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In the filtered water space, there is one company that has dominated brand awareness for decades. Water pitchers and filtration devices from Brita can be found in so many millions of homes and offices around the world that the term market saturation is more than just a pun. But there’s another water filtration company that, despite lower kitchen visibility, is actually a bigger player in the clean-water game. Culligan, founded in 1936 as a water softening and filtration service company, became known for its white-glove service. [Photo: Culligan] Often installed in basements or storage closets, Culligan’s equipment was as utilitarian as a water heater or furnace. Once the system was installed in a home or office, its users hardly gave it another thought, or look. “It was the technician that was actually working with the product,” says Kathy Chi Thurber, Culligan’s new global president of consumer products. “The products didn’t have to be beautiful, but the technicians had to be able to talk about our history, our capabilities, our research, and innovation.” Now, as a private 15,000-person company that pulled more than $3 billion in revenue in 2023, Culligan is embarking on a total brand and strategy overhaul. And aggressively so. Within the past five years, Culligan has acquired 362 companies in the clean-water industry, from local water purifiers to filter companies to component manufacturers. It’s positioning itself as a dominant player in a world where water safety and water scarcity are of increasing concern. [Photo: Culligan] Out of the basement and into your kitchen One priority is to start competing more directly in the consumer space, bringing its equipment out of the basement and into the hands of water drinkers everywhere. “We’d never really given an eye to the consumer, and that has 100% changed,” says Chris Quatrochi, chief product and technology officer at Culligan International. To venture into the Brita-dominated consumer market, Culligan turned to the industrial design firm Ammunition Group. Known best for its work designing Beats by Dre headphones and products for companies like Polaroid, Square, and Lyft, Ammunition was tasked with helping Culligan develop products that appeal to regular consumers. It also updated the brand to tell those consumers that Culligan is not the box-in-the-basement brand they may have known in the past. “Our portfolio has not been the greatest from a, I would say, beauty perspective,” Quatrochi says. “If you really want to show that you are leading edge from a water-quality perspective, you have to have a product that demonstrates that.” Ammunition started by applying its deep product design background to creating a water filtration pitcher that embodies this new company focus. Building on its 2020 acquisition of the water filter maker ZeroWater, Culligans ZeroWater Technology line of three handheld pitchers and two countertop dispensers is the companys first foray into the consumer space. [Photo: Culligan] Designing a better water pitcher Ammunition’s design focused primarily on the ways people actually use filtered water pitchers. “One of the constraints is putting it in your refrigerator,” says industrial designer Robert Brunner, Ammunition’s founder. Research into the market showed that more than 70% of water pitcher users, particularly those in the U.S. and Western Europe, keep their pitchers in the refrigerator, often in the door of the appliance. At the same time, most of the pitchers on the market don’t actually fit into a fridge door all that well. Their rectangular shape and bulging handle tend to take up a lot of space, and need more room around them to be moved in and out. [Photo: Culligan] Ammunition rethoght that form factor to better fit inside the refrigerator door, using a rounded square shape for the pitcher that allows it to fit more like a carton of milk. The pitcher also has an innovative open-ended handle that cuts down on its overall bulk and allows more stuff to fit in the refrigerator door’s shelves alongside it, while also being more ergonomically comfortable to carry and hold. “Figuring out how to have that single connection point for that handle so it’d be mechanically robust and reliableit was actually a fair amount of engineering effort to make sure that could work when it’s getting filled up with water,” Brunner says. “The handle is extremely important, because when this thing is full, it’s quite heavy, and you have to be able to manipulate it, carry it, pour it. We wanted to maintain this simplicity.” The design team also thought about the spout shape and the challenge of pouring water for people with dexterity and mobility issues. That led to considerations about one