It was tuberculosis and an oven that, 111 years ago, caused the birth of what is today one of the most viral, sought after, sold out and resold products in the entire United States: a cup-bottle-thermos (called quencher) that is sweeping the entire country (and on social networks), with lines in supermarkets that cause camping and even robberies and thanks to which his company has multiplied its sales by 10. And all to be able to carry a long liter of hot coffee all day.
To understand the story you have to start at the beginning, but to understand the phenomenon it is better to start at the end. It all started in 1913, when William Stanley Jr. started working for General Electric, inventing an oven. Although he lived in Pittsburgh, tuberculosis caused him to return north, to the town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he had spent his childhood with his grandparents. There he started camping and hiking and saw that he needed a good bottle that would keep him warm and cold. He applied his knowledge of steel, insulation and temperatures, the same with which he worked for that furnace, and found an insulating canteen that he patented in August 1912. A year later he set up his company and, according to local records, in 1924 They were already manufacturing between 800 and 900 thermoses a day. Good at inventions and bad at business, he sold it in 1933, and in 2002 it passed into the hands of a Seattle multinational, PMI.
And here is the recent history. The brand began to grow and develop more and more products, until in 2016 its so-called Quencher arrived, a 40-ounce (1,183 liter) glass with lid and straw for 45 dollars, about 41 euros, whose base fits into the spaces for the car bottles. It was just another invention. In 2020, Terence Reilly arrived, joining as president of the company. Reilly landed from Crocs, the company of colorful (and desirable and increasingly trendy) plastic clogs, and quickly understood that the market had to view his products as objects of desire. Looking for new outlets for his products, he discovered the website of a Utah blogger and marketer named Ashlee LeSueur, known as The Buy Guy, who loved quenchers… which were becoming more and more discontinued. They reached an agreement and he sold her 10,000 of her thermoses for her to resell to her fans; She has explained in an interview that it was “a huge risk”, “a mortgage”, because she invested all her savings. But her community caught on quickly: he managed to sell the first 5,000 in four days; another 5,000 in an hour. It was a revelation for both parties, who joined forces to continue developing the quenchers. “Any brand in the world that does not target women between the ages of 25 and 50 is losing perspective,” LeSueur said in an interview a few months ago. 98% of its 180,000 followers are women.
Then, of course, Stanley flew alone. She began to develop colors (more than 100), special editions, customizations, accessories for her bottles (from keychains to covers)… which have caused her sales to multiply. And everything represents a huge sales success for the company, which according to The New York Times has grown 275% from 2020 to 2021. According to the chain CNBC (the only one that has data provided by the company), the company has already sold more than 10 million quenchers and has gone from billing 73 million dollars in 2020 to 750 million in 2023. Its vice president of global sales, Matt Navarro, stated in the magazine Retail Dive that Stanley is the number one brand in the United States in drinking articles, and that on TikTok they have 700 million views with the label #StanleyTumbler.
Your old woman classic green bottle It is no longer the best-seller, as it was just five years ago, and has given the throne to the giant thermos. There are several factors that have helped. On the one hand, putting women at the center as a target audience, millennials or generation Z, and with social networks as a base: hundreds of instagramers and TikTokers recommend them to their friends and acquaintances, it is a hit among mothers who say they don't even have time to refill a bottle, who collect them and accumulate them as soon as a new one comes out. Car culture, almost a second home for Americans, also has an influence: according to the AAA insurer, one of the most powerful in the country, in 2021, 92% of American households have a car and spend time in him 61 minutes a daywhile In 2017 there were 51 and in 2014, 48. Also in the United States, a lot of bottled water is consumed (16,000 million gallons, that is, more than 60,000 million liters), but disposable bottles have an increasingly worse reputation, which is why refillable ones are sought. And then there is the coffee market, the second most consumed drink in the country, which moves 81 billion dollars per year—according to 2021 data—since three out of four Americans drink it daily. The average expense on coffee is $200 annually.
In addition, these months two powerful viral moments, not sought by the brand but supported by it, have helped them. The first when in November 2023 an American woman named Danielle showed on her social networks how her car had completely burned… except for the Stanley mug that she had inside her, which had survived. She was seen by 100 million people, and the CEO of the company responded offering you not only a new thermos but also a car, something that positioned them even more in the market: dozens of comments claimed that they had bought their products because of both videos. In January, real madness broke out when the brand released two editions (in pink and red, for Valentine's Day) in collaboration with Target supermarkets. It's not that they were sold out, it's that there were queues and campers outside the stores from the day before. As if it were a new iPhone, in Starbucks coffee shops, where one of them was also sold, There were even assaults and fights.. target has laid off employees for getting them ahead of time and reselling them. From 45 dollars they
have gone to 200, 300 on eBay. The giant thermos fever has no limits.
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