Hello - thanks again for tuning in to the TITAN Blog! 

Here is part 2 of the TITAN Water Bottle story, as told by inventor and entrepreneur, Jared Joyce.

Investors always choke a bit when I present the expense of prototyping within a budget, but it is an imperative component of successful design.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand pictures. Prototyping is problem solving in three dimensions.

It enables us to fail faster so that we can succeed sooner!

The need for prototyping couldn’t have been more relevant than when it came to the fine tuning of the mouth piece for the TITAN. Of all of the inventions I have developed, none has been as difficult to perfect as when we were trying to create the harmony of a comfortable mouth piece with a successful water flow rate. For a time we had to stop making prototypes of the entire cap and just create versions of the mouthpiece.

We would put the prototype mouthpiece in the top of a plastic bottle and chug test it.

Test and tool, test and tool, incrementally improving the integration of mouthpiece comfort and water flow rate.

I will always remember this portion of prototype development because the answers on how next to improve came very quickly; and they had to because when we were tooling the mouthpiece it was being sprayed by coolant, which made it impossible to hold the water in your mouth very long before you were forced to spit it out. It was a disgusting process, but I wasn’t willing to wait to test the mouthpiece before we could run it through the dishwasher.

After we had completed our final working prototype we had made about 100 of them, and I had developed four patentable versions of the TITAN. After our manufacturer informed us that there could be no metal in the cap assembly in order to meet US safety standards, I developed a fifth patentable version…which became the TITAN.

N.I.H. AND NALGENE

I had conceived of my water bottle cap screwing onto a Nalgene, so I had always envisioned licensing my water bottle to them. I marketed my water bottle to them as the N2, or the second generation of Nalgene. I could type over 20 pages on all of the experiences and lessons learned while trying to license my water bottle to Nalgene and all of the other top water bottle manufacturers.

The bottom line summary of all of my meetings was that they believe consumers view water bottles as a disposable good. Therefore, it does not matter how many increased functional or health benefits my bottle possessed, they believe that consumers will not pay more than $10 - $15 for a water bottle.

James Dyson was told more or less the same thing when he was trying to license his vacuum to the top vacuum manufacturers in the business. He didn’t quit, and 4 years in, I wasn’t about to either.

Since all of the US manufacturers were poor of vision and averse to risk I decided to try my hand at licensing in Taiwan.

UNIVERSAL TRIM SUPPLY (UTS)

The funny thing about UTS is that you’ve probably never heard of them, and yet you probably enjoy their products every day. Among other things UTS makes all of the trim design on clothing for companies like Patagonia, REI, Helly Hansen, etc.

UTS was already making 2 million generic water bottles for Wal-Mart each year, but they weren’t famous for making water bottles. I had to convince them that if they were successful manufacturing my water bottle then they would be able to sell it to all of their existing clients who were also in the outdoor recreation business, but didn’t currently have a water bottle that they sold.

The other benefit of partnering with UTS is that they are masters of co-molding technology. An example of this is when you see a metal zipper encased in a rubber zipper pull - that’s co-molding. We were able to design a co-molded assembly for the underside of the water bottle cap whereby the nylon plunger is co-molded with silicone to create the waterproof seal on the cap. There are few if any other manufacturers that could have achieved this solution at such an effective price point.

Unfortunately, after a year of development and working together China started getting bad press for dog food, lead paint, etc. UTS got cold feet with all of the anti-China movements that we’re taking place in the US and decided not to pursue the all expenses paid licensing/manufacturing of my water bottle. Then along came Amazon…

In the story of the TITAN Water Bottle: Part 3, Jared discusses the Amazon Fulfillment plan and the bisphenol a (BPA) issue!