What You Need To Know About Maniac Pumpkin Carvers From Shark Tank

Season 15 of "Shark Tank" is in full swing, as people who think their business ideas can withstand the scrutiny of seasoned investors brave the tank to make their pitches. "Shark Tank" has jumpstarted successful products from coffee to phone cleaners, but for the week of Halloween 2023, the show got itself a spooky-themed episode, complete with horror-inspired pitches. Aboard as a guest shark is Jason Blum, the founder of indie horror film studio Blumhouse Pictures, and the pitches this time around all revolve around the scary festivities.

One of the companies making an appearance is Maniac Pumpkin Carvers. If you think you've seen an intricately carved jack-o'-lantern before, you really haven't. Not until you've beheld one of the meticulously crafted gourds created by Marc Evan and Chris Soria, the founders of Maniac Pumpkin Carvers. They're more passionate about pumpkin carving than you'd think a person could be, and the results of their work are epic in scale. If you thought a humble orange gourd couldn't be elevated into a real artistic medium, you might be convinced after learning a few facts about their fascinating company.

The founders of Maniac Pumpkin Carvers have been working at their craft for years, and together with a team of equally skilled pumpkin artists, they work around the clock each Halloween season to bring their customers' dreams to life. They've worked with international brands and esteemed artistic institutions, but can they survive the Shark Tank, or will their prized pumpkins become fish food?   

The founders of Maniac Pumpkin Carvers, Marc Evan and Chris Soria, have been close friends since childhood, as Evan recounted in a 2022 piece for Business Insider. The company is based out of Brooklyn, New York, and the pair met when they attended the same middle school in 1992. They connected over their love for horror artwork, and both attended the Parsons School of Design after high school, where they put together massive Halloween haunted houses each year and carved pumpkins together.

When pumpkins aren't in season, the two friends work as visual artists and muralists, according to their website. Fittingly, they painted a gigantic Jack-o-lantern mural on their Brooklyn HQ. Today, their pumpkin carving empire stretches from art galleries to Broadway theaters, and they are frequently hired by massive companies ranging from movie studios to soda brands. They have taken on a team of other artists who love getting deep in the pulp of a pumpkin and maintain a busy production schedule each Halloween season.

Over the years, Maniac Pumpkin Carvers have built an impressive portfolio of work. Among their other efforts, they've carved up artistic masterpieces for the Museum of Modern Art, which commissions a carving of one of its displayed works each Halloween season. As noted by CNN, Maniac has carved works from Henri Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí onto its gourds. Transferring a painting onto a pumpkin is no small feat, especially when the paintings in question are world-famous masterpieces, but Maniac has managed to capture styles ranging from impressionism to cubism with startling accuracy.

In addition to its more highbrow work, Maniac has also worked with a variety of major brands to deliver pumpkin-ized versions of popular characters or simple brand logos. Their website highlights pumpkins carved with logos from Coca-Cola, IBM, BMW, and American Express, among others.

Their designs, whether two-dimensional paintings or three-dimensional sculptures, are created with a variety of tools. Marc Evan told Mental Floss in 2022 that artistic tools, especially wood carving instruments, chisels, and even linoleum cutters, are the ones usually utilized. They also use tools purpose-built for pumpkin carving, like the kind available at seasonal Halloween stores.

While a pumpkin carving business is obviously dormant for most of the year, things kick into high gear as the harvest season approaches. Each fall, Marc Evan, Chris Soria, and their team of artists launch into long stretches of productivity, practically living at the Brooklyn warehouse where Maniac Pumpkin Carvers operates. That hectic schedule is necessary because their creations don't last very long, which means every pumpkin needs to be carved as close to delivery as possible As Evan wrote for Business Insider, "No matter how far in advance a client commissions a job, we typically carve everything within 24 hours of when it's needed to ensure it looks its best."

The average Maniac pumpkin can take more than a full workday to finish, but artists don't have the luxury of letting them sit on the shelf, where they'd quickly rot. The artistic pieces, in particular, require a careful hand, and Evan estimates about 16 to 20 hours are spent on each of those. "Once we get into October, me, Chris, and some of our artists pretty much work around the clock and take naps in the studio when we need to recharge," he explained.

Given how much labor and time, not to mention patient artistry, goes into the making of a Maniac Pumpkin, it shouldn't come as a surprise that these intricate gourds cost a lot more than the price of the average Halloween pumpkin. Marc Evan explained to Business Insider that their boutique gourds can often cost thousands of dollars.

That explains why so many of the company's clients are massive institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, or huge entertainment companies like MTV and Disney, which can afford to drop a few thousand dollars on a pumpkin carving that's going to decompose within a week or two.

With an established business that employs talented professionals and has worked for some of the biggest names in the world, it makes sense for Maniac Pumpkin Carvers to take their business pitch to the investors on "Shark Tank." There's clearly a demand for their seasonal art form — and room to expand even further.

Marc Evan and Chris Soria enter the "Shark Tank" hoping for a deal once they teach the panel of celebrity investors how to "pumpkin like a pro." They ask for $150,000 in exchange for just 8% of the company, imputing a sizable valuation of $1.875 million.

Over the entire three-year lifespan of their business, however, the entrepreneurs have only sold around $260,000 worth of product ($170,000 in classes and $90,000 in tool kits), most of which were apparently sold business-to-business to corporate clients looking for unique team building opportunities. While this is certainly impressive on its own, the lack of sales and consumer customer base doesn't help justify the buy-in price.

Kevin O'Leary and Mark Cuban congratulate the entrepreneurs on their well-presented pitch and success thus far but decline to invest, citing the absence of clear scaling strategies. Lori Greiner, meanwhile, feels as though their competition — in the form of tools and diagrams purchasable for pocket change at grocery stores — is too stiff and steady to topple. She goes out as well. Barbara Corcoran is out too, questioning why the business doesn't extend its longevity by going into the sand castle market.

Last in the tank is Jason Blum, the CEO and founder of Blumhouse Productions. Despite seeing the artists within Evan and Soria, he can't find the entrepreneurs — he goes out, leaving these charming pumpkins sadly smashed as they exit the "Shark Tank."