Pacific Beach entrepreneur and University of San Diego Business School alumni Stephan Aarstol, and his company, Tower Paddle Boards, will be featured on ABC’s “Beyond the Tank” airing at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 28 on San Diego’s KUSI, Ch. 10. Aarstol, who took a master of business administration degree from the University of San Diego in 1999, founded the stand-up paddle boarding brand in Pacific Beach in 2010. Since partnering with Mark Cuban and landing $150,000 in funding on ABC’s “Shark Tank” in 2012, Tower has done more than $17 million in sales. The San Diego Business Journal named Tower the No. 1 fastest-growing private company in San Diego in 2014. A year later, Tower ranked No. 239 on INC magazine’s “Inc 500” list of Americas fastest growing companies. Using acumen he sharpened during his MBA training, Aarstol has grown Tower’s annual revenues over 2500 percent in the last four years. With only $100,000 in lifetime sales at the time of his investment, Cuban has been quoted in Forbes saying that Tower Paddle Boards is one of his best Shark Tank investments. The “Beyond the Tank” segment includes Cuban meeting with Aarstol in San Diego to discuss different areas of the company to see what they can grow and improve as well as Aarstol traveling to Seattle for a potential business development deal with senior amazon.com executives. As a purveyor of the beach lifestyle, Tower is designed to create tools for the human spirit. Beyond selling paddle boards at TowerPaddleBoards.com, Tower operates a lifestyle magazine at Tower.Life and sells handcrafted wood sunglasses at SunglassesByTower.com.
