The Journal. - How the Stanley Cup Became the Internet's Favorite Water Bottle

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

The Stanley Quencher, an insulated water bottle, is everywhere these days. And the popularity has been good for the company. Stanley generated $750 million in revenue last year. WSJ's Callum Borchers explains how a brand traditionally loved by outdoorsmen has become the new favorite of moms and teen girls. Further Reading: The New Office Status Symbol Holds a Lot of Water—and Has a Wait List Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bella Boy is 18 years old, and she lives in Florida. The other day, we got on a video call, and she showed me her collection of water bottles. I have all of them here. This one is called Iris. It's a blue color, and this one's a 30-ounce cup. Iris. It's a blue color and this one's a 30 ounce cup. And then I have another 30 ounce and this is called Sizzling Pink. I got a lot of these for Christmas. These aren't just any water bottles. These are Stanley water bottles, also known as Stanley cups. Stanley cups are insulated travel mugs. And the most popular style, the one Bella has 11 versions of,

is called the Stanley Quencher. It costs around 50 bucks. This is the Starbucks Stanley, very sparkly, very pink. And if you have a teenager or have been on social media recently, you've probably heard about Stanley cups. They're insanely popular right now. And this one is the 40 ounce. So it's bigger than those other two. Here's one of the Valentine's Day ones. It's super cute with a little heart next to the logo

and the different colors up top by the straw. But the thing I'm like still trying to wrap my head around is like, why? Like it's a cup. Like, why is it such a big deal? I kind of laugh about it too. Sometimes I'm like, do I really need 11 cups? And it is kind of crazy. But in a sense, it's like, if you have interest towards something, you know, it's okay if you like it. And if you want to get them, everybody has, you know, things they're interested in that other people just don't understand. And it is like, I do think it's silly. It's a cup, but I really do. I just, I love Stanley cups.

This type of love from millions of people like Bella has been great for Stanley's business. has been great for Stanley's business. The company's revenue, according to its president, has gone up by 1,000% in just three years. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Friday, January 19th. Coming up on social media, you can spend more time dinnering with them.

How's that spicy enchilada? Very flavorful. Yodeling with them. Ew. Ooh, must be mating season. And hiking with them. Is that a squirrel? Bear! Run!

Collect more moments with more ways to earn. Air Mile. Our colleague Callum Borshers has been writing about the Stanley craze. So, I just noticed that you took a sip of something. Was it from a Stanley cup? I do have a Stanley, but no, I usually keep it in the car because you can put it in there. And I mean, true to the branding, the stuff does stay cold in there. Can you give me the history of Stanley? Stanley Company has been around for more than a century. You know, I think of it with like my Eagle Scout

father from New Hampshire, right? Like toting around camping gear in the woods. And that's sort of what the brand had been for a long time. The Stanley brand was founded by inventor William Stanley Jr. in 1913. He invented the steel vacuum insulated

bottle that Stanley and tons of other brands still use to this day. The technology is really good at keeping hot things hot and cold things cold for hours. Over the years, Stanley became popular with campers and construction workers. In one of the company's ads from the 1970s, a Stanley bottle takes a big tumble on a construction site and comes out unscathed. Stanley, the top all-steel thermos bottle that's completely defendable and built to take a bounding year after year. For decades, Stanley enjoyed modest success,

selling various cups and mugs, as well as camping cooking sets and coolers. selling various cups and mugs, as well as camping cooking sets and coolers. They were useful, but they definitely were not cool or trendy. In 2016, the company introduced a new product called the Quencher. The Quencher is a large cup with a giant handle and a straw. And unlike many other large water bottles, it has a skinny bottom that fits into most car cup holders. Part of the novelty of the Stanley Quencher is just the size. I mean, 40 ounces is a giant water bottle. I mean, it weighs four pounds when it's full. When somebody shows up with like this giant water bottle, it kind of catches people's

eye. But the Quencher landed on the market with a thud. Stanley's typical male customer didn't seem to care, and it didn't sell that well. So after a few years, Stanley pulled back on the Quencher. It slowed down production and eventually stopped restocking it. But just when it looked like the Quencher was going to disappear into the dustbin of retail history, a woman pulled one off a shelf at a Bed Bath & Beyond, and the cup's fate changed

forever. I'm Ashley Le Suir. I am 44 years old, and I am a co-founder of The Buy Guide. The Buy Guide, a female-oriented shopping blog that's run by three moms, two of whom live in Utah. When did you first hear about the Stanley Cup Quencher? So I found the Quencher totally organically at a Bed Bath & Beyond. I had a cupboard full of water bottles and cups, just like everyone does. And none of them, something about every single one of them bothered me. And when I found the Quencher, I was like, this is it. This checks all the boxes. What was it about the cup that checked all the boxes? It has a straw for easy drinking while driving. It fits into my car cup holder. It is dishwasher safe. And also, I love the feature of having a

