take you back in time I need to take you
back to nineteen fifty to a place called
the cold dog Libya excuse my
pronunciation a mountain pass in the
French Alps home to a grueling stage at
the Tour de France bike race and home to
an iconic moment in sport now I’d like
you to meet fausto coppi and Gino Batali
two legendary Italian road cyclists and
they had a fierce rivalry that spanned
well over a decade here they are
captured in the heat of battle during
that epic 20 kilometer hill climb but
this this photograph captures something
more than the race it captures something
more poignant it captures a rare moment
where two fierce rivals were united
united by a simple gesture the passing
of a water bottle and that water bottle
came to symbolize not just their
intimate rivalry but also their
friendship and their respect for one
another and it was this photograph that
got me hooked on the golden era of
cycling and drew my attention to the
humble bicycle bottle now back in the
day this very simple metal flask would
have been filled with milk and sugar for
energy an early version of a redbull
sometimes it would have been filled with
wine as you can see here the performance
enhancer of the day and sometimes it
would have been followed by a
love this picture so I was really
intrigued by this this weird and wacky
world of cycling the rivalries the races
the characters the camaraderie so I
decided to immerse myself in it a little
more and i entered a nostalgic new world
i started to attend vintage bike
festivals and bike rates races I started
to document my newfound obsession with
the bottle all different shapes and
sizes or with different owners all who
had a different story to tell and around
this time I started to dress very very
strangely as well so this is me actually
taking part in a bike ride called
larocca it’s a hundred miles and you do
it on a heavy vintage steel bike and you
do it wearing questionable period
clothing this actually took place in
California and if you haven’t ever
ridden 100 miles in 100 degree heat in a
pair of very thick wool shorts I really
wouldn’t recommend it but I noticed
something about my my fellow cyclists
during these events and that was a
shared obsession they shared my my
passion for this most simple of products
I noticed a couple of things I noticed
that they were going onto eBay and they
were spending hundreds of pounds on
originals from the 1940s the 1950s
or they were going to great lengths and
getting very creative in turning a new
bottle into an old bottle as you can see
here this guy had garden wine cork and
an industrial sander but no one was
remaking them in the spirit of the
originals and this is what intrigued me
so I enlisted the help of a friend and
we began to trace the roots of some of
the original bottle makers from the 40s
and there was one one bottle and one
company in particular that we were drawn
to it was made in England up in
Birmingham it existed in the late 1940s
faded out in the early 50s we assume
when plastic bottles became popular in
my opinion it was the most elegant of
the designs the most beautiful and it
was deep bottle that featured in all
those black-and-white photographs the
company I’m talking about the bottle I’m
talking about is called chloral it might
not be a name that anyone here is
familiar with but it has something of a
cult following within cycling and our
adventure took us from the British
Library to Companies House and we
couldn’t trace any lines of ownership
and we spend over a year trying and we
decided to take a leap of faith and we
bought chloral that sounds much grander
than it is in reality it involved buying
the name the trademark the intellectual
property but in effect we became
custodians of this great brand and then
we had to decide what do we do next what
do we want the new chloral to be what do
we want it to stand for so we set about
defining our purpose we knew that we
didn’t want to make another replica or a
souvenir they were already out there we
wanted to make a bottle that functioned
but was as faithful in design as the
original and we knew that we wanted it
to stand for something more a purpose a
cause and for us the obvious choice was
the issue of plastic pollution for those
that don’t know eight million tons of
plastic are discarded every year around
the world
polluting land rivers oceans that’s
enough plastic to circle the Earth four
times and is a huge amount of over
consumption and a tiny fraction of
recycling so as well as being advocates
for this cause we committed to
eliminating all plastic not just from
the product itself but the packaging as
well so no plastic washers no plastic
linings no plastic bags and I want
chloral or be only in a small way to
really help address this issue now as
well as wanting the bottle to live
forever we needed it to function so we
kind of moved into the the design phase
of our project we started to draw and
sketch and we started to do
computer-animated diagrams we even did a
3d printed prototype at one stage and we
were really exploring the upgrades that
