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“The best art divides the audience. nICE Mug isn't going to be for everyone, but I'm not making it for everyone.”
One cold Minnesota winter night, Glenn Auerbach trudged to his backyard sauna and noticed a water container left outside — frozen solid on the outside, with liquid still in the center. He poured out the liquid and what remained was a perfectly formed drinking vessel. He filled it with beer. It didn't leak. The nICE Mug was born.
It took years of experimentation with potato salad containers, hockey tape, and eventually injection-molded tooling to reliably replicate what nature had done by accident. In 2013, a Kickstarter campaign with a $15,000 goal brought in over $25,000. Glenn has since sold more than 4,000 units and brings in $2,000–5,000/month, packing and shipping everything from his house.
Pricing lesson: don't just double your cost and call it profit. Glenn runs a 3–4x model that accounts for tooling, packaging, shipping, marketing, and website costs — all real line items that erode a naive margin.
"The best art divides the audience. nICE Mug isn't going to be for everyone, but I'm not making it for everyone."
What's next? Glenn shipped nICE Mugs to the NHL packed in dry ice, and all parties are in talks about a potential licensing agreement. As he puts it: the idea is still on ice.
Find the nICE Mug at nicemug.com.
