top of page

bevee: 12-Drink Reusable Carrier - No Mess, No Worries

  • Writer: KLS
    KLS
  • 4 days ago
  • 20 min read

For the 218th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, with bevee and Founder, Natalie Boyatt. Say goodbye to spills with bevee. The bevee 12-cup foldable reusable drink carrier was designed to carry you through life no matter what hat you're wearing. Whether you are a busy mom on the go, sales representative fulfilling office coffee orders, or a server navigating a crowded dining room-bevee is here to make your life easier.


bevee 1


"Together Talks" feature # 218: bevee presented by KLS - Dedicated Logistic Services for Excellence -Driven Businesses In The USA


Story of how it was created?

I am single mom and but I'm also a creative and sometimes those two don't match when it comes to paying bills. In 2015, I kicked and screamed my way into a corporate America job, specifically the pharmaceutical sales industry. And I'd like to say that at two months on the job, while tendering an order from Starbucks changed my life. That's a very common practice in that industry is to bring the offices lunches, coffees, smoothies, whatnots. And I got an order for 10 drinks. I walked into Starbucks and was given two cardboard drink carriers full of drinks across the counter. I just about died wondering how I was going to get these into my office and in my car without a major mess. It was quite the ordeal, just getting it into the office because once I got to the hallway, the door into the waiting room opened into the hallway. I couldn't use the whole elbow hip trick. And I had to set one down the floor, pull my hand up, open the door and up to hook my leg around it, pick the drink carrier back up. I'm in a dress, heels, work bag. I found myself sweating in places that I shouldn't have been sweating. I saw exactly what I wanted.


And it was simple. It was something that had a handle and would keep one hand free and would hold multiple drinks. I thought it would be a simple act of going home and ordering one and come to find out there wasn't anything on the market back then.


The best I could find were the large Gatorade carriers that you see they run out onto the fields and dispense the individual bottles. So I had an engineer who did some rudimentary drawings for me. I had no idea what I was doing. I knew a guy who had patented a sunscreen machine, so I called him and asked about my idea and he shockingly did not laugh me off the phone. He told me he would look into this and get back to me. He called me back and said, I think you have found a needle in a haystack. I think we can get this patent. I decided, you know what, I'm going to just go figure this out.


I couldn't find a good granular resource on how do you go from an idea to actual product creation, but I decided I was going to go figure it out. I bootstrapped it myself for the first five years, sweat equated a designer to start helping me design the product. It's challenging to design something that's never existed. You're literally not creating a better mouse trap. I'm creating something brand new. I wanted it to look good, but fun. I wanted it to have more of like a Yeti higher-end look than like a Coleman look.


The challenges were, how do we make this thing look good? And how do we keep it compact so it can store and how do we keep it to where it can actually hold drinks without spilling them? How do we make the handles sturdy enough so that will happen? We went through a lot of different prototypes made out of plywood. We had to figure out the sizing. The first one that we made out of like foam board, core board, looked like a shotgun case, it was so long. We knew that would not work.


As we went along, I kind of started realizing I wanted to create different sizes of a big one and a small one. We had already started with a larger 12 cup and 2020 hit like most people. I was just miserable at my job. I knew that I was not doing what I was meant to do. so, I made the leap and I quit my job in 2021. I built a small team, I took in some investment dollars, and I quit my job too soon. I had no idea it's still going to be two more years before I had actual product in a warehouse.


We had more design challenges with the manufacturer that we had to work out. But we finally launched last year, throughout all of this, I've had about six other beverageware products that have come to me through different headaches or experiences.


I've realized that I'm not just creating a drink carrier company, I'm actually creating a drinkware brand.

What separates your company from competition?

COVID created this food delivery phenomenon that has really sparked a lot of competitors. On Amazon, no products are as sturdy as my product. We have two patents. One is the locking mechanisms on each end. It will not buckle or tip over. The competitors are mostly made out of things fabric plastic, but in the sense of it wasn't originally created to hold drinks. I think the most popular one on the market is actually a rubber made product that was made for cleaning supplies.


