The One and Only Notta Gurp
New Products and Brands.
A little over four years ago my friends and I launched our first brand “Gamer’s Inc.” It was with this brand where we dipped our toes into the design world. Our first product was stickers, our only product was stickers.
Today we’re launching our first product in over four years, the Notta Gurp.
Under the new brand, Goblin & Co, a hub where we can tip our toes again.
Why such a large shift in focus from stickers to 32 ounce restaurant tumblers? One simple answer, human connection.
Let’s start from the beginning
The Notta Gurps are direct ripoffs of another 32 ounce restaurant tumbler, “The Gurpler”.
The Gurplers were created by Goblin & Co’s favorite weekly show, The Regulation Podcast. Where they had produced Gurplers for nearly over a year. We had purchased two Gurplers when they were on sale and absolutely fell in love with them.
This led to the development of “The One and Only Gurp Sheet”. A spreadsheet where we tracked our daily “regulation gurps” intake.
We decided a regulation gurp is a full Gurpler filled with water to the 32 ounce line. The current world record is six regulation gurps in one day.
Our tracking of our daily gurps led one of the Golblin & Co. members to feel left out as he had been unable to purchase a Gurpler before their production run ended.
So we realized there were two options: wait for them to be on sale again one day, or make them ourselves.
After a week of research, we ordered twenty-four, 32 ounce restaurant tumblers. Why twenty-four if there was only 1 in demand? Short answer, that was the smallest quantity we could order. Long Answer, because we wanted more people in on the bit.
We wanted everyone involved in the project to have their own Notta Gurp, but we also wanted all those that weren’t as involved to get one as well. This ranged from people we told about the cups in passing, those who we asked for their opinions on design choices, and even those who we’d have to explain the entire story to so that the reasoning behind the cups existence made sense.
It was during this process that I realized design shouldn’t be scored on its ability to generate profit, but rather on its success in bringing people together.
Let's look at the Gurplers. They were priced at $15 during the final release. To me, the price made no sense for its purpose. If we were to score this on its ability to generate profit I would give it three out of five stars.
We can break this down into two main reasons. Reason one being that it’s hard for consumers to justify buying “merch” over actual “real products” especially when the merch is as simple as a plastic cup that can be found at any Chinese buffet. The second reason being is that the people behind the Gurpler admitted they were selling them for barely a profit because they were expensive to produce and no one would want to buy an expensive cup.
If we were to score the Gurpler based on its function as a device to connect people then we shoot up to five out of five. Since the release of the initial Gurpler there have been dozens of conversations on the product within the The Regulation Podcasts community.
A bog standard cup became the point of conversations to thousands, multiple times, while at the same time generating the company little profit. By sacrificing profits the company was able to gain value through genuine human interaction, something that should be at the root of design thinking.
There are similar tactics done in marketing, where rather than try to sell something to a consumer they instead opt to generate buzz around their brand themselves. I would categorize this separate from what I mentioned above. When the Gurplers were released for sale the intention was to sell a product rather than generate buzz.
The Gurpler shows that even the most basic design (not minimalistic) can function as a tool of connection.
During the development of Notta Gurp I’ve had a dozen conversations about the cup. Which to me has been the best part of the production process. What I realized was that being able to bring people “in on it” was the key to selling something as dumb as the cup is.
We realized design doesn’t work if the user isn’t in on it.
Of course to be able to design, business must generate profit, hence the price on design. If we were to score the Notta Gurps on profitability then it gets a 0, because we’re not selling them.
We’re doing this because Goblin & Co. is a passion project, not something we want to retire off of. This gives us the position to create products we want to share with people rather than sell to people.
With that we’d like to announce that Notta Gurps are free.
If you’re interested in one, check out my instagram where I have more details on obtaining one. This is an extremely limited release, hope you join in on the bit.
This week's Regulation Design Letter is an appreciation post for those over at the Regulation Podcast, who inspired my team and I to start designing for people again.
Jim,
Goblin & Co.