THE PRODUCT FARM
Product Design & Marketing: Making the BeerNStein™
The idea of a beer stein tumbler was first conceived in the fall of 2012 while the Brew2Go™ product was being developed. It was in the cards for the Brew2Go™ to be released to market first. The very first 3D concept rendering of the BeerNStein™ (below) was printed out and taped to my office wall, where it would remain and serve as a reminder of the next development in line. A year later, the 24 oz insulated beer stein development started.
Since we wanted the bottom of the tumbler to be fairly flat for our branding plug mold – I thought it would be interesting to bring the characteristic glass embedded star pattern into the bottom of the inner chamber.
We wanted the handle to be solid and for the final unit to be heavy and preferably very strong. We designed the top rim to be smooth to where you could comfortably drink out of the stein with or without a lid (although the lid does have a large sip hole that slides open or closed, if you prefer your beverage protected from the environment).
By fall 2013, we were ready to pull the trigger on the BeerNStein™. Once we the decision, the CAD drawings were close to complete and it did not take long for us to wrap up the final details. We still needed to sort out what type of lid would work and look the best on this product…
We printed a high resolution 3D prototype of the tumbler and tested how it would look to put a Brew2Go™ lid on the BeerNStein™ body. The conclusion was that it did not look very good (above image)… While the stein body looks solid and masculine, the Brew2Go lid seemed too feminine. We started working on a new lid specifically for the BeerNStein™. The below image shows views from our final 3D CAD file with the new lid.
We added a larger “sippy hole” and more durable slider mechanism in comparison to our previous lids. We also added a rubber gasket which was a nice upgrade after having a few issues with failing ultrasonic welds on the original Vino2Go® and Vino2Go® XL, due to an overwhelming pressure fit around the top outer rim of the tumbler. Since most ultrasonically welded insulated drink-ware items are the most weak in the welded rim area, we felt that it would be good to do whatever we could to minimize the pressure. A rubber gasket would solve this problem by wedging in between the lid and the internal walls of the tumbler. We printed out the lid design on our in-house FDM 3D Printer to confirm a good fit and working lid design. This was later sent to the manufacturer as a reference along with the stein body 3D print.
Once we were happy with the CAD/design, we submitted dimension sheets to our manufacturer overseas for production estimates. Final CAD engineering drawings we're created by Brian Himelright.
While waiting for an overseas quote and production details, we also took the liberty to protect our intellectual property by applying for a design patent. A month later after the injection steel molds were completed, we received our first production sample. Everything looked great. The handle felt solid. The light refraction effect in the bottom of the unit was exactly what we could have hoped for. Product finished!
