Instant noodles are good friends of insomniacs. The water boils at 100 degrees, but it will evaporate the aroma of the noodles. The noodles are cooked through in three minutes, but the teeth are most elastic when they are not penetrated. Perfection only exists for a moment, and numbers can help infinitely approach this moment.
The beauty is not the pinnacle, but it is before the pinnacle. How to control him is the key.
This is a classic scene in the movie “I Love You”. The three-minute instant noodle method pioneered by Takeshi Kaneshiro has become the subject of many food bloggers.
The “God of Sushi” Jiro Ono also said : “Just-pulled sushi is the most delicious, so it is necessary to do it as soon as possible Eat. The rice portion of sushi is prepared by hand, the temperature is the most delicious when the temperature is the same as human body temperature.
In addition to instant noodles and sushi, the food we eat actually has a “best taste period”. For unpackaged foods, enjoying the food at the right time provides the best taste and experience. Of course, not everyone cares if they can enjoy food during the best season of food. But the people who care will always use new products and numbers to help themselves enjoy the food, infinitely closer to perfection.
U.S. startupWhat the brand Ember temperature control cup wants to do is to make the temperature of the drink in the most suitable temperature range, so that the drink you drink will not be hot and can be enjoyed at the right temperature of the drink. But it is more famous than the product itself, “the world’s first smart temperature-controlled cup”, and it may still be Ember’s high price. When it entered China, it was once called “the sky-high price cup” by the media.
A mug costs 848 and a travel mug costs 1528. For many people, buying a cup with a few hundred dollars is an “exclusive behavior of the rich.” In my life, I will be scolded by my mother, “Did you burn more money?”
I tried the travel mug for a week, and I used to drink hot water
Why sell a cup for 1,000? In order to answer this question, I really took this cup, drank a week of water, and experienced this temperature-controlled cup that was quite controversial due to the price.
Unlike most people think, Ember’s temperature control cup is not heavy. As a functional cup, it weighs even less than some equivalent-sized coffee cups. When you get it in your hand, you won’t find it different from ordinary cups. From the appearance, they all look similar to simple cups. The biggest difference is that Ember’s cups may be better with a base.
The base is the key to keep your Ember temperature cup working. Without a base, the cup can only be kept at a constant temperature for 1.5-3 hours, which is the full battery life that a non-heavy cup can maintain. Compared to the previous generation, the new generation of cups has provided longer battery life.
This charging coaster base does not need to be bought, it is part of the product. Put the base on the table, and take the water or brew the coffeeAfter you place the cup on the coaster, you can continue to charge it. You can use the cup on the coaster all day long. If you do n’t want to charge the battery for battery life, the three-hour temperature control time may not meet your all-weather requirements.
In addition to coasters and cups, the product itself comes with different power adapters. Although I personally do not use this thing, but think about the price of the cup, I think this may be prepared for users who have international business travel all year round.
When using Ember’s temperature-controlled travel mug, you can adjust the temperature by simply touching the logo on the cup body. Another way is to download an app for temperature control. One app can pair multiple cups, and you can easily handle it at home and in the company. Only in the experience, the performance of the app is not good, the pairing will fail, and the stutter will occasionally occur.
As a smart product that cannot be separated from water, waterproofing is also one of the basic configurations of the cup. You don’t need to avoid the socket and water intrusion when cleaning like other kitchen appliances that are powered on. Ember’s cups have passed the IPX7 water resistance test and are completely immersed in water without compromising the performance of the product itself.
And my positive evaluation of this cup is not related to the current weather.
As a person who feels dizzy after drinking coffee, I use this cup for hot water only. Guangzhou has just been successful in the winter. Using this cup can ensure that the water you drink is always hot, but not hot. When you think about school in winter, there is always a big bucket next to the water dispenser in the classroom to pick up the cool white discarded by your classmates. I think this thing is still practical.
The editor who sniffed at the beginning of the Ember cup next to me, after discovering that I was used to drinking water, also said, “It seems that this cup is still a bit market in China.”
It is more difficult to make temperature control products than you think.
Regarding the temperature-controlled cup, we must explain that the temperature-controlled cup and the thermos cup look a bit similar, but the two are actually completely different. Vacuum cups use vacuum to delay heat dissipation, block the transfer of heat, and make the water cool down more slowly. The temperature control cup can use a cup to adjust the beverage to a suitable temperature. If the temperature is too high, it will absorb heat and cool down. If the temperature is not enough, it will heat up.
Instead of a cup, consider it as a “cooking machine” that can cool down and heat up, but its temperature control is only in the range of 50-64 degrees.
