This is the Stanley Quencher. It costs
$45.00, comes in dozens of colors and sells out in
minutes.
So how did it become one of the most popular
water bottles in the world?
Stanley, the 110 year old drink Ware company based in
Seattle,
WA, has seen his Quencher H2 Point O flow state
skyrocket in sales over the past three years,
spiking the company's annual revenue from $70 million in 2019
to a projected
$750 million in 2023. But when the Quencher was launched
in 2016,
it wasn't exactly flying off shelves.
The popularity of the Stanley Quenchers can be credited to
a key pivot in 2020.
When I joined, I realized that this could be something
that in the right hands,
with new colors, materials and finishes,
could be something that catches the eye of a new
consumer.
And that is exactly what happened.
Here's how a viral water bottle turned a
110 year old company into a
$750 million success.
Stanley's story starts in 1913 when electrical engineer William Stanley
Junior patented the first vacuum sealed water bottle made of
steel.
At the time, vacuum sealed water bottles were made with
glass and were fragile.
These bottles were mass produced and called the classic Legendary
bottle.
The marketing for Stanley's Legendary bottle was largely to 1
demographic men.
The Thermos bottle means more to you than a picnic.
It's some kind of top thermos bottle.
It wasn't until 2007 that Stanley made a new product,
a flask. Then in 2014 it released a barware line
and in 2016 the iconic Quencher was added to the
brand lineup.
The Quencher was the 1913 Classic Legendary bottle flipped on
its head.
It sports a large handle and a taper design that
fits perfectly in car cup holders.
The Quencher was only available in five colors and took
a back seeds to more popular bottles like Hydro Flask,
Yetis, or swells. I fell in love with the cup
before it was a well known commodity or before it
was ever shared online just because of the practical applications
to my daily life. Ashley loved her Stanley Quencher so
much that she shared it on a site she runs
with two other mothers called The Bye Guy.
There were a huge hit on the site,
but the bottles got harder and harder to find.
Stanley had stopped restocking and promoting The Quencher in 2019
due to poor performance,
but the team at the Buy Guide felt the Cup
had potential with a new consumer group.
At the time, there was nothing
that had all of the features that we liked about
The Quencher,
so we weren't willing to let it go.
The Buy Guide team sent one of the beloved bottles
to The Bachelor alum Emily Maynard,
and almost immediately The Quencher went viral.
In 2019, the team at the Buy Guide bought 5000
Quenchers to sell on the site.
Within five days, the cups were sold out.
Stanley ended 20/19 with the revenue of $70 million.
Although The Quencher was getting some traction,
the company's iconic classic Legendary bottle in Hammertown Green was
still its best selling product.
That year, good changes were on the horizon.
In May 2020, Terrence Riley was hired as
Stanley's global President. Riley came from a chief marketing role
at Crocs,
where he worked with the once hated clock that became
an Internet sensation,
and he immediately saw the factors holding The Quencher back
from its own potential.
There was no effort being put forth to send The
Quencher to the stratosphere,
which is where it is today.
And there was no new colors,
which wasn't exciting audiences anywhere.
And one of my colleagues,
Lauren Solomon, mentioned that there was a group of women
in Utah
who are the buy guide and that they had taken
a liking to our 40 oz Tumblr.
And my experience at Crocs told me that that kind
of influencer opportunity was just the magic that Stanley might
need.
And we were right. The buy guide and Stanley reconnected
and worked out an affiliated marketing deal that would feature
new Quencher colors.
Some of the old school Stanley people had a very
difficult time with the idea of a pastel colored cup.
It just sort of felt like we are going against
everything that their brand identity
good for, but we felt really strongly that for a
working mom to take her Stanley all day to hydrate
her throughout her day does not in any way illustrate
less strength than somebody taking a
water bottle on a hike.
They had a keen eye for what colors might work
for their audience,
and they were right. After its launch in November 2020,
the new cups sold out within three weeks.
With the new refined focus,
Stanley set out to attract new customers with new products
and colors,
but still stay true to its origins.
We obsessed what was happening with color outside of the
drink Ware industry and inside of style and fashion.
As soon as we changed color,
we started to change the trajectory of this brand and
our company.
At the end of 2020,
Stanley had released 2 new Quencher Colors,
Cream and Desert Sage. Sales increased in the company ended
2020 with the revenue of
$94,000,000, but Stanley's classic legendary bottle remained as his best
seller.
