What Is the ‘It’ Water Bottle for Back-to-School Shopping?
The New York Times
The mighty Stanley’s reign appears to be ending, with Owala, Lululemon and Hydro Flask all competing for affection — and cachet — among teens and tweens.
With August having arrived and summer slipping away, teens and tweens are already in the process of gearing up for the new academic year. For many, a vital question looms before they get back to books and backpacks: What will be the “it” water bottle this school year?
Parents, footing the bill for back-to-school shopping, will likely get caught up in this important, future-shaping decision as well, whether they want to be or not.
Last year, you may remember that the Stanley 40-ounce tumbler was all the rage. The oversized cup, which had already been popular among adult women, became a trendy fashion accessory and collectible from high schools all the way down to elementary schools. Stanley sold an estimated 10 million “Quencher” water tumblers in 2023 (at $45 a pop, in most cases), and when the company released two special-edition cups for Valentine’s Day this year, customers nearly came to blows in Target stores trying to buy them. Some camped outside stores, in the dead of winter, to get their hands on one. In California, two people were arrested after being accused of stealing the collectibles.
But that was ages ago in the life span of status water tumblers. Shortly after the Target collaboration dropped, Casey Lewis, who writes about Generation Z’s shopping habits in the newsletter After School, was telling The New York Times that “some millennials or Gen-Z are already embarrassed to carry a Stanley.” And a recent collaboration with the lifestyle brand LoveShackFancy may prove to be too little, too late.
The average teenager is more attuned to cultural capital than Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist who coined the term. Given the light-speed of trends, especially those driven by social media, they know it’s probably time to retire their durable Stanley, if not in a landfill than on a bedroom shelf. But where do they go from here?
