Not Quite Yeti

Let’s talk for a minute about a brand we’re not selling. You know those guys, Yeti? If you live in the southern half of the United States, you’ve probably seen their insulated bottles. Or their high-end coolers. Or their logo decal on a truck. They’re kind of the REI of the bass-boat set.

We have to hand it to them for that. Yeti is among that rare group of brands who’ve taken a product line that was previously humble and anonymous and built it into an aspirational lifestyle symbol. Even people who don’t own Yeti stuff want to show off their affinity with everything Yeti stands for. As Ad Age brilliantly put it, “If you can’t afford $350 for a grizzly-proof [cooler], you can always settle for a hat.”

Before Nike, nobody would have considered paying $100 for a pair of tennis shoes. Before REI, nobody would have slapped a sticker on their car to tell everybody where they bought their raincoat. Yeti works a different flavor of the same magic. Even more impressive, Yeti does it by winning over a demographic of stoic tough-guy suburban-warrior types who would never think of using the term “lifestyle brand.”

We wish we could get a piece of the magic. If we can’t convince you guys to pay $30 for a water bottle because you wanna be cool like us, we wish we could at least get ahold of some cheap Yetis. But we’re not that smart.

So we have to go the other direction. Here’s a pair of insulated bottles for 12 bucks that according to our own video test work much better than the Yeti ones. They keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold for hours under any external conditions - indeed, some of you have complained that your coffee stays almost too hot to drink. We don’t know if they’ll survive a bear attack or an avalanche or an elephant stampede, which is fine because those things aren’t going to happen to you, and if they did, your water bottle would be the least of your worries.

You’ll not only have cooler/hotter drinks than with the Yeti, you’ll have plenty of money left over for Yeti logo decals, so you won’t be left out of the cult. If you can’t afford $30 for a water bottle, you can always settle for a sticker.