Gayla Bentley was the fashion designer behind Gayla Bentley Fashion, a line of chic clothing for women sizes 12-28. The charismatic saleswoman pitched her business on Shark Tank, where she said she’d been making $500,000 in sales per year. Bentley told the Sharks she needed an investment to open a flagship store in Houston, Texas. After negotiating a deal with Daymond John and Barbara Corcoran on TV, she said playfully, “Let’s go eat!”
Four years after the Shark Tank episode (which aired in 2009), Daymond John said it was one of the worst deals he made on the show. During an interview on The Breakfast Club on power 105.1 FM, John said while he thought Gayla was “an amazing designer,” he said he and Corcoran “haven’t seen her since” making the deal. (See interview below.) In 2012, Gayla and her business partner husband Russell Bentley told their small business story on a segment of MSNBC’s Your Business, which did not mention the appearance on Shark Tank (see video below). The Gayla Bentley Fashion website is still up, though “under construction.”
