Porter Water Bottle

March 22, 2025

Early in the pandemic, one of my friends quit their job at North Face to go work at Totokaelo on their in house label. Shortly after her joining, Totokaelo shuttered and she became unemployed. It was shocking to me just how little of a safety net a lot of businesses had, and simple “givens” were really just duct taped together (and likely still are today). Never before has the outward facing image of a company been so removed from its material conditions.

A place like Totokaelo felt like a staple in the fashion world, and though it was smaller than SSENSE, it had a significant following and great merchandising. In hindsight, a lot of businesses were probably propped up by low interest rates and surviving on future capital. I’m a heavy user of the “ZIRP” acronym — zero interest rate phenomena. Being “too big to fail” like SSENSE became key in being able to secure future capital and survive the high interest rates and market uncertainty.

One potential silver lining of the economic devastation of Covid is that businesses are more fiscally responsible (I hope) and they realize that domestic production is just good practice, and a bulwark against future supply chain disruption.

The next paragraph is probably kind of controversial, but this is my blog, so I get to write whatever I want.

Domestic production could mean price increases due to reliance on labor requiring higher wages than producing goods in lower cost countries. Higher prices could lead to less consumption, which can be a good thing. Americans are 5% of the world’s population but responsible for 34% of the world’s consumption. Economic inequality is a whole other issue in the United States, but it’s clear that American consumerism just can’t continue the way it does today. This production and consumption upward spiral is a byproduct of growth above all else, and ZIRP poured gasoline on the fire.

Back to my friend.

My friend offered me her friends and family discount, and I snagged this water bottle. The silicone casing feels so good in my hand, and I like the heft of the water bottle. That weight used to be a deterrent for me in previous years, so I rarely used the bottle, but now it just feels good to me. I’ve had the bottle for a while, and now the top is yellowing, but I think it adds some charm to it. The light blue feels really optimistic to me and refreshing. I like a lot of products to have light cool colors because it just feels like it’s coming from a better future.

The Porter water bottle is produced by a company called w&p. They make some great looking stuff, but I get annoyed by their greenwashing marketing tactics. But I told myself I wouldn’t be a hater on this blog.

Takeya water bottle

This Porter water bottle feels like an improved version of the Takeya bottle I had years ago, also with a silicone casing. The Porter water bottle is smaller, and that provides better weight distribution, while the Takeya was tall and slender, but I always knocked it over and it got really annoying. So I have kept the Porter water bottle much longer and I can imagine keeping it for a much longer time.