COLLEGE STATION — The Stanley Cups craze has taken over social media and real life. One local business has capitalized on the viral trend by making Stanley Cup toppers.
- Business owner Kristin Young says 95% of their orders are Stanley Cup toppers.
- Before the holidays, she was making hundreds of toppers every week; now she still makes several hundred in a month.
- A Texas A&M Marketing professor says the company's marketing strategy boils down to two things: creating demand and using social media to their benefit.
BROADCAST SCRIPT:
A laser machine – *machine whirrs*
A computer –
And a viral water bottle.
“Simona: So it's mostly Stanley Cups toppers?
Kristin: Yeah, yeah, I'd say 95%”
Kristin Young is a graphic designer who launched her business making personalized laser crafts in August…which really turned into mostly Stanley Cup toppers.
Kristin: “My husband like got up with me at 5am and we would start working on toppers. I would go to work and he would keep working on toppers until I got home after my eight hour day and then we would work on orders until sometimes two or three in the morning getting orders out. It was insane.”
Because if you haven’t heard…Stanley cups are all the rage.
From the 23-year-old woman in California who was pulled over and had 65 Stanleys in her trunk, worth over 2500 dollars (photo) – to the giant Stanley cup mural in San Antonio, and even a baby Stanley – what is it about these bottles that have our pop culture in a chokehold?
Keith Wilcox: “One of the most powerful things to get consumers to buy things or do things is to make something scarce, you know, and so sometimes we do it with a really high price, but then sometimes you do that with a limited release.”
Keith Wilcox is a Marketing professor at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School I sat down with him to ask him one question: is this marketing genius or a stroke of good luck?
Wilcox: “A lot of these things happen organically. It's what the company does, once it happens organically, that can determine how successful it is.”
Stanley definitely seems to have capitalized on that good luck.
Simona in interview: “Did you see a big influx of sales when this Starbucks collab came out?
Kristin: Yes, for sure. I think that is probably what peaked or like what started the holiday season ramping up for us.”
Before the holidays, Young says she was sending out hundreds of toppers every week – holiday themed ones, sports teams, or just personalized names… with this laser machine and this computer….all because of a viral water bottle.