In fact, the birth of the Ember Cup is really about cooking. Ember’s founder, Clay Alexander, ate the chilled eggs again during breakfast. He thought, why ca n’t plates keep food warm and cups notKeep the coffee hot? This was the beginning of his interest in temperature control.
Ember’s first product is a temperature-controlled dinner plate, followed by the temperature-controlled cup we now see. Ember still has an internal debate about which product to bring to the market first: “At the time, high-end tea culture was emerging. (We) thought that to truly enter the mass market, it was better to pass our technological value than temperature-controlled mugs, Dinner plate. “
In 2009, Alexander became interested in temperature control; in 2012, the Ember brand had its original product concept; but when the cup was officially launched to the market, it was already 2016. Alexander also said in an interview with Ai Faner and other media, “From a concept to mass production, the challenges encountered at each stage are different.”
Their original products were very different from the ones that finally came to the market. At that time, the battery, wiring and even circuit boards and switches were external. They used prototype cups to experiment with different application scenarios. After finding that the concept worked, they focused on design.
From the primitive prototype to the beautifully designed product, the biggest challenge is how to use the possibility of technology miniaturization to further shrink the product. This is why we hire some mobile phone design engineers in our products because they are good at how Miniaturize electronics.
They also spent a lot of time on waterproofing. As the first temperature-controlled drinking cup with electronic originals, Ember’s biggest challenge at that time was whether the cups were washable and waterproof. “The concept of the design at the time was to rotate the outer wall, and use magnetic induction technology to promptly transmit the design information of the temperature through the rotation of the outer wall, so that the two parts of the mechanical firmware would not be combined, causing water leakage and watertight problems. 2 meters underwater can still be waterproof.
The smooth design of the cup is hard to come by. The founder said, “Every product starts with design, and our original intention is to create a product that people have the desire to own.”
The design of the Ember travel cup is separated from top to bottom, while the top is narrow and the bottom is wide, the line of the cup is vertical. Alexander said that it is very difficult to produce such a vertical product with a single injection mold release, and many manufacturers are unwilling to do it. They were looking for dozens of manufacturers, and finally found a factory that was willing and able to make vertical lines on both sides, and that could be injection-molded at one time. This factory also developed a process for this kind of plastic injection molding mold.
Conversation founder: This cup is not expensive compared to buying coffee
This cup has its own advantages, and its product is indeedIt is irreplaceable, but is this price too high?
Clay Alexander, the founder of Ember, said to Ai Faner, “Our main target users are heavy lovers of coffee and tea. These people will pursue high-end coffee and tea drinks. In terms of coffee, buying a cup of coffee requires 5 A cup of $ -6, multiplied by 365. The coffee you consume outside is not expensive compared to the quality of tea and coffee in a mug for thermal insulation.
What complements the high price of the cup is its place of sale. You can buy this cup offline, but not in the brand’s unique flagship store, but in the Starbucks and Apple Store. Ember cups are also found in Apple products on a table at Ai Fan’s “Sugar Club”.
▲ The mug on the left of the desktop is the Ember cup
From Ember’s point of view, these two brands have a huge base in China, and they can cover a wide enough range, and these two brands also represent two important characteristics of Ember, one is high-tech, One is lifestyle. In the opinion of founder Alexander, these two brands’ clear high-end consumer groups are also what Ember needs.
We believe that consumers at Starbucks and Apple retail stores have a very good agreement with us, because we ourselves are not retailers of electronic products. We use the channels of Starbucks and the Apple Store. Starbucks also hopes to cooperate with China’s Starbucks channels in the future. One of the reasons for working with Apple’s sales channels globally is that we share consumers with consumers in these two channels. These consumers have common consumption habits. Through these two channels, our sales are very good.
After years of cooperation between the two channels, Ember also began exploring cooperation with other high-end retail stores to find new growth points. In addition to retailers, another brand-building action is to cooperate with high-end brands. For example, the cooperation between Ember and Aston Martin has a charging interface on the car, and you can put the cup in the Aston Martin.
Although working with Aston Martin, Alexander still compares his brand to Ferrari and Lamborghini in this industry, attaches importance to product quality and design, and uses first-line parts products.
For those who love coffee, the water temperature of Ember cups of 50-62 degrees allows him to drink the most suitable coffee. For Chinese users who are not used to drinking coffee, drinking hot water with this cup is also a good experience.
It all depends on whether you are willing to pay RMB 848 or RMB 1528 for a temperature controlled drink.