OK son. Well, once upon a time (as all good stories start) …in fact, it was late one afternoon.
I was drinking my favourite beer in the sun in the backyard, waiting for the barbeque to heat up to grilling temperature. You were lying in the shade nearby, drinking breast milk from your own favourite bottle. Down in the garden, the attractive, intelligent and devoted woman who is both your mother and my wife was mowing the lawn. I thought to himself, ‘Could life be any sweeter?’ I thought not. Not unless I could persuade your mum to put down the push-mower for a minute and go get me another beer.
Suddenly, I had an idea! Wouldn’t it be cute if you were able to hold your bottle in a little baby-sized neoprene holder like your dad’s beer bottle holder? Wouldn’t it be great if this holder kept the milk warm for longer (and cooler for longer) for all those times when mum and baby are on the run? Wouldn’t it be nice if the neoprene bottle holder was easier for little baby hands to grasp? Made it more fun to hold? Made it less likely to be dropped? Wouldn’t it be cool if people could give little baby bottle holders as gifts to friends when they became fathers for the first time? Wouldn’t it be awesome if I was able to quit my day job, build a website, get some of these things made, and make millions of dollars selling them over the Internet? Wouldn’t it be better if I stopped asking all these questions and went out and did something about it?
First things first: I finished my beer. Then I cooked the steak and sausages (note to US visitors: the shrimp thing is a myth). Then I washed up, bathed you, put you to bed, and prepared a nice hot bath for your mum (after all, she mowed the lawn). Finally, I asked her if it was a good idea.
Then I largely ignored her opinion, and the Milkooler was born, and my vision came true (except for the last bit about the millions of dollars).
Milkooler is the vision of one visionary man, the expression of one expressive individual, the dream of one dreamy, good-for-nothing, never-amount-to-much Aussie layabout with too much time and not enough sense. But it’s also fun to have around, and great to have on your baby’s bottle at a backyard barbeque around feeding time.
Milkoolers are hand-made by highly-trained Swiss craftsmen in a complex multi-stage process that can take several months: from hand-selecting only the finest free-range, air-cured materials, through to agonizingly-slow, micro-surgical completion, in a manner passed on from father-to-son through countless generations and now only practiced by the men folk in one tiny isolated village. Each individual Milkooler must be wrapped in finest goose down and shipped out by donkey from the tiny, avalanche-threatened mountain valley to our waiting seaplane that can only land in the glacier lake one morning a month due to the prevailing weather. That’s why they cost so much. Not to mention the exchange rate against the Swiss Franc.
Actually, that’s not strictly correct. In fact, the reason they cost so much is that we’re only manufacturing them in very small numbers until I can convince my wife there might be enough demand to warrant borrowing some money from the bank to pay for a larger print run. Until then, as anyone who knows anything about printing and assembly will tell you, if you’re printing only a few hundred at a time, they’re pretty expensive.
So, it’s up to you: pay a premium price and be safe in the knowledge that you’re one of only a handful of other parents of exceedingly good taste to own a set of Milkoolers; or tell all your friends to buy lots of them, so that I can convince my wife of the potential demand, we can get a loan, the price can come down, and all the world can own a Milkooler… or at least, all the people in the world who need a little neoprene jacket for their baby’s bottle.
As long as we’re coming clean about the price, you remember the whole thing about the Swiss mountain village with the hand-crafting and the donkey-shipping? Well, that wasn’t strictly correct either, and not in the “only the names have been changed to protect the innocent” sense of the phrase “strictly correct” either, but more in the “not a word of it was true” sense.
The Milkooler’s neoprene jackets are actually currently made by a perfectly good Australian manufacturer, the bottles are the premium British-made Avent glass BPA-free bottle, and jacket, bottle and packaging are assembled and packed in a sheltered workshop in the Sydney suburb of Botany. Which is not as interesting as the whole Swiss thing, but at least the real answer is not “child-labour sweatshop”.
No matter the cost, we won’t be using child-labour to manufacture Milkoolers. Not ever. Because my wife has told me we won’t be having any more kids, and my son’s not going to be able to make more than a few a day for the next couple of years, what with pre-school and everything. And me? Well, I’ve just had another great idea…
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you & me
Dad, tell me a story. A really silly one.
