The Art of Changing Course

CHAPTER 10Accepting Feedback (without Letting It Defeat You)

When you think 100‐year‐old rugged outdoorsmen and construction worker products, the colors teal and hot pink probably don't come to mind. William Stanley invented a steel vacuum sealed container in 1913 for the likes of workmen, outdoorsmen, and adventurers to use from time to time. The company was already successful, but it wasn't until a few of their female customers noticed a large gap in their marketing strategy that they recently skyrocketed to the number‐one hydration container on the market.

Linley Hutchinson, cofounder of online shopping blog The Buy Guide along with Ashlee LeSueur and Taylor Cannon, noticed Stanley had a quencher cup that was amazing and stylish for simply carrying cold water around all day. They heavily recommended this cup to their predominantly women demographic in 2017 but found that the cups were harder to come by and not exactly positioned, in their marketing, for women (like at all).

They reached out to Stanley about these cups to potentially work with them to better position the product in a separate market in 2019, but Stanley at the time didn't do any sort of real affiliate marketing. Instead, Stanley offered to wholesale 10,000 of the cups to their blog. The three founders took a chance and purchased the cups that Stanley deemed not a priority in their product offerings, and much to their surprise, they sold all 10,000 in less than five days (5,000 of them sold in an hour).