- Cirkul's co-founders came up with a water-enhancing cartridge system, but couldn't find a manufacturer.
- What started as a hand-made operation in 2018 has now expanded to production in two states.
- CEO Garrett Waggoner told BI that making in the US has been key to the company's quick growth.
When Cirkul's co-founders came up with a water-enhancing cartridge system, no-one else knew how to make it — so they figured it out themselves.Cirkul
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That's what Cirkul co-founders Garrett Waggoner and Andy Gay discovered when they came up with a concept for a water-enhancing flavor cartridge system back in 2015.
"The Cirkul cartridge was such a novel form factor, and no one had ever done anything like it before," Waggoner told Business Insider.
Making the product overseas wasn't even an option, since there weren't any contract manufacturers who could do the job.
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"We just had to start doing it ourselves," he said.
Waggoner and Gay had "no formal background in manufacturing or operations, but back in 2018 we leased a little warehouse and started filling cartridges by hand at night."
Bit by bit, the Tampa-based brand gained a following on social media, linked up with Walmart, announced a $1 billon valuation in 2022, and Waggoner said the company now has a million square feet of production space divided between Florida and Utah.
Waggoner said making his products in America paired well with the company's original direct-to-consumer model, which allowed the team to quickly turn customer feedback into useful changes, rather than having to wait for a ship to cross the Pacific Ocean.
"In the early days, if you dropped the bottle from, say, hip height, the cartridge would kind of break apart," he said. "So very quickly, our engineering team identified manufacturing tolerance adjustments that strengthened that connection."
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That rapid feedback loop was "vital to helping the product grow up to where it is today," he said.
An expanding menu of flavors is still driven by customer feedback, with cartridges mixed and made in the US.
In addition to the cartridges, Cirkul also sells a selection of plastic bottles (which the company makes here), and a newer line of Stanley-style stainless steel tumblers (which are currently imported, though Waggoner said he's exploring ways to bring that production on-shore).
Although the decision to make his products primarily in the US was at first more about necessity than principle, Waggoner said he hasn't really seen outsourcing or off-shoring as attractive options.
"We've been growing so quickly that, to be honest, it's just never been a consideration, because we've been building our operations out continuously," he said. "Frankly, the team takes a lot of pride in it, and it's a lot of fun to see the team deliver something that is novel."