of the key parts of using a water pitcher: refilling it. Ammunition designed a sliding lid that makes holding the pitcher under the tap and refilling it easier. The lids circular shape became a recurring theme in the design of the pitcher line, as well as the broader work Ammunition is doing across Culligan’s other product and service categories. “The circular element is really the most natural shape to route water from one place to another, pipes being the most obvious example,” says Christopher Kuh, vice president of Ammunition’s industrial design studio. “It’s really an important and core element.” Another differentiating factor is the built-in water-quality meter. Measuring total dissolved solids (TDS) at the scale of parts per million, the digital meter slots into the pitchers and the countertop dispensers to give users a clear readout of how well the filter is functioningand when it’s time to replace it. “The TDS meter actually is going to start to read a value above zero at some point in time, which gives you a clear indication of the end of filter life,” Kuh says. In a clever turn, the meter can be removed from the pitcher or dispenser to dip into, say, a glass of water direct from the tap to see just how much the filtration system is doing. [Photo: Culligan] A bigger rebrand moment These design moves were informed by deep user research Culligan has conducted over the past three years. Thurber says Ammunition was game for putting its design prototypes in the hands of users from the very early stages and taking their feedback to inform new iterations of the designs before landing on a final product that looks and feels different from what’s already out there. “We all know who the major competitor is that has, like, 60% to 70% market share,” Thurber says. “It would be very hard to break through if we were not serious about what we wanted to do, and if we were not game-changing in our design and our functionality.” But this doesn’t mean Culligan is abandoning the more utilitarian water products that have kept it in business for nearly a century. Instead, Ammunition’s design approach for the pitcher is being extended throughout Culligan’s product offerings, including the industrial-scale water softeners and filtration systems that still live in basements and utility closets, as well as the company’s large and growing business in office water coolers. Some of those redesigned products will be coming online in the next year.
Category:
E-Commerce
The delivery app DoorDash and the Alphabet-owned drone company Wing are bringing mall food court favorites to select doorsteps as they expand their drone delivery program. The companies recently announced that they were partnering with GoTo Foods, the parent company behind shopping mall brands like Auntie Anne’s, Jamba, and Schlotzsky’s, to deliver orders by drone to select areas in Frisco, Fort Worth, and Plano, Texas. It’s DoorDash’s latest push into delivery by air after announcing in March it would launch a drone delivery pilot program with Wing for select Wendy’s items in Christiansburg, Virginia, and also a sign that the company sees more room for growth. DoorDash said it began offering drone delivery for Papa Johns and The Brass Tap during limited hours of operation in parts of Little Elm and Frisco, Texas, in June, and now its partnership with GoTo Foods takes that pilot program further. “As we continue scaling our drone operations, we remain focused on building a world-class logistics platform that enables partners like Wing to integrate seamlessly into our ecosystem; provides a smooth, reliable delivery experience for merchants; and offers consumers fast and affordable access to brands they love,” DoorDash’s drone program head Harrison Shih said in a statement. For now, drone delivery is limited to just a 4-mile radius of participating locations, but for those who live in the radius, DoorDash promises delivery within minutes of ordering. The company has leaned into robotic delivery outside of drones with Coco, a delivery robot it began testing earlier this year in Los Angeles and Chicago. And in May, it bought the British delivery app Deliveroo for $3.9 billion. DoorDash reported more than $3 billion in quarterly revenue in the most recent quarter, up nearly 25% from the same time last year, according to PitchBook data. For GoTo Foods, the partnership with DoorDash is a chance to take its brand out of the shopping mall and to reinvent it for a new generation at a time when malls are changing. Thanks to drones, food court pretzels could be more easily accessible to “high-growth suburban areas” that are “well beyond traditional mall locations,” the two companies said in a press release. You used to go to the mall. The mall now comes to you.