we could make and we decided on three
first of all we wanted to upgrade the
material from aluminium that would have
been used in the past to a food-grade
stainless steel which would be
considered much more health conscious
for today second we wanted to do two
things that almost contradicted each
other one we wanted to make it lighter
but at the same time we wanted to add
installation we wanted it to be able to
keep liquids hot as well as cold and
then the last one was we tweaked the
dimensions the specification so that it
would fit onto every bike within every
bottle cage and not require any special
fitting that the original would have
needed so next phase how do we move from
a design project to a real product how
do we make this a reality so we became
experts in a process called steel
spinning which is the process used to
form metal bottles and we also became
experts in receiving rejection letters
from factories UK Europe Asia another
year when passed of rejection and they
all said the same thing in terms of too
complicated not enough volume too
expensive
but there was one ray of light one
factory entertained the idea and they
gave us a costing albeit an astronomical
one but really it was our only choice
we’d been a long time looking for it for
a partner we took that calculation and
that that costing and we decided to set
about trying to raise the necessary
funds to move into production so we
launched a crowdfunding campaign on
kickstarter that i’m sure everyone’s
familiar with and it went really well to
start with it got lots of attention lots
of people wrote about it particularly
within the cycling world that you’d
expect but also it started to pop up in
design homeware & fashion even even g GQ
magazine at one point which was really
cool a particular highlight for me as a
sports fan and a cycling fan we’re
seeing some professional cyclists hear
about the project and throw their way of
support behind the project and this was
a real favourite from the british
cyclist victoria pendleton on twitter
but alas we fell short we didn’t reach
our target and we proved out a couple of
theories one was the pricing was too
expensive and overall our our target our
funding target was just too ambitious
but huge amount of awareness and it felt
like there was a huge amount of goodwill
from the cerney from the cycling
and then something really cool started
to happen before we had too long to
wallow in our Kickstarter failure people
who had heard about the project started
to contact us we got calls in emails
from people that just wanted to be part
of our adventure wanted to help us make
it a reality retailers factories and
brands came to us asked how they could
help one brand in particular came to us
and said let’s make this bottle together
let’s do it in partnership and this at
this point this was like a dream come
true a really prestigious brand very
exciting we moved into the design phase
and we started to kind of work together
share our thoughts and ideas
is it was all going quite swimmingly
until the final design came back and our
name had been completely removed from
the product and we had a I guess a rude
awakening at this stage and we had to
remind ourselves why we got into this
project in the first place and it was
for simple reasons it was to tell the
chloral story it was to make the bottle
better than it was before and it was to
have it serve a purpose and we realized
that that wasn’t going to be possible in
partnership with somebody else so we
decided to break away and follow our own
path a really difficult decision to make
because like I said it was a prestigious
brand and it was the only order that we
had on the table but it felt like it
wasn’t the right step for us and then
came a tipping point so three things
happened in kind of short succession
around the same time that we decided to
go our own way first people started to
pre-order the bottle from us on our own
website an amazing factory reached out
to us a specialist in stainless steel
manufacture and they said that they
would be flexible with us they would
kind of relax their usual terms and
commitments to help make it a reality
and then individuals within the cycling
world but also friends and family all
started to contribute the necessary
funds that we could use to pay for
tooling and pay for the first run of
bottles so that brings us up to date
this is spans five years as of three
weeks ago I’m very pleased to be able to
say that we are actually now making the
bottles they’re in production 3,000
bottles to be precise coming to a store
near you soon and it’s been it’s been an
amazing journey it’s definitely been
more of a hill climb than a sprint but
we’ve learned a lot along the way and I
do think the hardship will be worth it i
think the finished product will make
both fausto and gino proud and rather
fittingly next year is the 70th
anniversary but the original color
company and I can’t think of a better
time to put it back where it belongs
which is back on the bicycle thank you
very much [Applause]