One of the things I did creating our smaller six cup, I went on Amazon and read all of the customer reviews, especially the bad ones, because I wanted to find out what was not working with that product. The question was how do we mitigate that and not have that as part of our six cup that we're about to launch. The biggest things that separate us from the competition is that I changed the interior of the product.


I started this so long ago that I used Starbucks as my sample size for the actual cup holders. And what we found when we launched last year was that there are so many drink sizes that have popped up on the market. There's slim cans, there's Yeti's, there's Stanley's, none of those would have fit in my product. I took a reconnaissance mission out to Vegas last year to talk to the casinos as far as getting us into a B2B space, the hospitality industry, replacing the heavy trays. They all said, we love this product, it can be held with one hand, it could be set on the ground. But it doesn't hold all drinks. If you can go back and make that happen, we'll buy it.


So I changed the interior of the six cup. It actually has kind of a funky little fingers that will actually bend and flex. So whether or not you have a slim can or a 32 ounce drink, it's going to fit in the bevee. That's going to be our biggest differentiator. There's not one product on the market that can do that. The other differentiator is because we have this amazing, beautiful hard surface, we can do branding that can actually be customized. Whether or not we sell it into corporate or corporate gifting or if we sell it into arenas or casinos, we can do branding for it.


I'm looking to get into partnering with a supplier that has the collegiate and professional licenses so that we can make these tailgating custom colors for these different sports teams and put those logos on there. There's a lot of opportunities that the other current ones on the market don't have.


What have been the biggest challenges?

By far fundraising. I think that probably would be most everyone's answer right now in the environment that we're in. The past two years have been the hardest for fundraising. On top of that, you add being a female founder of a CPG company with a product that no one has ever seen, knows exists. There hasn't been this long history of other products like it that have shown massive success. It's been really challenging to figure out how do we bring in a large amount of capital because CPG companies are so cash heavy on the front end, inventory purposes alone.

Reflect on a goal you set and how it made you feel to accomplish it?

This is somewhat of a personal goal, but last year when I was hitting what I called the rock bottom, both professionally and personally, I was very frustrated because at that point, I was eight years into this journey. I just couldn't get things to click and I couldn't get things to start working. I was beginning to wonder, am I the only one manifesting it as it worked for? And did I get this all wrong? I was told for seven, eight years that this was an incredible product. And I would just knock it out of the ballpark.


I just, I got so frustrated and one night in particular, I remember thinking and praying, I need something to change or I need to get out of this situation. And I don't know how to because I've taken in other people's money. I just, I don't know what to do. And it hit me like a bolt of lightning that I was supposed to write the guide book that I could never find when I first started. I was supposed to write the book that talks about how you start a product from dollar one. I was supposed to take all of my knowledge, my eight years of dirt road, dead ends, goods, bads, lots of losses, but a few great wins. And just walk people through the process.


I woke up the next morning, running wrote 18 chapter titles, wrote the chapter the next day, and I wrote the book in four months. I published it myself on Amazon three weeks ago, and the book and the e-book, audibles. I love this book so much because it really is transparent, I break down all my costs. I talk about things that I had to go figure out. I almost did what would have been a failed Kickstarter campaign in 21, because I didn't know how to properly vet a Kickstarter campaign. I just thought that's what you did, and I lost $35,000 in the process.


I say entrepreneurs love to brag. That's why you see books on how I scaled to 50 million, 100 million, but I wanted to really reach doubt and inspire, encourage the people that either want to change their life, want to have an idea and don't know where to start. I want to encourage and help those people that are just so scared of this massive entrepreneurial mountain that you have to climb to get it here.


How to remain balanced waiting for the next growth?

The big saying of control your controllables is really true. I think sometimes because this is such a grueling climb up the mountain, you kind of forget how far you come. Last year I said something to a friend about what happened with Amazon, they had just opened me up to Mexico nonchalantly and she stopped me and said do you hear yourself? Do you understand how big of a deal that is to, to like everyone else but you?


