{"id":16402,"date":"2025-09-25T21:02:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T03:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-alumna-and-father-score-investment-on-shark-tank\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:57:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:57:23","slug":"fort-lewis-college-alumna-and-father-score-investment-on-shark-tank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-alumna-and-father-score-investment-on-shark-tank\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lewis College alumna and father score investment on \u2018Shark Tank\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lindley
Lindley Gallegos Bach and her father Andres Gallegos explain their shoe company, Z-Coil Footwear, to investors on ABC's \u201cShark Tank.\u201d (Courtesy of Lindley Gallegos Bach)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Albuquerque-based Z-Coil Footwear is set to continue supplying pain-relieving shoes after being awarded a hefty investment on Wednesday\u2019s season premier of ABC\u2019s entrepreneurial reality show \u201cShark Tank.\u201d<\/p>\n

Father-daughter duo Andres Gallegos and Lindley Gallegos Bach, a Fort Lewis College alumna, appeared on \u201cShark Tank\u2019\u2019s\u201d season 17 premier to pitch their shoe company to investors. The sharks were skeptical of the company\u2019s viability at first, but in a dramatic twist, investor Lori Greiner announced she would give $250,000 to Z-Coil with a 50% stake in the company.<\/p>\n

That was actually the second time Gallegos Bach and her dad tried to get on \u201cShark Tank.\u201d In 2024, the pair applied but did not make the cut. But after a lot of tweaking and refining to their business pitch, the pair were selected from a pool of 200,000 applicants to appear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a hard, hard process,\u201d Gallegos Bach said. \u201cBetween January and June, we put in dozens, if not hundreds of hours into our pitch videos and to our scripting. \u2026 You have to get all that stuff together before they accept you. We\u2019re honored. We\u2019re actually on the premiere episode, which is cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Z-Coil shoes were dreamed up by Gallegos Bach\u2019s grandfather in 1991. They feature a spring built into the heel that, according to Z-Coil\u2019s website, can absorb up to 50% of the impact from walking. The shoes are designed to help relieve pain for people who have undergone surgeries such as ankle fusions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just going to be looking for the latest and greatest in materials to make the shoe lighter and even more comfortable than it already is,\u201d Gallegos Bach said. \u201cAnd I think \u2013 from my perspective \u2013 introduce a lot of new styles.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the money, she and her father hope to update their shoe design to be lighter and offer more exciting graphics and fashionable styles. The footwear\u2019s unprepossessing style was even brought up on the show by Shark Kevin O\u2019Leary.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion, ugly shoes are really in right now,\u201d Gallegos Bach said. \u201cPlatforms are coming back, Gen Zers are wearing orthopedic shoes. Crocs are like the ugliest thing you\u2019ve ever seen. And so people always tell us our shoes are ugly. And I\u2019m like, \u2018Well, look around. There\u2019s lots of funky stuff right now, and our shoes are comfortable.\u2019 So we\u2019re not just funky, we\u2019re actually really functional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Z-Coil
Z-Coil footwear CEO and engineer Andres Gallegos, left, and Marketing Director Lindley Gallegos Bach pitch their shoe company on \u201cShark Tank.\u201d They were awarded a $250,000 investment on the show. (Courtesy of Lindley Gallegos Bach)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Over the past 30 years, Z-Coil has received millions of dollars in research and design, Gallegos Bach said. With this new investment, they hope to boost sales and create new styles, broadening their market and customer base.<\/p>\n

She said 25% of Z-Coil\u2019s customers are in health care, and she hopes to one day collaborate with Fort Lewis College\u2019s nursing program to provide footwear for those who spend long hours on their feet.<\/p>\n

Gallegos Bach said her family\u2019s business has seen its share of hardship. In 2020, her mother died, and her father struggled to run the business while grieving. The business declined, and so the two went on \u201cShark Tank\u201d to revitalize it and bring their product to more people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was almost a 45-minute pitch that they cut into a couple of minutes,\u201d she said. \u201cSo of course they don\u2019t get to see everything, but it was really emotional. My dad and I felt like we were as vulnerable as we could be, and we left it all out on the line.\u201d<\/p>\n

sedmondson@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pain-relieving Z-Coil Footwear given funding to expand market, colors and styles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[431,902,132,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-general","tag-entertainment-general","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20181,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16402\/revisions\/20181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16402"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}