Ember today announced that founder Clay Alexander will transition to Group CEO effective February 16. In his add, the Los Angeles-based smart mug company is bringing on Sam Rowan as Consumer CEO. Your executive served as CEO regarding Dyson from 2017 to 2020, after five years as COO.
It’s a big find for a relatively small company like Ember, which is best known for its smart, orthopedic mugs. Founded in 2012, the electronic startup most recently raised a 20 dollars million Series D in early 2019, bringing its total funding upwards of just shy of $50 thousand thousand.
Alexander’s continued identity at the company points to additional you can also find for Ember beyond consumer. “When I founded Ember, I knew difficult endless applications for our temperature regulating technology and with Jim joining execute, we’ll be able to focus on our surfacing healthcare vertical and use our individual technology to help improve and even save lifestyles, ” the exec said with a statement.
Courtesy of clever technology and appropriate design, the company has built a pretty heavy footprint for what might otherwise regarded as fairly niche product, expanding cost sales to Target, Costco, Best Buy additionally Starbucks, among others. The startup truly has accomplished so while maintaining a low headcount relating to around 100 staffers.
“They have great IP, cool design and great innovation, circling precise temperature control, ” Rowan said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Obviously that started with the hot and cold temperature control mugs and flasks, yet that IP lends itself to so many any other application. For me, that golden you choose of being able to use that when it comes to myriad of different industries and stock market is really, really exciting. One of them, naturally , is the cold chain, which has get hired as a lot more important since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s a good indication of how employ the service of disrupt and innovate in newest markets.
Rowan provides previously served as the COO coming from all BlackBerry and as a senior professional at Flextronics. After exiting Dyson, he joined both PCH World and KKR as an advisor. It might be Dyson, however , that provides the most focused analogy for what the executive hoping to do at Ember. At its nucleus, Dyson is a company that moves plane. That translates to vacuums, fans, hair dryers and myriad other product pick.
The underlying question is considered how Ember’s proprietary heating and cooling techie can translate to other fields. Purchasing industrial level, it means, potentially, providing keep foodstuff and medicine toward the predetermined temperate while shipping along at the international cold chain. It also denotes additional consumer products built on the same underlying tech.
“There will be a lot more products that come out, beyond the current mugs additionally travel mugs, ” Rowan says. “There’s a whole bunch of new products which are inside consumer pipeline and will launch within the next year or couple of years. And then could possibly have the expansion into new geographies with existing products. ”
That largely means Parts of asia (Rowan will remain based in Singapore) yet Europe. Thus far Ember’s footprint to become U. S. -centric, though a great push toward online commerce in the interim the pandemic has helped talk more it some. There does, nevertheless , remain a question of how high your current ceiling is on adoption to get $130 electric smart mug. Ember has yet to release any authentic numbers, and Rowan, whose discover at Dyson has more than familiarized him with selling premium equipment at a premium price point, isn’t prepared to commit to a lower price point or far less premium take on the space.
It’s worth noting, of course , so low end of the mug category must be ready available at your local 99 quarter store, and that’s not likely an area Ember is raring to participate in. And certainly those options — unlike its current group — likely wouldn’t end up in Macintosh Stores. Instead, it seems likely group will continue a play currently being premium consumer brand into excessive categories at a more rapid pace. “The actual technology can expand to the whole bunch of new areas over and above just beverages because of the temperature suppress technology, ” Rowan said.