I think it's, it's easy for us to forget. Some of the stuff that we have accomplished it's hard in early days because there's not a lot of great cool stuff to report, but even if it's just a little win, it is still a win. I think you just have to just stay true to the hustle that it requires and know that you may not be where you want to be right now, but there's a past version of you that would have killed to be where you are right now.


bevee 2


How did you handle the transition?

i told my mom I kind of feel I am sitting on train tracks and the train is coming and it's going to hit me. I just hope that I'm going to survive it and it doesn't hurt too bad. I have a really good friend of mine who owns a yoga studio and she had left corporate as well. She said, I can promise you that a year from now, you will realize it was the best thing you ever did.


She was right, it was a shock. But I like to say that the fear and the pain of staying in that job was just always a little bit less than the fear of making that leap to go do what I knew inside was what I was supposed to be doing. I love the phrase and I say it all the time that everything is figure-outable.


I knew that worst case scenario is everything fails and I could always go get another job. But that was never on an option, I just knew that for some reason, the safety net failed me, my wings failed me, their bridge wasn't built. I feel like money fuels so much of what we do in life. I refused to let that be the determining factor of whether or not I was going to go chase my dreams. And, I refused to let it be the determining factor of whether or not I was going to go find my best life and live my best life and live the life that I knew I wanted to do on my terms and not on a paycheck.


What have you learned from being an entrepreneur?

Your setbacks are almost always your setups. You may not realize it at the time. I've had multiple setbacks that ended up leading me sometimes three years later to one of the greatest discoveries with my business and my mission and my wife as I like to call it.


I've also learned, I wish especially in the early days, I had a little more fun because I don't now look back on some of the hardships, I don't really remember them as much. I remember the things that made us laugh. I remember talking to one of my business partners, just trying to name bevee and all the names we went through. It's hilarious to think back on some of the names that we came up with.


So I wish I had had a little bit more fun. And maybe even been a little easier on myself. It took me several years to realize that I did not have to work so hard on this business, it was okay for me to go do a yoga class at noon. I learned that the burnout is real. And also learned that it's okay to ask for help.


I've especially learned that, I've had so many people come to me over the years and I like to call them "big hats, no cattle". They all talk a pretty picture and a big picture. Yes, I can help you and we can do this and I learned that you've got to be a really a bit more apprehensive or cautious as to who you let into your circle and who you allow to help you.


There's a lot of people that talk a really big game and they don't really have the ability to help propel your business and yourself along. I learned to be really careful with who I get involved with and also who I let try to help within the business. Those are things that you can't really be taught and you can't really learn them in a book you kind of just have to live through them. My skin couldn't get much thicker that's for sure.


Interesting story, I adore this group and have now been involved for over three years. They've helped me so much and are some of my biggest cheerleaders. But three years ago, i still only had a prototype and during their pitch competition I made it to the semi-finals. And then I got roasted, it was so bad, I was so bad. Out of 35 possible points I scored just nine. The judges were brutal on me and I was so angry they even put me in the competition.


I almost didn't reapply, but they kept encouraging me too. As the years went by and I continued to pitch and pitch investors and in different competitions. Last year I made it to the finals and I scored a 33 out of 35. I was close to winning. You can't prepare for these tough moments, you just have to endure the painful heart stuff so that you can get better.


I can keep going. There's so much that you learn about meeting a founder. In fact, my angel investor really looked at me at our last meeting and said, I feel like the CEO was showing up.

I was like, yeah, she has.


What is the next thing you need to develop as a leader?

I'm looking at this next year being my scaling year. Right now my team is very small. This is going to be the year that I really have to buckle up and put on the CEO hat and be prepared to start really growing a team. Finding and filling roles in the company that are of people that are an extension of me. I've been very fortunate to have some really great mentors and I've watched how they've done things and taken their advice.


My goal this year was to surround myself especially with female leaders that I would like to emulate and learn from them. To learn what did they do to grow into the roles that they are today. I'm still in the growth process. I'm still learning. I'm still learning what are the parts of the business that I'm the weakest at. Those typically tend to be financial things because I am a creative and that's kind of a part of my brain that starts turning off.


