We didn't start RUGD because we saw a market opportunity.

We started it because we were annoyed.

Every camping trip, every weekend away, every day out on the water — the same problem. Andre with a travel mug for coffee, a stubby cooler for the arvo beer, a water bottle, a bottle opener that always ended up in a different bag. Malin with the same pile of containers that somehow took up half the esky space before a single drink went in.

We kept looking for one product that did it all. Something insulated enough to keep the morning coffee hot through the drive to the campsite and cold enough to keep the beer cold through the afternoon. Something that fit in the cupholder, had a bottle opener built in, and didn't make you feel like you needed to pack a separate bag just for drinkware.

It didn't exist. So we decided to build it.

The design process — longer than we expected

Designing a product from scratch when neither of you has done it before is humbling. What looks simple from the outside — a stainless steel cup with a lid — turns out to involve months of prototypes, material testing, lid geometry, vacuum insulation specs, and a lot of conversations about things like silicone durometer ratings and powder coat adhesion.

We tested early versions ourselves. Camping trips, fishing days, the morning school run, the footy. We gave them to mates to use without telling them what to look for. We watched where they struggled: the lid that leaked slightly when tilted, the base that was a fraction too wide for some cupholders, the opener that didn't quite have enough leverage on a thick-capped longneck.

Every problem went back into the next version. It took longer than we planned. It cost more than we budgeted. And when we finally had a version that genuinely worked across all five functions: coffee, beer, cold drinks, bottles, and the opener — we launched it.

That was 2023.

What happened next

We launched the StubCup as a two-person operation on the Sunshine Coast with no warehouse, no big marketing budget, and no certainty that anyone outside our immediate circle would care about it.

The Australian community proved us wrong in the best possible way.

The reviews started coming in from people we had never met — tradies using it on the ute, fishers taking it on the water, mums keeping it in the car through the school run, golfers fitting it in the bag from the first tee to the 19th hole. Each review was a real person telling us that the problem we set out to solve was one they had been living with too.

Over 700 five star reviews later, we have moved into our own warehouse. A two-person camping trip frustration became a real business, entirely because of the Australians who took a chance on a small brand and came back to say it was worth it.

We are genuinely grateful for every single one.

We still use it every day

This is not something we say for the marketing. We both use the StubCup every single day. Morning coffee, afternoon cold drink, weekend away. It is in the car, in the office, and at the campsite — exactly where we designed it to be.

Using the product daily means we notice things. Feedback from customers goes into a real conversation between two people who use what they're selling. When a customer tells us something could be better, we take it seriously because we'll notice the same thing the next time we reach for ours.

That relationship with the product is something a large brand launching a new line cannot replicate overnight. It takes time, genuine use, and a willingness to keep improving based on what real customers experience in the field.

What we believed in from the start

We built the StubCup because we believed in it — not because we saw another brand doing something similar and thought we could do it too. The 5-in-1 concept was ours because we lived the problem it solved, designed the solution ourselves, and tested it in the conditions it was built for.

We never wanted to make another version of something that already existed. We wanted to make the thing that didn't exist yet — the one product that genuinely replaced five others for the Australian who lives outdoors.

That is still what the StubCup is. And that is still what RUGD is.

A small business on the Sunshine Coast, in a warehouse that exists because Australian customers believed in what we built before anyone else was paying attention.

If you're one of those people — thank you. The StubCup is yours as much as it is ours.

Get out. Get RUGD.

— Malin and Andre, RUGD