OK son. Well, once upon a time (as all good stories start) …in fact, it was late one afternoon.
I was drinking my favourite beer in the sun in the backyard, waiting for the barbeque to heat up to grilling temperature. You were lying in the shade nearby, drinking breast milk from your own favourite bottle. Down in the garden, the attractive, intelligent and devoted woman who is both your mother and my wife was mowing the lawn. I thought to himself, ‘Could life be any sweeter?’ I thought not. Not unless I could persuade your mum to put down the push-mower for a minute and go get me another beer.
Suddenly, I had an idea! Wouldn’t it be cute if you were able to hold your bottle in a little baby-sized neoprene holder like your dad’s beer bottle holder? Wouldn’t it be great if this holder kept the milk warm for longer (and cooler for longer) for all those times when mum and baby are on the run? Wouldn’t it be nice if the neoprene bottle holder was easier for little baby hands to grasp? Made it more fun to hold? Made it less likely to be dropped? Wouldn’t it be cool if people could give little baby bottle holders as gifts to friends when they became fathers for the first time? Wouldn’t it be awesome if I was able to quit my day job, build a website, get some of these things made, and make millions of dollars selling them over the Internet? Wouldn’t it be better if I stopped asking all these questions and went out and did something about it?
First things first: I finished my beer. Then I cooked the steak and sausages (note to US visitors: the shrimp thing is a myth). Then I washed up, bathed you, put you to bed, and prepared a nice hot bath for your mum (after all, she mowed the lawn). Finally, I asked her if it was a good idea.
Then I largely ignored her opinion, and the Milkooler was born, and my vision came true (except for the last bit about the millions of dollars).
Milkoolers are hand-made by highly-trained Swiss craftsmen in a complex multi-stage process that can take several months: from hand-selecting only the finest free-range, air-cured materials, through to agonizingly-slow, micro-surgical completion, in a manner passed on from father-to-son through countless generations and now only practiced by the men folk in one tiny isolated village. Each individual Milkooler must be wrapped in finest goose down and shipped out by donkey from the tiny, avalanche-threatened mountain valley to our waiting seaplane that can only land in the glacier lake one morning a month due to the prevailing weather. That’s why they cost so much. Not to mention the exchange rate against the Swiss Franc.
Actually, that’s not strictly correct. In fact, the reason they cost so much is that we’re only manufacturing them in very small numbers until I can convince my wife there might be enough demand to warrant borrowing some money from the bank to pay for a larger print run. Until then, as anyone who knows anything about printing and assembly will tell you, if you’re printing only a few hundred at a time, they’re pretty expensive.
So, it’s up to you: pay a premium price and be safe in the knowledge that you’re one of only a handful of other parents of exceedingly good taste to own a set of Milkoolers; or tell all your friends to buy lots of them, so that I can convince my wife of the potential demand, we can get a loan, the price can come down, and all the world can own a Milkooler… or at least, all the people in the world who need a little neoprene jacket for their baby’s bottle.
As long as we’re coming clean about the price, you remember the whole thing about the Swiss mountain village with the hand-crafting and the donkey-shipping? Well, that wasn’t strictly correct either, and not in the “only the names have been changed to protect the innocent” sense of the phrase “strictly correct” either, but more in the “not a word of it was true” sense.
The Milkooler’s neoprene jackets are actually currently made by a perfectly good Australian manufacturer, the bottles are the premium British-made Avent glass BPA-free bottle, and jacket, bottle and packaging are assembled and packed in a sheltered workshop in the Sydney suburb of Botany. Which is not as interesting as the whole Swiss thing, but at least the real answer is not “child-labour sweatshop”.
No matter the cost, we won’t be using child-labour to manufacture Milkoolers. Not ever. Because my wife has told me we won’t be having any more kids, and my son’s not going to be able to make more than a few a day for the next couple of years, what with pre-school and everything. And me? Well, I’ve just had another great idea…
Alan Jones
Founder
Milkooler