We were lucky to catch up with Rachael Petter-LaManna recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachael, thanks for joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

So our story started back in the summer of 2016 when my husband and I both matched on Tinder. We soon realized that we both shared the same love for the ocean and the desire to keep it around. Living in San Diego, we are lucky enough to be around the ocean all the time but also, unfortunately, see the sad side affects of humans not taking enough care of it. EVERY SINGLE DAY we find trash near or in our ocean, so we wanted to provide products that could help solve this issue.

We decided to start SAVRcup, a reusable cup company. It has taken YEARS to get to where we are and we are continuing to work on making the product better all the time. We invested in a cup printing machine that can print hundreds of cups per hour and also have invested in some new & better lids! It took some time (and money) to actually get above and beyond into actually selling to clients successfully!

Everyday we continue to push forward because we want SAVRcup products contribute to the movement of stopping the mindless use of single-use in a fun and exciting way. We also recognized that eco-friendly products can be expensive so we wanted to make sure our products didn’t break the bank.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

The reason we got into the reusable cup business is because we saw a great need for them and they are such a simple product to implement at events! Some things that make our cups special is that they are made in the U.S.A., made from 100% post-industrial recycled plastic and they are completely customizable with a wraparound design! This is very unique as most companies can only do a small print on the front of the cup!

Have you ever had to pivot?

Oh man, we are constantly having to pivot. It is an uphill battle. Honestly, watching Shark Tank has helped me realize we aren’t alone in this journey – it really is that hard. A time we knew we had to pivot to a bigger, better machine is when we got a very large order (which was great!) but the production was extremely stressful and took way too long to the point where we realized that we would not be able to be profitable without a larger more automatic machine. So we took our savings and invested in a new machine that we knew would get us to where we eventually wanted to be.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I think everyday I question if I am doing the right thing by putting so much time & money into the small business. But there is nothing more exciting & uplifting than getting an order! We recently got one of our largest orders this year and it really give us a boost in confidence.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://savrcup.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/savrcup/