How This Company Thrived by Ditching Most of Its Customers
By trying to create a luxe water bottle for the masses, Grayl built a product no audience wanted.
Travis Merrigan and Nancie Weston had a simple, elegant idea. They wanted to make a bottle that cleans water. Fill it from a dubious source -- a stagnant creek or a rusty spigot in a foreign country -- and then use it like a French press, pushing down on a plunger-like filter to screen out harmful compounds. In 2013, after two years of development and a successful $15,000 Indiegogo campaign, they made it. It was called the Water Filtration Cup, sold under the brand name Grayl.
Arielle Shipe
Related: The 10 Must-Have Ingredients for a Successful Invention
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