From my brief research into these things just now (never even heard of Hydro Flasks before, I guess I'm old), it seems they got success from a combination of methods, not just one:
1) Product started picking up around 2014, the time when Instagram went mainstream and influencers started appearing, and the app was no longer just confined to photographers. Hydro Flask (HF) capitalised on this. Google Trends shows this:
2) From several articles, it appears these guys have tons of cash to burn (investor-funded).
For them to be able to get onto shelves worldwide, so fast, suggests the investor has powerful connections to make this happen.
3) The REAL KEY : HF likely gained real traction when they started marketing it to college kids : College culture: Hydro Flasks, Birkenstocks and Macbooks - The Stanford Daily
It's like the "Apple" of the water bottle world. They're selling it as a status symbol. Their technical features (such as double insulation and all that shit) are not a big deal, it's boring even. But by selling it at $60 and having all the "cool kids" in high school and college have one, it got desired by the rest. And to make it happen, I won't be surprised if they have college ambassadors to help make this happen.
Alison, the 5'10 hot Amber Heard-lookalike from Class X, who surfs at the beach and grooves with the city's most famous DJs on trips to mad hot parties on the beaches at Barcelona, has a HF.
Josh, the 6'12 rugby guy, who has 3 different girls hanging on his arms every day, drinks from a HF.
And in that college alone, there's many Alisons and Joshs. Want to be like these cool instajanes and douchebros? The easiest way to rub some of their glitter onto yourselves is to get a HF.
Because everyone else already has a Macbook Pro, iPhone and carries a Starbucks cup in their right hand.
An interesting article: What's a VSCO girl? Shop the latest teen trend
In all trends, things ALWAYS start from the young crowd and grow to encompass the older crowd : Facebook and Pokemon Go is a good example (for Pokemon Go, not sure what it's like in other countries, but at least here, it seems nowadays the middle aged boomers are the ones playing PoGo and not the young kids anymore lol).
4) Look at HF's web stats on Similarweb:
They've a heavy Youtube presence. Surprisingly, their IG despite having 660K+ followers and decent engagement for a brand actually got listed as last.
And looking at their Audience Interests above confirms their main market audience are college kids.
If you go to their Instagram page, click on a few of their posts, read the comments, you'll see at least 99% of their fans are young white chicks.
5) I'm pretty sure HF is a fad though. From looking at Google Trends and Similarweb, their numbers seem to be going down.
Looking at these stats, it seems to say that when HF gets introduced to a new country, it gets popular, but after a while when it reaches a "plateau" (pretty fast, I say), it starts to decline.
Philippines is probably getting started with HF but a couple years later, it'll probably go down like CA and UK. Again, these numbers may be also affected by heavy advertising. E.g: probably bumped up ad spend in the US due to Black-Fri-Cyber-Mon, and probably spent less on ads in UK.
I'm not a fan of their bottle shape though. The colors are cool, but personally I feel something like Sw'ell bottles look more pleasing (but are very hard to clean properly).
5) Other factors, such as riding on the greenwashing / wokewashing trend which is big among Gen Z and millennials.
omg, your using plastic bottles? how can you? like, um, they kill turtles and sharks, they're killing our environment. omg omg loook!!!! these metal hydro flasks r sewww fire and hard!
we highkey need to get em now mmkay?!
1) Product started picking up around 2014, the time when Instagram went mainstream and influencers started appearing, and the app was no longer just confined to photographers. Hydro Flask (HF) capitalised on this. Google Trends shows this:
2) From several articles, it appears these guys have tons of cash to burn (investor-funded).
For them to be able to get onto shelves worldwide, so fast, suggests the investor has powerful connections to make this happen.
3) The REAL KEY : HF likely gained real traction when they started marketing it to college kids : College culture: Hydro Flasks, Birkenstocks and Macbooks - The Stanford Daily
It's like the "Apple" of the water bottle world. They're selling it as a status symbol. Their technical features (such as double insulation and all that shit) are not a big deal, it's boring even. But by selling it at $60 and having all the "cool kids" in high school and college have one, it got desired by the rest. And to make it happen, I won't be surprised if they have college ambassadors to help make this happen.
Alison, the 5'10 hot Amber Heard-lookalike from Class X, who surfs at the beach and grooves with the city's most famous DJs on trips to mad hot parties on the beaches at Barcelona, has a HF.
Josh, the 6'12 rugby guy, who has 3 different girls hanging on his arms every day, drinks from a HF.
And in that college alone, there's many Alisons and Joshs. Want to be like these cool instajanes and douchebros? The easiest way to rub some of their glitter onto yourselves is to get a HF.
Because everyone else already has a Macbook Pro, iPhone and carries a Starbucks cup in their right hand.
An interesting article: What's a VSCO girl? Shop the latest teen trend
In all trends, things ALWAYS start from the young crowd and grow to encompass the older crowd : Facebook and Pokemon Go is a good example (for Pokemon Go, not sure what it's like in other countries, but at least here, it seems nowadays the middle aged boomers are the ones playing PoGo and not the young kids anymore lol).
4) Look at HF's web stats on Similarweb:
They've a heavy Youtube presence. Surprisingly, their IG despite having 660K+ followers and decent engagement for a brand actually got listed as last.
And looking at their Audience Interests above confirms their main market audience are college kids.
If you go to their Instagram page, click on a few of their posts, read the comments, you'll see at least 99% of their fans are young white chicks.
5) I'm pretty sure HF is a fad though. From looking at Google Trends and Similarweb, their numbers seem to be going down.
Looking at these stats, it seems to say that when HF gets introduced to a new country, it gets popular, but after a while when it reaches a "plateau" (pretty fast, I say), it starts to decline.
Philippines is probably getting started with HF but a couple years later, it'll probably go down like CA and UK. Again, these numbers may be also affected by heavy advertising. E.g: probably bumped up ad spend in the US due to Black-Fri-Cyber-Mon, and probably spent less on ads in UK.
I'm not a fan of their bottle shape though. The colors are cool, but personally I feel something like Sw'ell bottles look more pleasing (but are very hard to clean properly).
5) Other factors, such as riding on the greenwashing / wokewashing trend which is big among Gen Z and millennials.
omg, your using plastic bottles? how can you? like, um, they kill turtles and sharks, they're killing our environment. omg omg loook!!!! these metal hydro flasks r sewww fire and hard!
we highkey need to get em now mmkay?!