best performance is the one we went to market with.

AE: Wow, so were you really good at chemistry class? How did you figure this out?

SB: No! It was entirely a labor of love. Math and science was sort of not my gig. I was always more liberal arts; arts and literature. But it was just something that with research, I think I became really analytical and really research and data-driven and it sort of-it changed who I was and what I needed to be in order to get this thing done. It’s so much bigger than me.

AE: I always see recalls or warnings about vet-recommended product on the news or social media. Are these scares driving people to Wondercide and wanting to learn about not poisoning their own animals?

SB: Absolutely. I think there’s undeniably a consumer demand driving this where people are wanting safer products to protect their families, and I think really it started with the organic food movement. And it took several years for that to kick off, but people are just now starting to realize-and we’re trying to help them realize-that it’s not just in your food. Pesticides are everywhere. They’re all over your home, all over your lawn, and we’re putting them directly on ourselves, directly on our animals. And if you read any of the labels-whether it’s a can under the kitchen sink or the drops or pills for your dogs-it says right on the back of the box that this is harmful and toxic, and you shouldn’t get it on your skin, yet you’re applying it directly to your animal. People are starting to ask questions and, you know, I would say that a large portion of our customer base is not just people that are looking for something natural, they’re also looking for something that’s effective because a lot of people have said the drops and the pills are no longer working very well. So I think there’s also this feeling and sort of even scientific evidence to back it up, of resistance; the chemicals just aren’t working like they used to. Sometimes there are articles like “super fleas” and “super ticks” and they’re becoming resistant to it, and so our products are biological based, and so it would take thousands of years potentially for insects to evolve for this not to work.

AE: What is the competition like for you? Are there a lot of other companies doing similar natural pet products?

SB: So with respect to competitive landscape, it’s interesting because there are certainly chemical-based companies and pharma-based companies on the pet side, all of the flea and tick drops and pills are pharmaceutical, and so those big pharma companies for people are also the ones that put out the pet products. And then the same thing on the chemical/pesticide part of it for consumer products that you would have under your kitchen sink-common name brands-or in your garage to throw on the lawn, so there’s those, and then there are, on the natural flea and tick side, there’s a couple of competitors. So the way that we’re different is that those products are typically essential oils with a trifectant, which allows the water to mix with the oil. But our product doesn’t contain any water, so it’s a proprietary patented formula that has a delivery method of the oil without using water, so it suffocates the insect and instantly repels them. But the competitive landscape whether it’s chemical or natural-there’s really no company doing what we’re doing. … Our mission is to eliminate exposure of pesticides for family, pets and home. And so in that regard, there are no other companies doing that. I think there are a lot of companies out there selling products to kill bugs, but what we’re trying to do is essentially save lives by eliminating that toxic exposure.

AE: So going into Shark Tank, what was your strategy and what were you hoping for? Did you have a specific shark in mind?

SB: SI think we had to think long and hard about going on the show and what purpose it would serve because our business is organically is doubling year over year and so the time commitment it took-it really had to be worth it for us, and so we looked at the partnership of the sharks that were available, the people that we were interested in were Barbara Corcoran, Laurie Greiner and we also had interest in Mark Cuban and we chose them because of their selling channels. One is an expert in sort of e-commerce, and a couple are experts in retail, and pet specialty retail.

So that’s really who we wanted to partner with, and our strategy was to expand to independent pet stores and other types of independent stores throughout the country, natural groceries, things of that nature. All of our products are sourced and made in the USA, right here in Texas. So it’s really important to me as a company as a culture that we’re creating jobs in the United States. And so we also are very big on go local, sort of one of our campaigns and a big campaign here in Austin. So we want to be able to support small Mom and Pop or small local businesses nationwide. And so while we could go to bigger companies, we would just be a product on a shelf. Our mission is to provide a non-toxic solution, and the way to do that is through relationships. … Our intent on going onto the show is really to share that message. You’re using these products already; just switch them out for something that is safe, and that is what we asked for the funds for. You’ll see that, probably, on the episode.

AE: Would you say you had a positive experience?

SB: There’s a panel of five, and so it gave us the opportunity to pick and choose the questions that we wanted to answer, and they could receive it the way we want them to hear it. So I feel like it was a really positive experience and everyone within the Shark Tank family-producers-were just really excited about what we’re doing, so it was awesome.

AE: It seems like it would only be a good thing to get the exposure on Shark Tank, even if you didn’t get a deal. But did you have any hesitations?

SB: Our hesitations were the time that it took. Laura and myself, she’s my CMO and joined me a partner in the company, we constantly had to check in with each other; are we sure we want to keep going because only 120 were selected to film and less than that would air. But Luna’s legacy and the purpose behind what we’re doing is so much bigger, we have to make it through for her and for all of the others who want solutions for protecting their families without poisoning them.

AE: It’s always said that lesbians are huge into cats, but I feel like dogs are becoming the new go-to pet for gay women. What’s your professional opinion?

SB: My experience has always been more dogs, I think. And I don’t know if that’s an Austin thing, but all the lesbians I know have three or more.

Watch Stephanie on Shark Tank tonight on ABC at 9/8c.

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