The best looking aluminum cup brand i've seen

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom Pod. We have Paul Creighton with us today. Paul is a co-founder of a company called Lumi Cup in the LA area. He was previously CEO at CO2 Cycle, co-founder of Jibe, bunch of companies, interesting guy altogether. Paul, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you've been up to.

Yeah, so Paul Creighton, I'm a co-founder and in this iteration I'm the Chief Sustainability Officer at Lumi and our As you said, our main product is the Lumi Cup. We, we've been working in the sustainability space for a very long time, trying in different channels to come up with ways to help consumers use their buying power to positively influence what's happening with our environment, whether it's with people's carbon footprint or whether it's finding ways to use less single-use plastic, which is a particular problem the whole world is dealing with right now. So Lumi was sort of the outgrowth of a lot of learnings that we had from these other companies that you mentioned we were involved with over the last 8 or 9 years. We— I think when we began this journey in sustainability, we were firmly committed to the idea that consumers just needed to make certain changes to their lifestyle, their daily habits, to make these better choices. And what we discovered the hard way through the failure of those first 3 startups is that people are actually really fond of their habits, you know, and their behaviors, and they don't really like making adjustments. So LumiCups are a way of meeting the consumer where they are. People are busy, they're on the go, and they want a single-use disposable cup for, you know, all the things that they drink during the day. And We found that the best way to give them what they want while simultaneously benefiting the environment is to make it out of an infinitely recyclable material, which is aluminum, which is why we basically created this product, which is essentially the same aluminum can that humans have been using since 1959, but in a single-use cup. So you get the performance that aluminum brings, which is keeps your drink colder longer. You get the ability to print on the cup and you get the convenience of tossing it into the same recycling bin you've been throwing away your aluminum cans your whole life with this. So we were thrilled with this sort of revelation and innovation and went into an R&D process and probably started like around 2021. Um, and have been in the market for the past year and a half and having a, having a blast with it.

And what brought you there, right? Like, I read something interesting about you. Uh, you started, or you dove in the startup world in your late 40s. What happened there?

I mean, I've asked myself that same question too, because I was very firmly, you know, a corporate America, um, kind of guy. And maybe that's a generational thing. But I think I segued from corporate life into being just a sole proprietor, you know, and working as a freelance writer for many years. That was sort of, it's the skill I was born with. But I always had all these really cool ideas for different things. And I think meeting partners, meeting people who shared, you know, a similar vision, Having a husband who's also extremely focused on the environment and sustainability and was willing to jump in with both feet as well. That all probably came later in life. Like, all the ingredients were finally in the pot at the right time, and I just happened to be, you know, in my mid-career, as opposed to, you know, you started when you were still a teenager, I believe. So it's, you know, everyone comes to it in a different way, but I think we were also motivated by the fact that there's like a serious measurable problem in the world, in the environment that we all share. And I could either write checks to nonprofit groups and other organizations that were trying to solve the problem, or I could just personally get involved and do the thing I wanted to do rather than watching from the sidelines as somebody else did it.

Which one, which one was your first one? Because LumiCup only came in 2021. I see Jibe and CO2 Cycle before that. Like, how did these 2 ventures go?

