The Stanley Quencher Tumbler has become its own movement dominating TikTok and Instagram feeds over the last year. The the hashtag #StanleyTumbler has received more than 461 million views of TikTok and for several weeks I felt I couldn’t go a day without seeing several Quenchers on my Instagram feed. What may seem to many like an organic, word-of-mouth phenomenon was a series of savvy business decisions.

So what happened and what were the decisions that caused a demand that no one knew existed?

Stanley, a 109 year old brand that specializes in camping gear and outdoor accessories has become a household name and obsession of millennial and Gen Z women. But tumblers has not been a primary revenue source, or even the intention of the company. It’s a camping company.

The Adventure Quencher Travel Tumbler costs $40, comes in 11 standard colors and sporadic limited edition shades. Several hundreds of thousands of people have signed up to be notified by Stanly when a released shade that previously sold out. I even read that some limited edition shades are listed on Poshmark for over $100.

The crazy part? In late 2019 Stanley stopped prioritizing the Quencher in all parts of its business: marketing, production and sales. It was a discontinued item in a market they felt was saturated (think yeti, hydro flask, etc.). But the three social media influencers of The Buy Guide who loved the tumbler noticed that every time they linked it, it would sell out quickly. The Buy Guide made several attempts to contact Stanley over the years with no luck. Some would see this as a closed door.

The first intentional choice by The Buy Guide was sending a Quencher to the extremely popular Influencer Emily Maynard for more exposure. When Emily talked about the gift on her Instagram stories, a female executive at Stanley saw an influencer talking about a discontinued item - and a small door was opened!

When The Buy Guide noticed that Stanley stopped stocking the tumbler on its website, they decided to propose a partnership with Stanley.

Spring 2019, The Buy Guide reached out to Stanley’s national sales manager and negotiated a new opportunity. The Buy Guide purchased 5,000 Quenchers at wholesale cost, but also paid for storage, shipping, and handling when a tumbler was purchased from a buyer. The Buy Guide was then allowed to keep all profits from those sales. This was a HUGE risk for The Buy Guide. They bought the tumblers outright - if the idea didn’t work that would have been a significant financial loss.

The order was fulfilled in November 2019, and they sold out within FIVE DAYS. Because of this success, The Buy Guide was then able to meet with an executive specifically to launch affiliate marketing for the Quencher. And that’s what started the domino effect and the insane success of The Stanley Quencher.

Stanley has now developed partnerships with dozens of influencers and launched several more products. The story doesn’t end here at all.

But what I want us to learn from this story goes all the way back to the beginning. The Buy Guide knew its data. They tracked each time they linked the tumbler, and saw that this one specific product had legs. There is no doubt there are several parts of this story that were a risk: The Buy Guide’s initial 5,000 purchase and Stanley’s willingness to step into affiliate marketing which really hadn’t entered the corporate world yet.

Risks are a lot easier to take when you have the data to know it’s not as much of a risk as everyone thinks.

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