Overnight Success in B2C Product Launch

This case study was created from an episode of the Product Marketing Adventures Podcast. It has been adapted into Dusted's case study format to preserve and showcase the guest's real-world experience. Written to preserve the voice of the true author, Daniel Alvarez, alongside his collaborator, Connor O’Neill.

When I was working product strategy at Ember alongside Connor on brand and partnerships, we were known for our beautifully designed self-warming mugs you’d see at Starbucks or Williams Sonoma. We had already made big category jumps like the self-warming baby bottle and the Cold Cube pharmaceutical shipper, but we still needed a new product that would expand our customer base while serving the people who already loved the brand. We had been deep in a product plan for another drinkware SKU that checked the feature and insight boxes, yet it simply wasn’t going to work.

Development costs for the original concept were going to be too high, and we couldn’t see a path to the quality bar we’d spent years building. Because that SKU was a major piece of the following year’s launch plan, we had to find an alternative fast. We needed to sell more to more people, quickly, with limited resources, without cannibalizing existing lines or spiking costs. At the same time we had immovable retail-reset and holiday dates, plus the usual waterfall of manufacturing and shipping deadlines that come with physical hardware. The brief became: attract a new adjacent audience (outdoor enthusiasts) while giving current customers the larger, more durable mug they kept requesting, all while reusing proven technology so we could hit the calendar and protect margins.