How SharkNinja grows its business ‘one five-star review at a time’

With products ranging from vacuums to air purifiers and LED face masks to espresso machines, some might wonder what SharkNinja does better — or differently — than anyone else. 

CEO Mark Barrocas has a definitive answer, and it’s not a particular item. It’s consumer-obsessed product innovation and marketing as a whole. 

“We have a mission statement that I wrote back in 2009, which is positively impacting people’s lives every day, in every home around the world,” he said during a keynote at NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show. “And that’s what we want to do amazing, and do over and over again.” 

The company introduces an impressive 25 new products each year, with more quashed during development than moved forward. SharkNinja’s “disruptive consumer-focused product innovation” means offering high-quality products that consumers love, solving their problems, delivering market-leading performance and providing value. 

But it also means telling a great story, he said. “Our marketing has really gone viral in terms of the way we communicate the products to consumers.” 

Each product is aimed at providing a solution, either to a known problem or one the consumer hasn’t yet recognized. Barrocas gave the example of researchers watching consumers turn their vacuums over and take a knife or scissors to the brush roll to release wrapped hair. Consumers might just see that as part of the process, particularly if they have pets or family members with long tresses. 

“But for us, that becomes the inspiration for innovation,” Barrocas said. “So we go back to our engineers and we say, ‘Can we develop a vacuum cleaner that doesn’t wrap hair?’ And 18 months later, we come out with the Shark self-cleaning brush roll vacuum, and it becomes the number one selling vacuum cleaner in the U.S. So it starts with, we think there’s an unlimited number of consumer problems. That’s why today we’re in 38 different product categories — because we just keep finding problems more and more places in the home and outside the home.” 

He’s talking about a lot of homes: Shark and Ninja are each multibillion-dollar brands. “And I think what’s exciting is that, I don’t think you’re going to find a set of consumer brands that appeal to a larger socioeconomic group of consumers or demographic group of consumers,” he said. 

SharkNinja products are sold from Walmart to Sephora “and everyone in between,” he said. “You could be a billionaire and own SharkNinja products, be a factory worker and own SharkNinja products.” 

In terms of demographics, high school kids talk about the company’s products on Instagram and TikTok, and he recently met a 55-year-old who had just purchased his first Ninja product: an outdoor heater and fire pit. 

The company’s approach to research and development, Barrocas said, “is a meandering journey.” There are usually about 70 ideas at the beginning of the year that get whittled down. That process includes hypothesis “and then putting products into consumer homes, prototypes, and starting to see if they resonate.” 

SharkNinja CEO Mark Barrocas

There’s also focus on TOA (threshold of acceptability); TOE (threshold of excellence); and TOV (threshold of virality). TOA is something like the noise on a vacuum; how loud is too loud? TOE is “something that is going to create real excitement for the consumer” because of how well it works. And TOV, well, that speaks for itself. 

Before a product goes to market, it has been in 1,000 consumer homes around the world for four weeks of user testing, with each consumer providing feedback. The product will continue to go through changes throughout, rather than waiting for a “second generation” to get it right. 

“When the curtain goes up on your Broadway show, I mean, you’ve got to be ready to go, or else The New York Times is going to write a review and you’re going to be out of business,” Barrocas said. As the feedback comes in, “you, as a brand, have two choices: ignore it or do something about it. And we choose to keep doing something about it, because we think our whole business is built on growing our business one five-star review at a time.”