Yeah, so CoCycle was the first. That was the one that kicked it off, I think, back in 2018. Um, so Steve, my husband, is a commercial producer. He makes, he makes commercials. Um, and he always lamented how, um, non-environmentally sensitive sets are. There's just, it's all about bringing people together quickly and doing whatever's easiest and cheapest. So there's always a lot of waste and a lot of energy used. So we came up with a framework of services that we could offer to shoots to make them more environmentally sensitive, reducing waste, switching over to recyclables, using renewable energy for certain things that— you know, could benefit from that. That was actually going really well. We got clobbered by COVID because changes in set life that followed, obviously all the protocols you had to follow for the pandemic, didn't allow a lot of space for what we were doing. Jibe was the next one that we did, which was more of a platform for people to rate the sustainability of the delivery and takeout food they were getting from restaurants. So the idea being you could look at a map on your, on your iPhone, um, and all things being equal, if there were 2 restaurants serving the same thing near you and one had a better rating for its packaging than the other, you would choose the restaurant that was using that better packaging and sort of use market incentives to get restaurants to migrate over to, to the more mindful products. Um, that did well, I think, during the pandemic. Ironically, that one did particularly well because so many people were doing takeout and delivery. Um, but then it really ebbed as we all came out of lockdown and people kind of wanted to rejoin, um, normal, normal society. And the third thing we did was Aram, which was another physical product. It was a tote bag designed to make it easier for you to carry 2 refillable bottles with you all day. And the idea was, if you didn't have to take the plastic bottle or the plastic cup wherever you went, you had your own in a really like chic, fun tote bag, you'd be more incentivized to do that. But people already carry a lot of bags. They have gym bags, backpacks, briefcases, purses, and we had trouble getting them to see the merits of bringing another bag with them, even if it was just in the car. So that went away as well. But like I mentioned, all 3 of those failures. helped us understand we just need to meet the market where it is, and that's with a disposable.

And when were you made aware of the environmental failure that we live in? For example, me, I think it's a combination of being an ultra runner, spending lots of times in the woods and seeing plastic all over the fucking place, uh, sometimes going to the beach and finding plastic at the beach. Right. And then probably some psychedelic trips that I did and realizing my connection with, uh, Mother Nature, right? Like, how were you aware of it on your side?

I think it's just this progressive— it's like pulling on a string. Like, once you become aware of something, you just can't help but notice the thing that's connected to it and then the things that are connected to the next level. Um, you know, and thanks to algorithms nowadays, once you start looking at something, you just get served up all this information that's related to it. So I think I've always been interested in it just as a citizen of the planet, trying to be thoughtful about things. But we really sort of crested, I would say, in the late 2010s, this recognition that we have these swirling continents of plastic out in the oceans, right? And that people were— wherever you went, whether you were at the beach or you were in the mountains, there was just plastic waste laying there from the person who was there before you or the millions of people who were nearby. And while there's been a lot of debate publicly about CO2 and climate change and things like that, and it's frankly, it's sort of at this point everyone's sort of locked into position, but there's no question that there wasn't plastic here before. Like this is not something that was put on Earth by a deity or anybody, any other creature. It's only arrived since humans have been here consuming it, and it's our responsibility to fix it.

Right. Lumi Cup 2021, right? Like, was there like a specific launch behind it? I love the branding. Let me just share my screen so that people can see it, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna be highly successful, right? Like, what was the launch like and how's it scaled since today, 2026, like 5 years in?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's been, it's been a very interesting arc, I would say. 2021, you know, we formed the company, we were in our R&D phase. There was a lot of R&D that went into those because we, we make this in a different way than sort of like the industry elders would tell you you should make it. And we actually have a patent that's been issued to us in the US for our manufacturing process because we really did innovate how this kind of thing gets produced. But we spent a lot of time, you know, in the lab figuring out how to do it. So from, you know, '21 to call it '24, we really were fine-tuning our technique and, you know, testing different alloys, testing different configurations, you know, whether the angle of the wall is a big deal, the way you curl the lip is a big deal, all these things that you can do without even thinking about it with plastic. because it's just this malleable material that cools into whatever shape you want. With aluminum, you really sort of have to work with it. So, you know, we sort of— we did a soft market entry with a single size back in late '24, early '25. We started shopping it around to potential customers. We were getting great reaction to it. So we realized, you know, we had something, and that's when we invested in the additional production capacity. So we now have 5 sizes that are the most popular ones that most hospitality operations need: the 9-ounce, 12-ounce, 16, 20, and 24. And that's everything from your sort of like cocktail cup on up to your, you know, your tank of whatever you want to drink at a tailgating party. But those things take a minute, and so we've been gradually rolling them out. And just seeing the reaction that our customers have to it, they're, you know, it's kind of magical because No one has seen anything like this before. And when they do see it, it suddenly seems— it's like it's so obvious to them. It's like the same with us. Like, when we see it, we're like, oh, of course, why weren't we doing this, you know, 40 years ago? Um, and so scaling it has simply been, uh, about building in the production capacity and waiting for everyone to sort of catch up with their procurement.