handle. I don't know about you, but most of the women I know, when we are getting into our cars, we have our bags and our laptops and our kids and our purses. And to have the handle feature allows you to juggle more things at once. You were sticking out your pinky there for a second. Did you just like dangle the quencher? I do. People tease us and they'll say, what? I just got my quencher for the first time. It's so heavy. How do you carry it? I'm like, we must just be really strong. I don't know. It doesn't bother me. After she discovered the quencher in 2017, Ashley and her co-founders started recommending it on the buy guide. And as a way to promote their site, they often sent curated gift boxes to popular influencers online. One of the people they sent one to was Emily Maynard, a star of the reality TV show The Bachelorette. Her gift box had a quencher in it.

Emily Maynard had just had a baby. There is no thirst like a nursing mom thirst. So we sent her a box of some curated items that we'd share on the buy guide, and she opened it on her Instagram stories and was excited about the cup. An employee at Stanley saw the post. Her name is Lauren Solomon. Lauren saw Emily Maynard's story and thought, what is this darling reality television star, fashionista, doing on Instagram with this cup? I work with this company.

We're mostly outdoorsy. We mostly market to men. It felt like worlds colliding for her. Lauren got in touch with the women at the buy guide and started quizzing them about why they liked it so much. She decided to help them purchase 5,000 quenchers wholesale that the buy guide could then resell for full price on its website and keep the profits.

But to get the cups, Ashley and her co-founders had to pay tens of thousands of dollars, which was a lot of money for their small operation. We took every dollar that we had earned to that point in our business account and had to supplement some funds personally from the three of us. And we placed a wholesale order with Stanley just like we were a retail location.

They offered us one color. It was white with black handles. And we set up a Shopify site and a secured warehouse and shipping space. And we ordered these 5,000 cups. And they sold out, I think, in five days. How did you feel when you saw them flying off your virtual shelves like that? It's the best.

Being right always feels good, right? It's the best feeling. It was exciting. It was really exciting. So they ordered more cups and did it again. And again. And the cups kept selling out immediately. Seeing this success, Ashley and her co-founders pushed Stanley to go bigger. In a meeting with the company's executives, they said the company was marketing the cup all wrong. They shouldn't be pitching it to men. They needed to be selling it to women. And they should make the

cup in more colors. Still, Ashley says Stanley wasn't entirely convinced. Some of the executives had a really difficult time imagining a more female-leaning color palette on the Stanley products. They had developed a very strong, very reputable brand over 100 years that, you know, hashtag Stanley Strong was really important to them. And they didn't want to do anything that they felt like would compromise the strength of that brand identity. So it did take some convincing. Eventually, Stanley did decide to partner with the buy guide.

And then the company got a new president who truly believed in what the buy guide was doing. That's next. Picture this. You finally get to the party. And it's the usual drinks and small talk. Suddenly, you spot something different. The Bold Seagram 13, a 13% cosmopolitan cocktail.

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business is unique, so your business insurance should be too. Whether you're a shop owner, a pet groomer, a contractor, or a consultant, you can get customized coverage for your business. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. In 2020, a man named Terrence Riley joined Stanley as its new president. Here's our colleague Callum again. When Terrence Riley took over this brand, this was still a very male-focused brand, right at the outdoorsman. That was sort of who the key demo was.

And I think the biggest thing that he did when he arrived at Stanley was to sort of broaden the idea of who the Stanley consumer was going to be. During his first week on the job, he got an idea for how to do that. When he started asking employees about what was working at the company and what wasn't. Here he is on a podcast this summer. Lauren Solomon, one of our brilliant sales associates at Stanley, told me that there was a group in Utah that had a genuine love for this little product called the Quencher. It was 40 ounces. And immediately I knew that that was it. The way he described it to me was he wanted the Stanley Quencher to be akin to a woman's handbag and how a woman might own multiple handbags and match it to whatever

outfit or coordinate it to whatever outfit she was wearing that day. That was his goal for the Stanley Quencher, that you would get it in different colorways, in different finishes, and you wouldn't need just one. And depending on what you were wearing that day or what your mood was that day, you'd pick your Stanley for the day. Riley kept listening to the advice of the women at the buy guide,

and Stanley began making changes to the quencher. They redesigned the cup's straw and began offering it in more colors. Here's Ashley again from the buy guide. I think the biggest difference when Terrence came on was just that enthusiasm. We didn't get pushback. We got enthusiasm.

