Yes, GoldieBlox Is Cool, But Have You Heard About Dairy Poop?
If you haven't heard of GoldieBlox or Dairy Poop, read this now.
Nov. 22, 2013 — -- When businessman and realty television star Bill Rancic, handpicked by Donald Trump himself in the first season of "The Apprentice," announced the final four contestants of Intuit's business competition, he channeled his inner sweepstakes spirit.
"When I walked into these businesses, they were all freaking out. I felt like Ed McMahon," Rancic tells ABCnews.com. "They saw the potential of where their businesses could go with this boost."
Rancic personally visited each of the final four contestants of a business competition funded by financial services software company Intuit. The winning company will get a highly coveted 30-second Super Bowl ad potentially worth millions of dollars plus enormous exposure in the weeks leading up to the big game.
While one of the companies, GoldieBlox, has already stormed the Internet with its revolutionary games to inspire girls in engineering, Rancic says the first day of the rest of their business lives will truly start for whichever business earns enough votes to get a Super Bowl ad on Feb. 2.
Read More: GoldieBlox Crushes Girl Stereotypes With Jaw-Dropping Engineering Toys
Intuit employees voted and narrowed the competition down to the final four, but now it's in America's hands, he said. Videos on the website for Small Business, Big Game feature the business owners describing why they think they should win. Anyone can vote for one of the four finalists through November and the winner will be announced at the beginning of 2014.
"Take Dairy Poop. This is a company doing $100,000 a year in sales," Rancic says. Based in Nampa, Idaho, and launched in January, the producer of natural compost from dairy cows places poop in compost rows for a few months. It's then processed and bagged to be used to garden plants and yards. The company sold to its first retailer in March.
"If they win this ad, they are going to be able to pick up the phone and call the CEO of ACE Hardware or Home Depot, and say, 'Listen, I'm going to have a 30-second commercial where 60 million people are going to see it' and they are going to get their product on the shelves of these national retailers," Rancic said. "A year from now that's the real story, when one of these businesses is doing $10 million in revenue. The family is going to be taking over the businesses one day and it's going to affect generations to come."
Rancic won't say if his money is on any one of the final four, but he can argue the strengths of each of the companies.
"The Dairy Poop one, I love their slogan: 'Oops, I pooped my plants.' It's pretty funny," he said with a chuckle. "And you have the young woman who created this board game to help girls get into engineering. It's very diverse."
Read More: Bill Rancic on Amy Robach's Public Cancer Battle: 'She is Going To Save Lives'
GoldieBlox, a company based out of Oakland, Calif., that makes construction toys for girls, has already distributed a viral commercial that uses Beastie Boys' 1987 hit, "Girls" with new lyrics. The CEO and Stanford engineering graduate Debbie Sterling says only 11 percent of the engineers in the U.S. are women. The company started on Kickstarter. You can read more about GoldieBlox here and see an eye-opening video.
"All the shows are talking about the commercials and to think one of these four, that's going to be a heck of a story come middle of January," Rancic said. "This company, whomever it may be, will get millions of dollars in exposure."
