[February 07, 2010] OPINION: Klean Kanteen's star rises Tweet Feb 07, 2010 (Chico Enterprise-Record - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A Chico company, Klean Kanteen, had a starring role Thursday in one of my favorite television shows, "The Office." The rapidly growing local company is popping up everywhere. A week ago they were at the X Games in Aspen, Colo., where 2,600 of the reusable stainless steel bottles were given to all athletes and many other people associated with the Olympic-style extreme sports event. Besides "The Office," Kanteens have also been spotted in the movie "Valentine's Day" and the TV show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Thursday night in Miami, there was a party for Super Bowl players and they all received Klean Kanteens. The company also produced bottles with the U2 logo for the band's latest world tour. And so on ... New and different designs, including stainless steel baby bottles and sippy cups, are being pushed by huge online retailers like Pottery Barn, L.L. Bean, The North Face and outdoors giant REI. And it all starts in a nondescript industrial-looking building about 200 yards off Highway 99 in north Chico. I elbowed my way into a tour Thursday with Peter Melton, who has the title of salesman but so far, that term has been used very loosely at Klean Kanteen. The company doesn't have to do much selling. It started with an idea. Long before most people were clued in to the problem of plastic water bottles filling landfills, long before the harmful chemical Bisphenol A was linked to plastic, local inventor Robert Seals went to Collier Hardware and bought the materials to start experimenting with reusable stainless bottles. In 2004, the first Klean Kanteens were sold. Darrel Cresswell and his children, Jeff Cresswell and Michelle Kalberer, partnered with Seals. They owned companies that sold jump ropes and equestrian ropes. They added a third distribution business for Klean Kanteens. Since then, people have recognized the need to -- as one character said in "The Office" on Thursday -- "eliminate the need for plastic bottles, which are the scourge of the environment." And the business has exploded. Melton and the other 40 employees barely have time for "sales." Just responding to phone calls and Internet orders takes up most of their time. Even with Internet-only word of mouth -- and the help of articles in Time, Outside and elsewhere -- the aluminum shack in north Chico is hopping. The company has clearly outgrown the space. There's a warehouse here, a warehouse there, and about 20 portable mini-storage trailers all full of products. The bottles are made in China (and reportedly closely monitored by the environmentally conscious company) then shipped here. Once here, all of the shipping to retailers is done in Chico. But the most fascinating part of my tour was the room where a printer transfers logos onto the bottle. Even without much marketing (there's a little link at the bottom of the site that says "co-branding"), that part of the business has taken off. A whiz kid named Mitch Looney showed me the process, from start to finish. Once the logo is placed onto a film overlay, color ink is added. He cranks out the bottles, one at a time, and says he can do 1,000 bottles with logos in a couple of hours. The minimum order recently was lowered from 180 bottles to 36, so more different logos than ever are being made. When Looney makes a new logo or design, he makes an extra stainless bottle and places it on a shelf lining the walls in the print shop. There are logoed bottles for dozens of breweries, schools (most likely sold as fundraisers), yoga studios, colleges, environmental organizations, running events, governmental organizations, the Sacramento Kings ... and my personal favorite, the Dunder-Mifflin logo. Mitch says there are nearly 800 different bottles lining the walls. That number, like the company, grows all the time. David Little is editor of the Enterprise-Record. His column appears each Sunday. He can be reached at [email protected] or 896-7793. To see more of the Chico Enterprise-Record or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.chicoer.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Chico Enterprise-Record, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]