What innovation means to us
Innovation begins where others have stopped asking questions. The biggest opportunities are not in new categories, they are in existing everyday products. In products that millions of people hold in their hands every day without giving them a second thought.
A to-go cup, for example. There are countless ones, and almost all share the same weaknesses that users have long since accepted: they leak, they are a pain to clean, and they get in the way of the drinking experience. Surely this can be done better.
We did not find the answer in the cup industry, we found it in precision engineering. The iris diaphragm controls the light in every camera, regulates flows in industry and works in the smallest of forms in medical technology. We combined it with a drinking vessel, in a form that had never existed before, and had it patented.
There was no tooling for it, no supplier, no standard. A renowned engineering firm said it could not be done. Today the IRISgo cup is in thousands of homes and used every day. To us, innovation means enduring the moment when everyone says it cannot be done. And carrying on until it can.
Living innovation
Innovation is not a moment. It is a habit. The IRISgo® cup on the shelf today is not the one from the first production run. The product has been refined continuously, the modular system with the Flex Lid tops was added, along with new colours and new finishes. A product can always get better. Forget that, and you get overtaken.
The road there is never straight. Anyone who wants to reinvent everyday products has to treat setbacks as part of the work. Not as an ending, but as an opportunity.
The vision: from Switzerland out into the world
Switzerland has shown the world how to rethink everyday products: the watch, the pocket knife, the running shoe. Products everyone knew, until someone from Switzerland came along and made them so good that the world wanted them. That is the tradition we see ourselves in.
Innovation Made in Switzerland was once a name known around the world. Today, sadly, less and less is produced to Swiss Made criteria, and less and less of it is in Swiss hands. We want to prove that it can be done differently. Developed in Horw, produced in the heart of Switzerland, sold around the world. The cup was the first everyday product we took on. It will not be the last.
With IRISgo®, our vision is to be the most innovative company for reusable products. We are only at the beginning.
