The Stanley Quencher, pictured for sale on the company’s website, is an insulated stainless steel travel mug that’s become extremely popular on social media and among consumers. A dramatic rise in the company’s revenue is being attributed in part to the tumbler. (Stanley)
The Stanley cup is so popular these days that even technology giants such as LG Electronics are getting on board.
And no, that doesn’t mean a South Korean appliance company is joining the National Hockey League.
It has nothing to do with the trophy handed out to the winner of the NHL playoffs each year (the confusion has led to some funny memes). Instead, it’s all about the reusable water bottle known as a Stanley.
Last week, LG unveiled the LG mycup tumbler washer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s a machine specifically built to wash a water tumbler, including the Stanley cup.
The Stanley water bottle trend isn’t exactly new — the tumblers have been popular on social media for a couple of years — but it has lasted.
In December, for example, fans in the United States ran — literally — to get the newest limited-edition pink or red Stanley x Starbucks collaboration cup for Valentine’s Day at Target.
So how did we get here?
Shift in customers brings ‘soda culture’
The Stanley brand was founded more than 100 years ago in Massachusetts. Vacuum sealed and made of stainless steel, the bottles have traditionally been marketed toward blue-collar workers — something they can take to the job site that not only maintains temperature but won’t break.
That image has undergone a massive shift in recent years.
“If you look at it when they were targeting men, it was about you can be active. It weathers all of the hardships you weather in a day and it’s a bit more about the ruggedness of the product,” said Aleena Mazhar Kuzma, senior vice-president and managing director at FUSE Create, a Toronto-based advertising agency.
But now, she said, “it’s about the esthetic.”
Enter the Stanley Quencher — an insulated stainless steel travel mug that fits in a vehicle’s cup holder, has a straw and currently retails for $46 US to upwards of $70 US, depending on size.
Released in 2016, the Quencher didn’t go viral right away. But it quickly became popular among female members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), or the Mormon Church, said Paul Matzko, a historian and research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
Historically, LDS members have followed church doctrine, which requires them to abstain from hot drinks like coffee and tea. In 2012, however, the church clarified that its health practices do not mention the use of caffeine. This led to the creation of a popular “soda culture” among younger members of the community, Matzko said.
“There are now chains of dirty soda shops … where they mix soda with other things. It can be sweeteners, like coffee creamers. It can be candy,” he said, adding that as such drinks became more popular, people began to make their own to carry with them throughout the day.
“You need a big object to do that in. And eventually the Stanley tumbler comes to fill that role.”
This was in large part due to a group of women who ran an e-commerce blog called The Buy Guide, Matzko said. The women would buy and sell Stanley Quenchers to their followers, many of whom were Mormon. The Buy Guide women eventually partnered with Stanley after showing the company how popular the Quenchers were in their community.
Sales take off under new leader
Then in 2020, Stanley, which is now based in Seattle, brought on Terence Reilly as its new president. Reilly had spent the previous seven years at footwear company Crocs and is largely credited with making the plastic shoe a fashion icon popular among celebrities like Justin Bieber and Bad Bunny.
The cup took off, becoming Stanley’s most popular item in 2020, and it’s contributed to the company’s revenue jumping from $73 million US in 2019 to a projected $750 million US in 2023, according to CNBC.
“It was regular moms in this case, women who are looking for something specific,” such as a wide variety of colours and the ability to maintain a drink’s temperature, said Kuzma of the FUSE Create ad agency.
The site is where Meghie Smids, a Canadian influencer who typically posts online about her experience as a woman working in engineering and finance, first came across the bottle.
Meghie Smids holds up her Stanley water bottles. Smids, who says she was attracted to the unique colours and the ability to fit the bottle in her car’s cup holder, travelled to the U.S. in 2022 to purchase one because the bottles were so hard to find in Canada. (Zoom)
“I saw these water bottles kind of all over TikTok, and they came in so many really cool colours. So that was one of the things that appealed to me,” Smids told CBC News. “Another thing was that they fit into a cup holder, and I have had so many problems with big water bottles, wanting to carry around a lot of water to drink, but not being able to fit it in my car cup holder.”
Smids said the bottles were so hard to find in Canada that in 2022, she travelled to the U.S. to pick one up. She has one 40-ounce and one 30-ounce bottle.
The role of the scarcity model
Kuzma attributes Stanley’s lasting success to something called the scarcity model: “Because they’re so hard to find, it makes people feel like they need it even more.”
This is why people are reselling Stanley cups on sites like eBay for hundreds of dollars, she said, adding that she doesn’t think Stanley’s moment is over just yet.
“This hype exists while people are lining up for hours to actually even buy the product. So there are millions of customers that probably don’t even own it yet,” Kuzma said.
Matzko has a slightly different perspective.
“If you surf TikTok now, creators will talk about how the Stanley tumbler was cool as long as it was niche. But now everyone has one … and so it’s overexposed. And the way coolness works … once it becomes overexposed, it stops being cool,” he said.
“The Stanley tumbler is going to be a victim of its own success.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
