How Chilly's Bottles went global

In a pretty stark world, Chilly's Bottles seemed to rise from the ashes to global recognition. How did this business redesign a household item and become the company with the fastest growing sales across the last three years? I take a sneak peek at this innovative brand and their incredible journey to the top.

It's pretty simple really- take a material that is leading the world to a global climate crisis and replace this with the stainless steel of a traditional flask; what's so different about that? Well that's where you're wrong, well.. not completely wrong, but there's more to it than that.

"Simple really- replace the material leading to a climate crisis with stainless steel, right? Wrong."

Although James Butterfield and Tim Bouscarle launched the business based on the century old flask, they added their own creative, striking and visually appealing designs to bring this product into the 21st century. They designed bottles that will keep water cold for 24 hours and hot drinks warm for 12 hours- a unique selling point compared to its competitors.

How did they become so popular?

A case study by Born Social highlights that Chilly's relied heavily on micro-influencers and a series of short video adverts to dominate social networking sites. The stylish bottle appealed to a younger mass market that so desperately wanted to make positive environmental change and be trendy whilst they did so.

Testing out thousands of variations of advertising methods allowed the business to thrive and branch out to create collaborations with the international sandwich chain Pret a Manger, international tennis star Johanna Konta and world renowned artists. But it didn't stop there- they went onto win big at the Digital Impact Awards 2018 which, by this time, they had sold over 200,000 bottles.

What do they have in store for the future?

After dominating the reusable drinks bottle industry, Chilly's have already looked to create reusable coffee cups, accessories and the ability to personalise every aspect of the bottle. Chilly's bottles have risen to a powerhouse amongst the likes of Gymshark (see my previous post for their story), Junkyard Golf and Brewdog- producing over 3.5 million coffee cups and bottles per year.

Alongside this, their climate change mission has been boosted by their partnership with Refill- the organisation responsible for the implementation of refill stations. In 2019 alone, they have seen a decrease in plastic bottle usage by as much as 100 million bottles- a feat largely attributable to the inventiveness of Chilly's.

With the push for a greener planet becoming ever stronger, the need for Chilly's bottles might just rocket even more across the coming years. This could give rise to a whole merchandising monopoly comprised of sustainable products, all expertly produced by this brilliant and innovative business.