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How Stanley went from making sturdy bottles for laborers to becoming an 'it' status symbol, and causing chaos at Target stores across the US

Grace Dean   

How Stanley went from making sturdy bottles for laborers to becoming an 'it' status symbol, and causing chaos at Target stores across the US
  • Stanley's 40-ounce Quencher tumblers are the current must-have accessory among TikTokers and middle schoolers.
  • The brand has been around for over a century, but in recent years it's reached a new market: women.

Stanley cups are everywhere. They've been called "adult sippy cups," the modern version of Beanie Babies, and become a middle-school status symbol.

In just a handful of years, Stanley has gone from a brand popular among blue-collar workers and outdoor recreationists to one with a huge audience of millennial mom fans. Recently its 40-ounce stainless steel Quenchers, which start at $45, have become a must-have among Gen Alphas and the TikTok generation.

Here's how the 121-year-old brand transformed in the space of a few years to target a completely new demographic and, with it, brought in booming sales.

For more than 100 years, Stanley targeted men

The brand was founded by William Stanley Jr, who patented his steel, vacuum-walled bottles in 1913. Born in Brooklyn in 1858, Stanley was an inventor who was granted over 100 patents.

For more than 100 years, Stanley's bottles, designed to keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold, were targeted at laborers as well as outdoor enthusiasts like hikers and campers. Hammertone green became its trademark color. Stanley says its products are an "essential part of workdays, road trips and outdoor adventures."

But the brand neglected half of the population in its marketing. Its drinking vessels were aimed at men, and they were marketed as functional products rather than lifestyle ones.

Then, in 2016, Stanley launched the Quencher, a stainless-steel tumbler with double-wall vacuum insulation, a handle, and a reusable straw.

Sales were lackluster to begin with. By late 2019, Stanley stopped restocking and marketing the Quencher.

A blog helped the Quencher blow up online

A shopping blog ultimately became crucial to the Quencher's success. The Buy Guide — a blog and Instagram account by sisters Ashlee LeSueur and Taylor Cannon, as well as their cousin Linley Hutchinson — highlighted the products to its readers back in 2017. LeSueur had bought one at a Bed, Bath and Beyond store, quickly became enraptured, and gifted them to friends and family.

"Of all the insulated cups... this is the one," The Buy Guide wrote on Instagram in November 2017. "Just trust."

"Every time we linked it, it would sell out so quickly," LeSueur told The New York Times. "We got so many pictures from teachers who all have them in their classrooms and from nurses stations with cups overflowing in different colors, and we knew we were onto something."

The bloggers gifted one to reality-TV star Emily Maynard. After Maynard posted about getting the Quencher from The Buy Guide, a Stanley sales manager put the blog's founders in touch with company leadership in spring 2019.

Later that year, when Stanley stopped restocking the product on its website, LeSueur urged the company to keep producing Quenchers. But instead, Stanley suggested that The Buy Guide made a wholesale order to sell the tumblers directly to its readers, CNBC reported.

So LeSueur placed an order for 5,000 Quenchers. The Buy Guide had to pay for warehouse space and shipping and handling fees, but was allowed to keep the profits, The Times reported.

"It was a big risk," LeSueur told CNBC. "It took every penny that we had in the business account, plus some personal funds to make that happen."

But the cups sold out within days.

The Buy Guide placed another wholesale order for 5,000 – and they sold out in an hour, Retail Dive reported.

Stanley agreed to restart Quencher sales on its website and in a wider range of colors in exchange for The Buy Guide promoting the products, The Times reported. The bloggers would receive a portion of sales revenue.

The Buy Guide was Stanley's first taste of affiliate marketing. Stanley at the time didn't have much of a social-media presence, and its website was rusty.

The women also advised Stanley on how to market it to women.

"Some of the executives had a really difficult time imagining a more female-leaning color palette" for a century-old brand with a strong reputation, LeSueur told The Journal, a podcast by The Wall Street Journal.

"Stanley had been a company only producing occasional-use items," LeSueur told Retail Dive. "We told them that this cup was a daily-use item. And that it needed to look good in people's homes and kitchens, with their outfits, and not just in the great outdoors."

