Australian product designer Jesse Leeworthy realized many products in his life were flat: his laptop, his iPad, his sketchbook, his carrier bag. The one exception: his reusable water bottle.
“Every time I packed a water bottle for class, or later for work, it just didn’t fit—it created this big bulge,” he said.
Leeworthy started sketching designs for a new kind of reusable bottle—a rectangular shape that could fit more sleekly in bags of any size. He shared the concept with his best friend and former college roommate Jonathan Byrt, who was working in Los Angeles as an accountant at the time. Byrt agreed that the product “had legs.”
“We had no money behind us at the time, so we thought: why not crowdfund it, put it out to the masses and see what happens,” said Leeworthy.
The friends spent nine months creating a prototype for what would eventually become memobottle, and uploaded it to Kickstarter with a goal of raising AU$15,000. Within a month, memobottle raised AU$260,000 from 14,000 backers across 70 countries, making it one of Australia’s highest-grossing Kickstarter campaigns at the time.
“We went global overnight. It was actually pretty nerve-racking,” recalled Byrt. “We thought we’d maybe sell a couple hundred and ship them from my parents’ garage in Melbourne. Instead, we had to set up a network of 3PLs around the world.”
Memobottle’s internet success caught the attention of the organizers of the 2015 Academy Awards, who decided to include the product in the famous Oscar’s swag bags handed out to celebrities. One of the nominees that year was actor Matt Damon, who was also a co-founder for the charity Water.org. Through him, memobottle launched a partnership with the non-profit. Today, the company continues to donate five months of clean water in the developing world for every bottle sold. To date, memobottle has provided over 50 million days of clean water.
“We wanted to create a tangible impact for every single product that we sell,” said Byrt.
Soon, retailers around the world were approaching the partners with offers to sell memobottle in their stores, though it wasn’t until they launched their store in Amazon that they gained traction in the US.
“Being from Melbourne and trying to crack into the US region is an incredibly difficult thing for a business,” Leeworthy explained. “We tried to do that for many years, and it wasn’t until we had our Amazon store that we started to get noticed.”
Using Amazon A+ content, the co-founders were able to create elevated imagery and videos that gave customers a sense of their product and sustainable values. In five years, memobottles annual US Amazon sales grew from AU$100,000 to AU$2.5 million.
Byrt says this growth has been made possible in part by Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which simplified their international packing and shipping.
“Honestly, the thought of not using FBA gives me nightmares,” he said. “The idea of uploading spreadsheets in all the various shipping platforms like I used to, and the time it takes—I don’t think there’s any chance that we’d go back to that.”
Memobottle has since expanded to 18 new regions with Amazon Global Selling, and has expanded its product line using feedback from Amazon customer reviews to include accessories and stainless-steel models.
Because memobottle puts a lot of value in its product development, Byrt said he is particularly appreciative of Amazon Transparency, which uses unique barcodes to prevent counterfeiters from selling low-quality replicas.
“With Amazon Transparency, we’ve been able to shut down over 5,000 fake listings, which translates to one to two million in revenue,” he said.
The duo say they’ve only reached the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to their company’s growth story. On the horizon are new products, including lunch boxes, coffee cups and tote bags.
“We have a lot planned over the next few years, and I expect our Amazon revenue to double if not triple,” said Byrt. “More than anything, what we’d really love is to become a household name, not just in Australia but across the globe.”