But it's important for me to to know them and to get comfortable with them. Those are some of the challenges that I have. I know I'll get there and I know I'll certainly accomplish those goals. I think that's one cool thing about being an entrepreneur is once you hit one goal, you know you could hit any goal that you set for yourself.


It's just a matter of figuring it out.

Did you ever doubt the fate of your company?

100% that night that I spoke on. The product had been out for three months. I had hired this wonderful marketing specialist who came in, he had done marketing for one of the largest cannabis company in the country. He had experience with just with online selling. He did a deep dive. We really kind of laid everything out, made some improvements to the website and socials.


He asked about target market. I started rattling off everyone I envisioned; it's the sales reps and office workers and delivery drivers and moms and the casinos and the resorts and the hospital, the whole hospitality industry, the whole beverage industry. I was saying to him that everyone in the world is going to buy one of these. And he just stopped me. He's like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. you have a brand new product. We need to find your beachhead so that we can figure out who's going to organically buy it.


Find out what they like about it. This first version is almost like a test version for you. He said, let's start with why you created the product. We really dialed it back to just that specific reason of why we started selling and who we were selling to.


It started very slow. Google ads weren't working, Instagram ads weren't working, because no one was looking for this product. We tried things like direct mailers to professional offices, and it helped some but the lights were not going to stay on for much longer.


This was about the time where I thought, I don't know what else to do. We've tried everything, we've done everything we can, and the people that do buy it like it. I struggled to figure out what do we do now? How do we pivot? What what what can we do?


That's when this rock bottom moment happened. That's when the book idea happened. That's when things really started to make sense. I was supposed to hit this rock bottom so that I could write this book that will help so many other people, especially women. I'm just obviously drawn to helping them.


Three days later, I got an email from Amazon corporate and that changed everything.


What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?

I think I love how resilient it's made me. I love that I can now start helping others with the position I'm currently in. I love the fact that one night lying in bed, I just knew in my heart of hearts, instinctually, my spirit told me that this is going to work and you're going to be very successful.


Share a mistake and what you learned from that experience?

As we started trying to figure out how to create this product, the original thought for the interior to hold the drinks was to use foam, if you think about like memory foam, it expands, it contracts, it makes sense that it would compress. We messed around with foam for the better part of four years, and it was a matter of just trying and we couldn't get the density right.


Every time that we went through a new iteration, they would make the molds, create them, ship them to me, we'd test them, and they wouldn't work. It was just a long process. And then what we found was over time and use, the foam started cracking. It looked cheap, it looked terrible, I was so unhappy with it.


When I finally signed with my manufacturer in 2021, I had quit my job. I didn't know anything about pricing. I knew nothing about how to price a product. All I knew is that I wanted to create a product, a high quality product. I knew I wanted it to sell for somewhere between $15-$60 and just go make it.


This was a rookie mistake on my end is that I should have spent more time learning this process and being concerned about what my costs were. At the time, I was using a manufacturer rep that's based here in the US who contracts with China, that directly terrified me. They were getting their cut of the pie. As this process went along, we could not come up with a good solution for the interior.


Finally, my manufacturer rep came up with the idea of, you may remember, the game connect four. If you picture that game turned sideways, that's essentially the grid that they put inside the product. And then they covered it with silicone. That's what the product is currently. It's a beautiful product. But it all also added four dollars per unit to my cost.


So what was an originally, you know, an $18 my cost unit. By the time we added all the packaging that that additional silicone, all the fees associated with getting a product here, I was shipping at one of the highest peak shipping times of all time, COVID, this thing became an $80 drink carrier. And quite frankly, I wasn't sure if anybody was gonna buy an $80 drink carrier.


I've been fortunate that I have been able to sell it at a slightly lower price on Amazon. But that could have been a disaster, and that may have been partially why people weren't buying it in the beginning. I got very smart and got very educated and I write about it in the book about how to understand pricing and understand how important it it is to get it right on the front end.