Around this time, in 2020, Terence Reilly joined Stanley as president. Reilly came from Crocs, where he'd helped the footwear brand navigate its own turnaround and brought its shoes back in style.

Speaking about The Buy Guide, Reilly told CNBC: "My experience at Crocs told me that that kind of influencer opportunity was just the magic that Stanley might need. And we were right."

People have scrambled to buy limited-edition Quenchers at Target

The tumblers are largely available in block pastel colors, though brighter and sparkly versions are available. Some have patterns etched into them, and they're available in a variety of sizes. This has cultivated a collector culture: People want a range of Quenchers so they can coordinate them with their outfits and have aesthetic displays at home.

The colors are part of the reason they're so social-media friendly. Creators post videos showing them unboxing new cups, organizing their collections, and lauding the benefits of the Quencher. It's dishwasher-friendly, comes with a reusable straw, is easy to carry, fits in a car cup holder, and keeps drinks cold for hours.

Stanley was part of last year's viral #WaterTok trend, too, where TikTokers would post videos crafting water "recipes" with flavorings, syrups, or fruit. Bon Appétit wrote that Stanley's Quenchers became "the face" of the trend.

And the tumblers got more coverage in November after a woman posted a video showing her Quencher surviving a car fire. Some of the interior got scorched, but the TikToker claimed the ice in her cup didn't even melt.

Stanley has collaborated with brands including textiles company Pendleton and skincare brand Olay, as well as celebrities like country-music star Lainey Wilson.

Some of the drops – like its Galentine's Day Quenchers, available only at Target, and its collaborations with Starbucks – have seen shoppers lining up outside stores and scrambling to get their hands on the limited-edition tumblers before they sell out. They've spawned a huge resale market online, too.

Reilly told CNBC that Stanley was making more products available with each drop but still wanted "a little bit of scarcity" to create a buzz.

The Quencher is now Stanley's top-selling product

Stanley has sold over 10 million Quenchers in total, according to CNBC. Since 2020, the tumbler has been the brand's best-selling product, beating the Stanley bottle, CNBC reported.

Reilly told CNBC that the Quencher craze has benefited the rest of Stanley's brand, leading to strong sales for new products.

Stanley's revenue rocketed from $94 million in 2020 to $194 million in 2021 and $402 million in 2022, and was projected to hit $750 million last year, CNBC reported, citing data from the company.

People aren't sure how long the trend will last

In the last couple of years, the cup has gone from cultivating a millennial mom fan base to being a must-have status symbol among Gen Zers and Gen Alpha. They've even been causing rifts among school-goers: One mom recently said in a viral TikTok that her nine-year-old daughter was mocked at school for having a $10 off-brand dupe.

The Quenchers were the most-featured item in Gen Z Christmas-haul videos on TikTok, Casey Lewis, a youth consumer-trends analyst, previously told Business Insider. But the cup's popularity among tweens and younger teens signals that the end of the craze could be in sight, Lewis said – when youngsters start to take part in a trend, Gen Zers and college kids don't want to anything to do with it anymore.

There are concerns about the sustainability of the trend, too. Stanley says that its products are designed to be used for life – but collecting hoards of the cups defeats the point, and critics fear they'll just get trashed when a new trendy cup comes along.

Some people say the Quenchers aren't as good as other bottles on the market, anyway. "It's a cute cup, I get it, but it's hard to bring on the go," TikToker Grace Mary Williams told BI, saying that hers was big and bulky.

But for some people, it's not about whether the cup is cool. Kaitlin Gostel, 29, told BI that she doesn't have social media but gets "nervous butterflies" whenever Stanley releases new drops and associates each cup with particular moments in her life, like the ones she ordered on her wedding day. The Stanley hype reminds her of lining up outside Barnes and Noble for new Harry Potter books when she was younger, she said.

"I do think it will eventually probably fizzle out. Every phase is a phase," Gostel said. "But for me, it's not just a collection. I've kept every Harry Potter book with all of my tabs in them and my bunny ears, and with my Stanleys, each one of them brings a memory and those memories are timeless."

Do you collect Stanley cups? Email this reporter at gdean@insider.com.



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