We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Danielle Ruttenberg a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Danielle, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

My business partner and I developed the business plan in 2015 with a steady background in glassmaking. In glass fabrication, there’s barriers to the traditional methods and we started to see that source materials were becoming more and more sparse. Looking at available materials, namely bottle glass, we started to attempt to transform certain bottles into new glassware – re-marking them!

We began prototyping in 2015, launched a small line at the tail end of 2016 in the holiday season, and meanwhile continued with a variety of custom projects to maintain cashflow in the origins of the business.

What we discovered and what I found to be really exciting, was the notion that the glass tells a story. After we transformed each bottle, we were able to still see the original color and original details from the manufacturer’s process, even the small bumps on the bottom ridge of the wine bottle. I found those details to be extremely dynamic and that inspired our keepsake line.

Our keepsake process is when we are able to take a bottle with sentimental value and with consultation of the owners and consumers of the bottle, we bring it to a new life that can be a living memory and useful item in the home of that owner or couple.

The bottles and glass that we use in our process is brought to us by local community members and specific business partners. Once we got past the first few years of business, the opportunity to scale our impact and formalize our collections process presented itself in the creation of our non-profit organization Bottle Underground. We now recycle over 10,000 lbs of glass per month and creatively find different end markets that divert this glass from the traditional waste stream.

We now sell our Remark line in-store in South Philadelphia, online at remarkglass.com, and through a variety of brand partnerships where we upcycle organizations’ products into custom glassware for corporate gifting or resale.

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?

I entered the hot glass studio for the first time in 2003 in college at Tyler School of Art. The nature of the fire was the first thing that drew me to the process. As many people know, just watching glassblowing can be mesmerizing. I decided that I wanted to master that skill to the best of my ability. After graduating, I worked in a variety of shops and then returned to the Philadelphia area, switched gears and worked as a salon manager.

Although it was a complete 180, the business management skills that I acquired at that time really advanced my desire to run my own operation. I started moonlighting with some fabrication work and making my own sculpture and glassware and was able to split off and run my own operation for about 7 years. In that 7th year, I got married and had my first kid and while I was grateful for those opportunities, it created barriers in my work lifestyle. At that point, the opportunity to collaborate and divide my responsibilities with other makers became the best path forward. That’s when we founded Remark Glass.

The notion that I couldn’t do full time parenting and have my own business wasn’t something that I easily accepted. I think that my skill set, while very strong, was no longer viable for a traditional workplace and that led me to lead a team where we could honor flexibility to a variety of backgrounds and lifestyles and to inevitably lead with empathy.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

We built our social media presence by showcasing our unique process and the story behind our work. We saw naturally how people loved learning about our process and identified with it. I think my advice would be to first be consistent – if you post even once a week you’ll learn what people like and don’t like. Second, leverage video, even just from your phone. It doesn’t have to be professional and in fact the most successful reels and TikToks we’ve made are from iPhones. Finally – take interesting shots and show what makes your story unique.

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

When the pandemic started in 2020, as a hot shop we were at a loss for what to do. All of our employees work in person and in close proximity. While many of our counterparts understandably temporarily closed or laid off their employees, we decided instead to prioritize our people and take a creative approach. We shifted our products to items like jewelry that could be worked on from home and we began growing our online sales.

Additionally, as an organization that only works with used bottles and jars, we lost our supply of restaurants and bars, and therefore bottles. We decided to take that pause to found our non-profit Bottle Underground to start to crowd source bottles from the community and expand our impact. Ultimately, the same creativity that got us started is what allowed us to adapt through that tumultuous time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.remarkglass.com
• Instagram: @remarkglass
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RemarkGlass/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/remark-glass-05698a26b
• Other: TikTok: @remarkglass