I think being an entrepreneur, you learn to grow and you learn to get that thick skin, but you also learn to like ask for what you want and don't settle for anything less. I've had to learn to kind of be somewhat of a like a stickler for what I need for my business, what's best for my business. It's proving work in my favor because I'm about to sign a deal with one of the largest retailers in the country.


bevee 3


What is your why?

I say every entrepreneur needs a why because if you don't have a why, then you'll quit. You need that one thing that's going to be the ultimate reason why you're going through all the hard stuff. I'm grateful. I'm so appreciative that all of this is starting to play out in a beautiful fashion, beautiful tapestry and it's going to allow me to do what I'm ultimately meant to do.


I'm also grateful that I've had a daughter, who's 16 now, but a seven year old daughter who's been on this journey with me. She does not think that she can't do anything in life. And that's so cool. It's so cool that she gets to share in all these wins. She's been there to lift me up sometimes when I needed it, but I love the fact that she's along for the ride. I got to text her yesterday and I was like, oh my God, I think I'm getting the publishing offer.


Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?

I mentioned that I got an email from Amazon as one of their highest keyword searches for our product. In fact, it falls into 0.1%. The way Amazon they rank keywords one to a billion and anything that falls one to a hundred thousand is considered a best seller, considered a winner.


Drink carrier falls somewhere between 55-60,000 just depending on the day, it fluctuates. They found my product. They have a special team that looks for products that fall within that one to 100,000. They had found me and sent an email saying they wanted to have a vetting call.


I actually thought it was a joke. I was googling this thing like a girl going on a first date. We had a call with them and by the next week we had been partnered with Amazonian of the year 2022 in Kitchenware. We worked with him for five months to get our page to perfection in Amazon's eyes. We launched the week before Thanksgiving.


Keep in mind, I've been having slow trickle sales, right? Well we started doing some influencer outreach a little bit. In December, about three weeks after we launched, I started noticing an uptick in emails received from Amazon. I get one every time they've shipped a product and I was getting an uptick and then it was a crazy uptick.


We had gone from one or two sales a day to 30 in a matter of hours. One influencer had reached out and said that she does require compensation, but might be willing to run a reel, but she won't tag us and she won't let us know.


And what we found out the next day upon investigating is that she had in fact ordered one herself and did a reel. Within four days, we had hit over a million views. and you know 70,000 shares and it was the moment where it was like I knew it. I knew I was right. I knew I had a product. I knew this.


Ever since then organically, these influencers they all follow each other they all find these winning unique products and they continue to just purchase and purchase and purchase. I think our most seen video now has over 20 million views and it is all organic. Her most popular one for us, had over 8 million views, 150,000 likes, 100,000 shares,15,000 comments. She did it as a mom, struggling to go into Starbucks to carry drinks for the kids, a place to put it in the car.


What it told me was this is an untapped market if I create and launch my six cup solution in a very similar fashion, I've got a winner. And target moms. I have a best-selling product here. That led me to being really methodical with the colors and how we're going to market it. We have a database now of over 60 influencers that have various reels and stories on the product. They're going to be first on my list that I contact to help us launch this six-cop.


It's just been so cool to see how I was, at this time last year thinking, I may have to watch all this go away to now holy cow, everybody buckle up.


Piece of Advice

This is one thing that I think has caused the biggest change in my life, start expecting and looking forward to surprises. Life is going to surprise you. And just like my story, it's probably going to be in a way you've never saw coming. And it's going to be probably in a way that's going to be bigger and more wonderful than you could ever imagine.


The way that I was able to tap into that was that I let go of holding on so tightly. I let go of trying to control the outcome and trying to figure things out. Instead trying to just surrender because if you really think about it in the big picture, for the most part it is going to work itself out.


When I started living a life of gratitude and looking forward to the surprises, that's when all the good stuff started happening. If you're not happy with the life you're living or don't feel like you're living your fulfilled life that you want to be living, then go change it.


Go change it. It's so easy to change. Start with something small. Start with something that you love. Start with something that brings you joy. You'll be surprised at what may come your way. And that's probably the biggest piece of advice give you.


In Closing

KLS wants to thank bevee and Founder, Natalie Boyatt, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!

Comments

bottom of page