So it was a slow build over many months.
And then you could see that the
waiting list began to grow and that allowed us to
forecast better and bring in the right amount of products
while still having some scarcity.
To create the fun and the frenzy and the demand,
the water bottle company spent
2021 releasing 10 new Quencher colors and experimenting with different
forms of marketing.
As sales of The Quencher kept going up,
Stanley took its numbers proving the Quencher was a success
to big retailers like Target,
Dick's Sporting Goods and REI.
The stainless steel cups found their way to the front
of stores and regularly sold out.
Experts say social media could be a huge reason why.
Our data regularly shows that brands that go viral online
perform much better among social media users on key metrics
like favorability,
brand awareness, purchase consideration. History was made when
Stanley's 2021 revenue racked up to
$194,000,000, a $100 million difference than the year before.
And the classic Legendary bottles Rain as the number one
seller,
came to an end that year.
The 40 oz Quencher Travel Tumblr in its new cream
Color was the company's new best selling product.
Something happened and it went viral,
like a lot of things on social media and it
just took off and I saw a video of a
plain white Stanley on TikTok
and I told my boyfriend I was like,
we need to find this.
I first heard about it on TikTok liked the style
and I thought it would fit into
like going to the gym.
The first half of 2020,
The Quencher rolled out in 12 new colors and three
new sizes.
The printer teamed up with companies like Olay and Starbucks
for limited edition collaborations.
Tumblers were flying off shelves and selling out online so
quickly that there was a limit of two per order
enforced on each purchase.
It is extremely rare for such an old brand to
be able to have this sort of reinvention,
especially with such a niche consumer segment
that is so diametrically opposed from what it is historically
been known for.
As the bottles were getting into more hands than ever,
consumers were asking the company for changes to the Internet's
favorite water bottle to better fit their needs.
When we redesigned the Flow State
H2O Quencher, it was the first time that we put
on new principles of design in action.
The Quencher H 2.0 Flow State Tumblr launched in September
2022 with upgrades like a spill proof design,
A larger handle and new colors and finishes the H2
point O ended
2022 as the company's best selling product and Stanley's sales
exploded to
$402,000,000 for the year and the brand continued to go
viral on TikTok.
Stanley did a great job of picking up on virality
of their product on TikTok and investing in it further.
So just a few months ago,
they tapped an agency as their dedicated TikTok agency,
which is something that not a lot of brands are
doing at the moment.
In 2023, Stanley launched Stanley Creates where customers can create
custom designs for their Quencher online.
Stanley also had collaborations with country music star Lainey Wilson
that sold out in less than 25 minutes
and a holiday collection with Starbucks that also very quickly
sold out.
We're going to go hunt for the red Starbucks X
Stanley right here.
I literally walked in at 5:00 AM when they opened,
got here early and this was the last one on
the shelf.
I am so freaking excited.
Stanley is on track to finish
2023 with the revenue of
$750 million. That's a 300%
growth since 2019.
The H2 Point O Quencher was its best selling product
for the second year in a row.
Today the Quencher is available in dozens of colors and
since it's launched in 2016 /
10 million Quenchers have been sold.
We are 110 year old overnight success and so the
entire Stanley brand has benefited from the Quencher trend and
certainly our heritage products have regained their velocity and their
place in culture and in serving the needs of consumers.
And all those sites like TikTok have been huge drivers
in Stanley's success.
They could potentially harm Stanley too.
There is inherent risk to
attaching yourself super closely to one social media platform,
especially a platform that's under increased scrutiny by lawmakers.
And keeping that line of communication open to consumers across
many different platforms is the best safeguard for brands from
immediately losing an audience.
If a platform like TikTok were to get banned in
the United States,
fans like Emily say they will be Stanley users for
life.
Stanley just came up with everything that I love.
When you think of Stanley,
you think of you know,
good quality and and good colors and they're always coming
out with something new,
even when they go out of style.
I see myself having my Stanley's forever just because I
love them so much.
But to Stanley it's 110 year old history and additional
products were prevented from being just a fad.
When you bring originality, legacy and relevancy together,
it's unstoppable. I like to say we've turned the Quencher
from a product into a franchise and now an icon.
We've been here for over a century.
So the Quencher trend is certainly exciting,
but we're more than just the Quencher.
We have a variety of categories that will fuel
Stanley's growth for years to come.
Well, I'm really excited about the present,
of course, but the future is so bright.