BeanScene Magazine

When Abigail Forsyth first started developing the KeepCup, she thought it would be “a nice little project” to have on the side while she raised her children.

Four years later the KeepCup has become Australia’s leading reusable barista standard coffee cup, distributed by many of Australia’s biggest names in coffee and launching into markets world-wide. Her humble plans, it seems, have taken off beyond her most ambitious dreams.

“It’s like a tank that’s just started to take off,” she says, “Unless you start driving it, it’s going to run you over.”

From her small office in the hip inner-northern Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Abigail laughs at the nostalgia of the beginnings of a project she hoped would keep her mildly occupied during motherhood. Her children, she reveals, were her primary inspiration in the initial design, as she took notes from her daughter’s “sippy” cup.

In 2007, Abigail and her brother Jamie were growing increasingly concerned about the amount of wastage taking place at their take-away food store, BlueBag. They toyed around with existing reusable cups, but most were ugly and few fit under a coffee machine. Furthermore, there was the question of whether people would wash their cups. To see how receptive their customers would be to reusable containers, they experimented with a plastic soup mug and found that 15 per cent of their customers did reuse their mugs. They knew then that they had a market.

The next step was a two-year design phase to come up with an attractive and convenient option. It was of primary importance for Abigail that the final product was esthetically pleasing. Wanting to create more than just an item that was sustainable in theory and a nice idea, Abigail knew that for the cups to catch on they had to be something people wanted to use, like an iPod or a SIGG water bottle.

“We had a good idea of the aesthetics. We wanted to echo a paper cup, but also be a little different,” Abigail explains. “[The Keep Cup]’s reason for being is sustainability, but it’s the patterns and the colours that people love and it is probably why you buy it.”

Abigail received two grants from Design Victoria and the City of Melbourne to design the cups and from there worked with industrial designers to come up with the initial design.

To test the prototype, a few skeptical friends had told her that if she couldn’t sell the cups to corporates, then she couldn’t sell them commercially. And so, she took the prototypes to NAB and Energy Australia, who were instantly receptive and placed orders based on the prototypes. Abigail’s designs had entered the market just as these corporations were looking to boost their sustainability programs and the KeepCup fitted the bill perfectly.

With this renewed confidence, Abigail moved forward in the design phase, but in 2009 hit a major glitch as the first set of cups leaked. “It was a really stressful time,” she recalls. “You’ve committed so much time and investment at that point.”
To fix the problem, they experimented with shaving off microns to fine-tune the edge. Finally the glitch was solved and they took the cups to the market for the first time at the Federation Square Design market.

The success of that initial launch was beyond anything Abigail expected, selling 1000 cups in just six hours. The reaction they were receiving was phenomenal, in that it followed Abigail’s desire to make the KeepCup a desirable designer item.

“People didn’t even know what it was and they were buying it just because they liked the colours. People were telling me this was something they wanted to do, or something that they had been looking for,” she says. “That was just such a fantastic moment – knowing that we provided a solution for something and that people wanted it.”

The product itself hasn’t changed much from the initial design. There has been some minor fine-tuning, such as changing from a semi-gloss to a matt finish and this April the company plans to launch a Piccolo-sized cup.

Since the launch, the cups have been sold direct in Australia via the major roasters including Merlo Coffee, Campos and Toby’s Estate, as well as through corporates such as WestPac.

With limited formal marketing, Abigail credits most of the product’s success to its popularity in the blogging sphere. For instance, in one case someone from Los Angeles had blogged about the cups and within half an hour they had received 10 orders from the US. Abigail’s marketing strategy, or some might arguably say lack of, is indicative of the new-age environment in which the product was launched.

“It’s really been quite viral. It’s something that just happened, but we leaped on board when we needed to,” explains Abigail. “It’s the way of the future.”

Since this incidental start, Abigail has taken a more purposeful approach to social networking, actively engaging in discussions where she can. In this respect, she warns other corporates that it is important to be cautious in any approach to the newest online environments.

“You have to be careful you are not just pushing your own barbell,” Abigail says. “In social media it’s easy to spot disingenuous communication. You have to be genuine and that will make people seek your product out.” In other digital efforts, the company revamped their web site last November.

Another huge step the company took last November was to launch their first office in the UK. Learning from their first experience in launching in Australia, Abigail says that their first step was to seed themselves in the “hard core” espresso community. In winning them over, Abigail hopes to spread admiration of the KeepCup in a similar fashion to her home turf.

They also launched the KeepCup at Coffeefest in Seattle, Washington and received a positive response. In the US they are working with larger corporations to distribute the KeepCup - a different approach to direct sales that have worked well at home.

“The big chain stores dominate over there. It’s not like here,” she says. They are currently courting interest from Amazon and Whole Foods to distribute the KeepCup.

This energy to expand overseas has come as less of a purposeful push and mostly at the behest of customers, Abigail says. Essentially, when they receive an inquiry, they look for an overseas partner and just follow where the demand is. With limited competition (the two major competitors now are ceramic cups) who knows where this demand will end?

Talking dirty – a barista’s guide to the KeepCup

As with any new product, learning how to work the KeepCup into your café’s routine poses some challenges. Abigail offers a few tips on dealing with dirty cups.
- You are not accountable. Some baristas have expressed concern that they may be held accountable for serving coffee in a contaminated cup. Abigail notes that this isn’t the case, because the cup is something your customer is bringing in and legally you can’t be held accountable.
- Pride in the KeepCup. The KeepCup is meant as a designer item that customers should be proud of. If they’re bringing in dirty cups, it is ok to politely refuse to serve your coffee in them and ask if next time they can bring it in clean.
- Taking note. The side of the KeepCup is designed to mark what coffee your customer prefers. Check it out as it may save you time in taking their orders.
- Stick it. Keep a pad of sticky notes where you take your orders. If the customer’s favourite coffee isn’t marked on the cup, or they want a different one, you can write it on the sticky note and keep it on the cup.