He was excited about working with us. He understood. He understood what was possible with this women selling to women, the viral sensation that could happen, the way organic sales works in the real world. He understood all of those things and he understood that we had the potential to really bring this to the level we wanted it to.

A lot of this playbook of trying to make a relatively boring product cool was similar to Riley's strategy at his old job, Crocs, those rubbery, weird-looking sandals. At Crocs, Riley took the advice of an intern and decided to partner with the rapper Post Malone, who just so happened to be a major Crocs fan. And it was a huge hit. He helped revive that brand. People think they're ugly or they're uncool

or people love them, right? And so, you know, he was able to develop kind of a cult following around those and has been able to kind of replicate that success with the Stanley. At Stanley, like at Crocs, he partnered with people who were already passionate about the product

and he teamed up with influencers who promoted the brand on social media. Social media influencers certainly existed before then. But this is part of what I think you have to give Terrence Riley credit for, as he helps take over this company, is finding a way on the cheap, right, to not have a big splashy marketing campaign, but to find people who will help push your product out into the wild and make it really popular on social media, starting on Instagram and then migrating to TikTok. The strategy worked. Stanley Cup videos started appearing all over social media. The

hashtag Stanley Tumblr has over a billion views on TikTok. Oh my gosh! It's a Stanley! I got this cup for Christmas, and I honestly love it. It's beautiful. $40 for 40 ounces of water is not that bad if you think about it. Stanley pays close attention to these TikTok videos. A few months ago, a woman posted about how her car caught on fire, but her Stanley Cup survived,

and it even still had ice in it. Stanley saw the video and posted its own TikTok in response. Hey, Danielle. My name is Terrence Riley. I'm the president of Stanley. And we've all seen your video. Riley had a surprise for her.

But we'd love to replace your vehicle. Yeah. All of us at Stanley, we'd really like to replace your vehicle. So check your DMs. Stanley bought the woman a new car. And the video the company posted on TikTok about it has more than 55 million views. Stanley also started partnering with brands like Starbucks, Olay, and Target to release limited edition cups in new colors.

And people will stand in line for hours for them. Stanley came out with a blue cup. Blue is my favorite color, meaning I need it. So we're at Target and we're going to try to find one. There's one. We checked inventory, so they have 13. And hopefully, we just need one. All of this made Stanley cool.

And teenagers especially seem to love it. It's sort of like the iPhone in a way. When you see, you know, your older sister with it or your parents with it. Yeah, maybe they're using it for work stuff. But whether it comes down to the sleek design or the expense of it, right? It's kind of like a status thing still a little bit. I mean, it's still a very posh water bottle relative to some of the other options. What they've managed to do is make the Stanley Quencher aspirational for the tween crowd.

As a result, Stanley's revenue has exploded. between crowd. As a result, Stanley's revenue has exploded. Before the quencher craze, the company's annual revenue was around $70 million. In 2023, it was projected to hit $750 million. What lessons do you think other brands can learn from Stanley's success? I think a big lesson from the Stanley success story is that companies should really identify who their evangelists are going to be, who really loves your product and would be willing to tell the rest of the world about it.

And that may sound sort of obvious, but I think that a few years ago, the idea of really embracing the bloggers and social media influencers who were into, who really were the early adopters of the Stanley Quencher, you know, that was still kind of unconventional to really lean into that as a marketing strategy. Ashley, from The Buy Guide, the patient zero of Stanley Cup's virality, says she never doubted the Cup's potential. Did you ever imagine that the Stanley would be this successful? I mean, we did.

I mean, we really did. We really thought, this is why it's so crazy. People are like, why'd you do what we did? Because this is what we thought it could and should be. We thought this is what every adult woman wants. That's going to be part of her life. It's going to be a part of her every day. And now it's awesome because even the high school girls are carrying their Stanleys. I mean, it really is truly amazing to me. Like, how often in the world of business do you ever see like a passionate customer base, essentially,

just you guys were customers of this company, forcing your way in, essentially saying, you've got something here, you don't even know what you've got. We were very lucky that the way that all the stars aligned, it would be almost impossible to replicate. It's been a wild ride and it's been really fun and it's been really lucky and very educational and we think it's the greatest marketing case study ever told, and we feel so happy to be a part of it. That's all for today, Friday, January 19th.

The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. The show's made by Annie Baxter, Kylan Burtz, Catherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Victoria Dominguez, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphries, Matt Kwong, Kate Leinbaugh, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa,

Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Jonathan Sanders, Our engineers are Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Catherine Anderson, Marcus Begala, Emma Munger, Peter Leonard, Billy Libby, Bobby Lord, So Wiley, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.