months of meticulous product development, they had a glass flask that encouraged consumers to brew on the go. In the early days of Fressko, when Atme and Ciancarelli were packing orders in a garage, personally placing seeds in the bottom of the glass bottles to promote its fruit infusing capabilities, weekly sales fluctuated between $40,000 to $70,000. Like many other bootstrapped startups, the co-founders’ success quickly attracted imitators. It didn’t take long for competing brands, as well as some of the big-box retailers that stocked Fressko’s glassware, to bring out their own versions. Atme and Ciancarelli’s story diverged again when they decided to expand their range and launch a reusable coffee cup, which became Fressko’s best seller and “propelled us into another level,” said Atme. Fressko’s ethos around product development from the early days in the garage to a decade later as an internationally successful brand hasn’t changed: “What we want hasn’t changed, we always want the best of the best, and we understand that best is never an achievement – we can always be better and we’ll always strive to be better,” Ciancarelli told Inside Retail. “The vision has never changed,” agreed Atme. In pursuit of quality  With the tagline “simple, stylish, sustainable”, Fressko has built a brand where the quality speaks for itself and word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful weapons in its marketing arsenal. “We’re consumers as well, obviously and we know what sort of care we want when we’re purchasing something,” stated Atme. Fressko’s product quality is the foundation of the entire business model. It is what has encouraged consumers to switch from using other reusable coffee cups, an admittedly saturated market, and resulted in minimal returns. “You’d be really surprised if you saw our returns pigeon-hole that we have. For the amount of product that we push, the returns are very, very small,” said Ciancarelli. “That’s why quality is first. We don’t want to see it come back. We want it to last as long as possible,” he continued. According to the founders, Made by Fressko’s low returns streak extends to a white label product it produces for a big-box retailer which at one time had a 0.1 per cent return rate, putting it in the top five lowest returned items in a major store. “That was a very big achievement for us, and this was very early on, so we knew that we were on the right train,” shared Ciancarelli. A sustainable growth mindset Despite its almost overnight success, Fressko has taken a slow-burn approach when it comes to marketing, in part motivated by quality control and in part limited by finite resources. Fressko was an early adopter of social media and found great success with Instagram’s first algorithm when it launched its glass flasks – its page was able to cut through the noise and find an eager customer base that was looking for a sustainable and reusable solution. But due to changes in the Meta algorithm, for the launch of its coffee cups, Fressko took an offline marketing approach. Instead of throwing out a big net in the hope of capturing the market, it took a community approach and focussed on cafes. “We have a really strong relationship with all our cafes, especially locally, and we’re continuing that worldwide,” Ciancarelli elaborated. Fressko doubled down on this grassroots marketing strategy by allowing cafes to order co-branded reusable coffee cups. Ciancarelli admitted that this decision was one of the few disagreements he and his co-founder have ever had, but he ultimately conceded that, “Sean was right on this one”. “For the cafes, it also helps them get their names out and it also helps them create a tight-knit community where they’re also getting loyal customers back – whether or not they’ve discounted them on a coffee if they bring in their reusable Fressko cup with their branding on it,” explained Atme.  Now with a wide network of loyal cafes and customers globally, Atme and Ciancarelli are looking to expand their product categories. “The drinkware range is getting a bit of a revamp and we’re moving more into out-and-about products that will accommodate people more at parks and beaches – we are working on about five new designs for new lines, but I can’t tell you when they’re going to come out,” revealed Atme. “It’s going to be a busy year for Fressko, very busy,” Ciancarelli concluded.