商業(yè)往事丨第79話：老產品的新生命

A New Spin on an Old Idea

to be an entrepreneur, but I don’t think that I was shocked when I did start my own business.”

Kauss told Forbes that, if she could build something better in some way than the standard product, she was confident that she could persuade people to use it. “If I could convince an entirely new customer—a new segment of the market—to be interested,” says Kauss, “I thought that could be the big idea I'd been searching for."

In 2010 at the age of 41, Kauss started up her business with US$30,000 of her own savings and launched her first water bottle. Some years later, S’well had expanded beyond bottles and hydration into food, barware and accessories, in different colors, prints, patterns and textures, and now has more than 200 designs. In 2016, annual revenue for S'well topped $100 million, up 10-fold from two years earlier when the company had just $10 million in revenue.

Water bottles are highly visible products since people carry them outwardly, so it is relatively easy to get them in the public eye once people are using them. But how do you get people to buy them in the first place? S'well received a break when its products were featured on Oprah. After that, its business took off, a phenomenon known as “the Oprah effect.” S’well’s products made a fashion statement. And many of its customers were repeat customers, using more than one of its designs. Kauss said, “That was a surprise to me, quite honestly.” She added “Customers really became advocates for the brand and [they became] collectors.”

"It's not necessarily something that you leave at home, but you take with you to work, in school, and to the gym. And it's a product that invites conversation so very early on. The story of our brand was really being told and sold organically person to person," she said.

S'well bottles are also make for great gifts, because many of their designs are produced in limited quantities. S'well bottles were named as one of 25 designs that helped shape the world by Architectural Digest. What's more, they're a way for passionate customers to share S'well's mission of providing earth-friendly products with others, since its products are reusable, unlike single-use water bottles that are either discarded or need to be recycled, an energy-intensive process. To date, its reusable water bottles have helped to displace more than 4 billion single-use plastic bottles.

Everyone likes to use good products. If a company provides a good product for its customers, it has to clearly communicate its product’s value such that its customers can understand the product’s advantages. Fashionable reusable water bottles are a great business idea because they meet people’s desire for style with their desire to be environmentally responsible. S’well didn’t invent the reusable water bottle, but it made it into a kind of fashion accessory.

Note: Kauss sold S'well to Lifetime Brands in 2022.