If you head into your favorite independent coffee shop, there’s a good chance
the store is selling some sort of custom drinkware as a souvenir for visitors
and a reusable
vessel
to wean regulars off of disposable, paper cups. For a majority of those shops,
there’s a good chance that drinkware comes from Seattle-based
MiiR.
The 12-year-old company’s reputation is rooted in design-forward cups, canisters
and more — all with a major focus on social and environmental
responsibility. According to the
brand’s VP of supply chain and sustainability, Josh Stinger, MiiR’s B2B
custom program makes up most of its overall business — supplying shops and
retailers (such as Patagonia) with product emblazoned with custom artwork of
the customer’s choosing.
“However, there’s a small percentage of defects (in this program) that result in
thousands of units piling up,” Stinger told Sustainable Brands™. “It
kind of became a situation where our warehouse manager asked us, because this
beast was growing and starting to impact our warehouse space.”
Stinger says that custom drinkware can be rejected for a number of reasons —
whether that be the wrong artwork put on the product, improper positioning, or
that the customer didn’t like the final piece. He estimates this happens in
batches 1-2 times per month — and ultimately, those products are still perfectly
usable, but not appropriate for traditional sales channels.
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According to Stinger, the company understood for some time that there were
potential opportunities with this rejected product; but the facilitation and
launch of a viable program kept getting deprioritized.
“Now that the bandwidth has opened up, we said ‘we’ve gotta do this’,” he notes.
MiiR calls the program “Re:Claimed” — it essentially boils down to adding a “busy
layer” over the existing illustration or design to cover up what’s there, then
coming up with something new that meets the brand’s standards.
“This is a good way for us to collaborate with designers and bring product back
to life again,” Stinger says.
A four-phase launch
MiiR has a four-phase plan for Re:Claimed, the first of which began with the
first release earlier this year. Stinger says the initial sell-through was
highly successful, with less than 5 percent of the inventory left. The company
has plans to launch a second Re:Claimed product for this holiday season, then
launch phase two of the plan early next year (Stinger declined to comment
further about the full scope of each phase).
The program aims to be another way MiiR can put product out in the world for its
intended use — and put something existing on the market rather than having to
create something new. While the rejected product is ultimately a small piece of
the company sales pie, it does serve to reduce the potential waste and footprint
of all that custom product gone awry.
“It keeps us from having to go back to the well; and we can do something
special,” Stinger says.
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Geoff is a freelance journalist and copywriter focused on making the world a better place through compelling copy. He covers everything from apparel to travel while helping brands worldwide craft their messaging. In addition to Sustainable Brands, he's currently a contributor at Penta, AskMen.com, Field Mag and many others. You can check out more of his work at geoffnudelman.com.
Published Jul 22, 2022 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST