This is the fifth entry in our No Deal, No Problem series, real stories of Shark Tank founders who walked out with nothing and built something real anyway. This one is the only founder in the series who got rejected, came back a year later, got rejected again, and then turned one shark’s insult into an actual product on the shelf.
The First Pitch
James Martin first brought Copa di Vino, single serve wine sold in a sealed plastic cup with no bottle, cork, or glass required, onto season 2. He asked for 600,000 dollars for 20 percent of the company, on the back of more than 500,000 dollars in sales in just five months. Kevin O’Leary countered with a very different structure, offering to license the single serve cup design away from Martin’s wine business entirely, in exchange for 51 percent of the company, majority control. Martin heard the offer out and then turned it down flat.
The Second Pitch
A year later, Martin did something almost nobody else on the show has done. He came back. By season 3, he told the sharks Copa di Vino was on track to top 5 million dollars in sales, with demand strong enough that he needed to build an entire second manufacturing line. This time, Kevin O’Leary, Mark Cuban, and Robert Herjavec combined forces on a joint offer, 600,000 dollars for 30 percent of the company. Mark Cuban specifically called out Martin’s attitude during the negotiation, accusing him of only pretending to consider their terms rather than genuinely negotiating. Martin turned this offer down too, for the same reason as the first time. He wanted to keep control of the business he had built.
The Dead Man Walking Wine
During that first rejection, Kevin O’Leary reportedly told Martin he was a dead man walking, convinced the company would not survive without a shark’s money and guidance. Martin did not just ignore the insult. When he returned for his second pitch a year later, he brought along an actual wine blend called Dead Man Walking, naming a real product directly after O’Leary’s prediction of his failure. It is one of the more openly defiant responses to a shark’s rejection in the show’s history, and it turned a put down into free marketing that Martin controlled entirely on his own terms.
The Real Numbers Since Then
Copa di Vino grew to roughly 20 million dollars in annual sales and a reported valuation of about 70 million dollars in the years following its two appearances. The company’s ownership structure has changed since then. In January 2021, Splash Beverage Group acquired Copa di Vino outright, meaning Martin is no longer the sole owner of the business he twice refused to sell a minority stake in on television. Under Splash Beverage Group, annual sales reportedly grew from around 6 million dollars in 2022 to somewhere between 20 and 30 million dollars by 2025, depending on the source. The company Martin refused to hand 30 percent of to three sharks combined eventually found its way into new hands anyway, just through an acquisition he chose on his own terms rather than a deal offered to him on a soundstage.
Why He Actually Said No, Twice
Strip away the theatrics and the reasoning was consistent across both pitches. The first offer would have taken majority control of the company away from him entirely. The second offer, even at a smaller 30 percent stake spread across three sharks, still represented giving up real, meaningful influence over a business that was already proving itself with real, growing sales. Martin’s answer both times was the same. He would rather grow slower, or take longer to raise capital elsewhere, than give up the ability to run Copa di Vino the way he wanted to run it.
Why We Wrote This
This is the fifth entry in our No Deal, No Problem series, following The Bouqs Company, Coffee Meets Bagel, Xero Shoes, and BedJet. For the fuller picture of how Shark Tank actually works, read our earlier pieces on Shark Tank’s biggest deals and myths, the failure stories behind the show, and the founders who regretted the deals they did take. If you want to understand more about how we approach stories like this one, visit our Brand Guidelines page, or learn more about what Wolvra stands for on our About Us page. If you have a correction, an update, or a rejected pitch we should cover next, our Contact Us page is open.