Stanley cups are “on the way out” along with skinny jeans, say wealthy teenagers

• According to Piper Sandler, Stanley’s multi-colored insulated cups are still very popular among teenagers.
• At the same time, the brand’s popularity may have peaked and be “on the way down,” teenagers said in the company’s annual survey.
• Stanley now finds his cool factor somewhere between the trend-conscious Owala and the star Yeti.

Last year’s Stanley Cup boom, which cost many Americans money, time and, in some cases, their mental health and jobs, may have reached its peak.

While Stanley’s multi-colored insulated cups still have significant cache, higher-income teenagers told Piper Sander that the products could soon meet the same fate as skinny jeans.

The investment bank’s annual “Taking Stock With Teens” survey, released earlier this week, indicated a notable rise in the popularity of the Stanley trend.

“Stanley Cups landed at No. 2 on ‘Most Popular Fashion Trends for Women’ among the higher-income cohort – while also ranking No. 2 on ‘Fashion Trend on the Way Out’ among higher-income women,” say analysts Peter Keith and Alexia Morgan said in a note. Higher-income male teenagers surveyed ranked Stanley Cups as their fifth most popular fashion trend.

More than 13,500 teens in 47 states with a median age of 15 and a median household income of $67,440 participated in the survey.

Keith told Business Insider that the survey’s fashion trends question is open-ended, meaning respondents are not prompted by a list of options.

Stanley did not respond to a request for comment on the survey.

Led by its giant 40-ounce quencher, Stanley’s annual sales rose from $94 million in 2020 to an estimated $750 million in 2023, the company told CNBC. Stanley also claimed to have sold more than 10 million quenchers in total. The brand is owned by private company PMI Worldwide and does not publish regular financial results.

Stanley Cups were not on the radar of higher-income teenage girls the survey two years ago and only made it into the top 10 trends last fall with 1% of the vote. Within six months, Mugs rocketed past crop tops to third place, finishing second behind Lululemon with 19% of the vote.

“They really hit home with these larger, thick cups with handles and straws,” Keith told BI. “The brand just took off like wildfire. I mean, it’s one of the better success stories of a brand in the last two or three years.”

However, this year the brand also climbed up the report’s “on the way out” ranking, which Keith said was a question for the first time in the spring survey. (Skinny jeans have asserted their place in uncoolness this year—sorry, millennials.)

This means that Stanley’s coolness probably lies somewhere between the fashion-conscious Owala and the star Yeti.

Keith also said that Yeti wasn’t the first choice for teenage girls the company surveyed, a group that can make a whole series of brand changes every few years. Remember the VSCO water bottles for girls?

Owala fans, meanwhile, have given some Target employees headaches by mixing and matching the caps and bottles to create custom color combinations.

Yeti is growing with 84% brand awareness among teens, with two-thirds of respondents saying their household owns a Yeti product. Additionally, according to the survey, the average Yeti household has more than five Yeti products.

Yeti delivered quarterly revenue growth in the mid-teens, bringing in nearly $520 million in its most recent fiscal year. In the Piper Sandler note, Keith and Morgan said that Stanley’s rise did not appear to have affected Yeti’s sales or shelf space.

“We will continue to monitor it,” Keith told BI. “When brands make this transition from cool to uncool, they are likely to spend some time in an era where they are simultaneously cool and uncool. So we’ll see which side Stanley lands on over the next year or so.”

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