What’s next for Stanley after the rise and fall of the water bottle craze?

A few years ago, the reusable water bottle transformed from a humble utilitarian good into a status-signaling piece of arm candy. On TikTok, popular creators were decking out their water bottles with custom accessories and add-ons. Out in the real world, people were coordinating their water bottle colors with their activewear sets. Some consumers were even willing to drop hundreds of dollars for a “luxury” hydration experience. It was a full-on war of the water bottles, and there was a clear leader in the pack of drinkware brands vying for attention: Stanley 1913. 

For Stanley, a subsidiary of the parent company PMI WW Brands, the great water bottle wars were a business turning point. The 113-year-old brand, which invented the first all-steel vacuum-sealed water bottle, was originally an under-the-radar name beloved mainly by outdoorsmen. After its Quencher water bottle caught the attention of a popular shopping blog called The Buy Guide, though, Stanley launched into the cultural zeitgeist, appearing everywhere from the Barbie movie to the TV show Yellowstone and SNL. Stanley’s revenues skyrocketed from $73 million in 2019 to an estimated $750 million in 2023. 

Since then, the rising star of reusable water bottles has dimmed somewhat. In an interview with Modern Retail last April, Matt Tucker, a sports equipment analyst at the Chicago-based market research firm Circana, said that sporting goods retailers saw year-over-year declines of bottles and insulated containers each month from September 2024 to February 2025. On a full-year basis in these retailers, he added, the overall category declined from 38% growth in 2023 to 14% growth in 2024.

As the water bottle craze dies down, Stanley is looking to new horizons. The brand is betting that it can bring its unique attention to detail to other areas of its consumers’ lives, from the gym to the boardroom. Its first big play is a line of bags that’s taking a few major design lessons from the Quencher—and is already becoming a fan favorite.

What’s next for Stanley after the great Quencher frenzy

Stanley’s history can be told through three major eras, according to Graham Nearn, chief product and sustainability officer at PMI. 

The first—and longest—lasted from around 1913 to 2020, when the brand was focused on work and outdoor gear, primarily targeted toward a male audience. Then, from 2020 to 2024, the Quencher’s viral success ushered in a second era for the company focused on its hydration line, which also meant an influx of primarily female customers. For the last couple of years, Stanley has been outlining a plan for its third era in the wake of the Quencher’s explosion.

Stanley declined to share financial data on its recent Quencher sales and overall revenue with Fast Company, citing the company’s status as a private entity. But, at a March 2025 event, Stanley 1913 global president Matt Navarro said he was seeing “a settling of the hydration category in the U.S., in particular,” despite overall growth across Stanley’s business from 2020 to 2024. He added that the company’s huge boost in success came from being “a disrupter in a stale space,” and in order to maintain that momentum, it would need to “continue to bring relevant, innovative products to the market.”

Nearn says the company has landed on a three-pronged strategy for this next era: Investing in new global markets, like Asia Pacific and Latin America; capturing a more gender-diverse customer base with new products and partnerships (including recent collabs with Lionel Messi and Post Malone); and, finally, launching new products beyond the Quencher. 

While water bottles will remain a core element of Stanley’s offerings—in fact, the company just launched a new bottle format called the “Clutch” on March 17—Nearn says the company sees an opportunity to turn Stanley into a broader brand that’s known for more than just hydration.

“The Quencher was this incredible inflection point for the company and the brand,” Nearn says. “Actually, it was a signal. It was a signal that consumers wanted performance; they wanted self-expression; they wanted our Built for Life warranty; they wanted our quality; but the signal also was they wanted it in other parts of their life. Since 2024, Stanley’s been really on a pivot to giving ourselves the opportunity to create a premium lifestyle brand.”

Three design lessons Stanley is taking from the Quencher

When deciding the best way to diversify its product mix, Stanley turned to customer interviews and feedback on socials. One theme kept recurring: Customers loved how the Quencher could move with them everywhere, from home to work and the gym. They wanted more versatile products that would fit within that “connective tissue,” Nearn says, or the parts of the day when they were on the move. 

Based on that insight, Stanley’s big swing out of the hydration category is Vitalize, the company’s first-ever line of bags. The collection includes a tote, crossbody bag, and backpack (alongside a shaker bottle). In the past, Nearn says, Stanley has experimented with various lines of soft coolers and lunchboxes, but it’s never produced more general bags. 

Like water bottles, bags are a category that’s become saturated in recent years. In order to make a product that would stand out among the thousands of existing options, Stanley’s product designers—led by Roger Jackson, director of industrial design at PMI—turned to the core attributes that made the Quencher such a success: frictionless transport, i.e. the Quencher’s cupholder-friendly design; versatility, demonstrated by its ability to hold both hot and cold beverages; and personalization, as in the many different bottles colors and add-ons (like charms, straws, and side kits) that made the Quenchers such an aesthetic hit on TikTok.

“With the Quencher, I think the superpower that we brought to it was this understanding that people were seeing these products as not just a carrying device for water,” Jackson says. “It was becoming a companion throughout their day.”

How Stanley designed its new line of bags

The Stanley team started by ensuring that the bags would be compatible with the Quencher’s fixed handle, which Jackson says has been “a tough proposition traditionally for backpacks and bags,” given the Quencher’s atypical shape and size.

Both the tote and the backpack come with two large side pockets and an adjustable, buckled strap to hold bottles in, allowing the Quencher’s handle to slot smoothly into an empty space beneath the strap. The adjustable design is made to accommodate Stanley products, but it’s also a clever solution for anyone with a larger water bottle that might not fit into a traditional, rigid side pocket.

Another common problem that the team endeavored to solve was “contamination concerns,” Jackson says. Stanley noticed that consumers were often traveling with their electronics and valuables, alongside items like lunchboxes, thermoses, and gym shoes.

“A really simple observation is the lack of trust people have in food containment storage boxes—you’ll just see that people chuck them in a Target plastic bag and wrap it up before they put it into their backpack,” Jackson says. “What that tells us is that there’s contamination, there’s leak concerns, and so we wanted to provide a whole separate section for that product. So even if the worst happens, it’s contained in there.”

Their design solution, which appears on the backpack and tote, is a zippered bottom compartment that’s completely insulated from the rest of the bag and made of an easily wipeable white nylon. This section is also expandable, so that anything contained in it—whether that be a lunchbox, gym shoes, or a sweaty towel—won’t cramp the rest of the bag’s storage space. 

All three of the new Vitalize bags are designed so that people can customize them as much as possible. Each product comes with multiple interior compartments for users to fit their electronics, stationery, and an additional tumbler. Even the small crossbody bag has one exterior pocket, three interior pockets, and room to hold a full water bottle.

On the outside of the bags, adjustable buckles and clips invite users to attach their keys and charms (based on several TikToks, users are already catching on). Color options in the Vitalize line include on-trend hues like “sage grey,” “rose quartz,” and “twilight.”

Already, Nearn says, the team has seen these details paying off. Within a week of Vitalize’s February 17 launch, the tote bag sold out in direct-to-consumer sales, and the line became Amazon’s top new release in gym totes and backpacks. Most of the products have now been restocked on Stanley’s website, though the rose quartz tote is still sold out.

Stanley typically takes around three years to brainstorm and prototype new products, so Jackson is hesitant to share any specific details of where the company might go next. Generally, though, he says that sports, lunch, and wellness are all categories that it plans to target as it aims to move beyond the Quencher’s shadow.

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