Category:
E-Commerce
Sarah thought she’d nailed it. Three rounds of interviews for her dream marketing role, glowing feedback from the hiring manager, and a reassuring “we’ll be in touch soon.” So when the rejection email landed in her inbox two weeks latera generic “we’ve decided to move forward with another candidate”it felt like a gut punch. If youve had a similar experience taking job rejection more personally than youd like, youre not alone. Youre also very human. In fact, research has found that 78% of professionals say job rejection negatively impacts their confidence for weeks or even months afterward. But as normal as it is to feel knocked down, were also capable of using rejection to clarify our direction, refine our value, and accelerate the outcomes (and ideal roles) we wantnot to let it define us. This isnt about building thicker skin. Its about building smarter systems and more empowered thinking. Here are six straightforward strategies to do that. 1. Use the 24-hour rule. Youre human, not a robot. Its okay not to feel great when a rejection email lands in your inbox. Emotions may not always be rational, but theyre still real. So cut yourself some slack and give yourself permission to feel disappointed without immediately trying to “fix” it or bounce back. Set a timer for 24 hours, acknowledge the sting, then deliberately shift into learning mode. This prevents both endless rumination and what psychologists call “emotional bypassing”jumping straight to positivity without processing the real emotions. 2. Separate the ‘no’ from your self-worth. This rejection isn’t a referendum on your value as a person or professional: it’s simply a mismatch, not a verdict. Research has shown that people with a growth mindsetwho ask What can this teach me? instead of Whats wrong with me?are more likely to bounce back from setbacks, stay motivated, and take constructive action. When Marcus, a software engineer, didnt get the senior developer role he wanted, he initially spiraled into self-doubt. But when he shifted from “I’m not good enough,” to “What skills do I need to develop?” he used the feedback to land an even better position six months later. You do yourself a disservice when you let the subjective evaluation others place on you depreciate the value you place on yourself. That Tom Brady was the 199th pick in the 2000 NFL draft is proof that sometimes those tasked with assessing others’ future potential have absolutely no idea. 3. Ask for feedbackeven if you don’t get it. The simple act of requesting constructive feedback signals a growth mindset and helps you reflect more objectively on the experience. Even when companies dont respond (and many wont), the process of asking forces you to think strategically about your performance and what you might do differently next time. 4. Reframe it as redirection, not rejection. Jenny, a finance executive, felt incredibly disappointed when she didnt get a controller position at a startup. Six months later, when that company folded, she realized the rejection had actually protected her from a career disaster. Sometimes a “no” is actually steering you away from a situation that wouldnt have served you well. Research from Glassdoor shows that 65% of people who stay in roles that werent their first choice report lower job satisfaction within two years. 5. Dont personalize systemic issues. Sometimes hiring decisions come down to budget, internal politics, timing, or internal candidates being preferredfactors that have nothing to do with your qualifications. Other times, personal preferences, unconscious judgments, or stereotypes bias hiring decisions. According to research from SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management), 48% of HR managers admitted that biases affect the candidates they hire. Many hiring decisions are influenced by factors completely outside a candidates control. Avoid interpreting rejection as anything more than a decision someone madea decision shaped by a whole array of factors and biasesthat simply wasnt the one you wanted them to make. You cant control those variables, but you can control your response. 6. Track your progress, not just your wins Top performers dont avoid rejectionthey risk it regularly and treat it as no more than a hidden curriculum, mining any insights for their next opportunity. Create a system that tracks not only your wins, but also your courage: interviews taken, skills built, connections made, insights gained. Maybe you realized you need to clarify your value proposition. Maybe you discovered a role or industry isnt for you. These are all progress markers. These are all victories worth celebrating. Its not rejection itself that holds future potential hostage, but the emotions of unworthiness it triggers. The irony is that by avoiding rejection, we often reject ourselveslong before anyone else has the chance. So whether youre starting out or starting over, the biggest setback isnt being told no. Its letting it stop you from showing up again. Just imagine the possibilities if you moved forward knowing that rejection is simply part of your individualized growth plan. Let rejection refine your clarity, not shrink your courage. Keep putting yourself forward. Keep learning. Your next opportunity may just need the version of you that rejection helped shape.
Category:
E-Commerce
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