And who's in charge of the design? Who's in charge of manufacturing? Tell me a bit more about the team.

Uh, so there's 5 co-founders. Um, we have, uh, Kevin Diamond is our CEO. Um, Kay Wolfe is our sort of Chief Marketing Officer. Allison Diamond runs our warehouse and fulfillment operations. And then Steve Bauerfeind, my husband, is— because he has a full-time job on the side, uh, with his production company— is sort of our production, our, our our design and, you know, production expert who's always pushing us to come up with more innovative ways to design our cups for broader appeal. But the 5 of us make up the core team. We have a sales operation, we have a production partner in the EU, which is where we manufacture them. And the— I would say the mechanics of the cup were worked out between our co-manufacturing partner, and a guy here in Southern California named Sam Ristic. He's, uh, you know, an engineer.

And your CEO's the next Playboy?

Uh, so I believe where that prior, that prior work was, was PLBY, which was the holding company that owned a lot of the assets from, from, from Playboy, as well as, you know, they were, they're one of these companies that sort of like accumulating name brands and using those brands to remarket a variety of products. But yeah, that was his— I think he got to fly on, what was it called, the Big Bunny or the private jet was the Sky Bunny, I forget.

Yeah, well, you made aluminum cups really sexy, right? Like, I think that's one thing. Another uncommon thing, you guys raised a Series A in your field, so you're sort of bringing like tech babble into like an otherwise boring industry. Tell me a bit more about that.

I mean, it's kind of funny, right? Because right now, like, all the hottest businesses are doing AI and platforms, and it's just basically all electrons, you know, going back and forth. And we literally decided to innovate a product that has been, you know, part of humanity for 8,000 years. It's like we went to the complete other end of human development, but It's— I think it's a cool reminder that not every innovation is technological. Sometimes we can still surprise ourselves with, you know, in the physical world. This isn't one of those things that people were asking for, but as soon as they see it, they know they want it. And it just makes sense. But the Certainly the risk was in entering a market that has a gazillion players, right? If you go online and want to order some disposable cups, you know, get ready to spend some time scrolling. But there's really not that many options where you can feel good about your purchase choice because you know that you're not adding to waste. You are solving a problem by buying this thing that is going to recycle forever. I mean, it's It's— people don't realize that every time they open an aluminum can, right, or an aluminum water bottle nowadays, there are parts of it that are made from aluminum that has been recycling for the last 70 years. I mean, it just goes around and around. It doesn't degrade at all. Plastic can't do that. It's got maybe one recycling cycle in it, maybe 2, and then it just goes to the landfill.

The custom design part of it looks so good, right? Like, how is that innovative? How the hell do you guys like print stuff on something that is circular and is made out of aluminum? How does ink stick to that?

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. The ink really loves to stick to the, to, to the aluminum. I mean, you could even, if you get some of these and you want to go to a party, you can write your name on it with a Sharpie, Right, you know, before it starts sweating, and it'll stick the whole time. It's just— it, it not only does it take the ink well, it accents the color, right, because it's on this like shiny, shiny surface. So you can work with that reflection. It's— I always call it hand bling. Um, you know, like whenever we're at a trade show or something, people are holding it and they're always like sticking it out to the camera because it's all, you know, it's shimmering and it's— it glimmers, and people just love that sort of emotional connection to it. But yeah, to your question, the, the, you know, the full color spectrum of inks, um, you know, it's not a problem. And we're really only limited by our customers' imagination as to what they want to put on it. We, we get some really creative, crazy stuff. Um, we're thinking of doing sort of a gallery show.

The manufacturing plant, do you own it, or, uh, how does that work?

No, we work with a manufacturing partner. The guy who we work with is actually one of the innovators behind the Nespresso pod, so he's sort of an aluminum savant and helped us with a lot of it.

How far can you scale production, right? Like, how many cups a month can you do? What's your ceiling when you actually need to start about like a second plant or doing something else to increase production?

Yeah, I mean, the great thing about the way we do it is the machines we use just love to run, right? So, you know, if we wanted to, we could run the plant 21 hours a day. The machine, you know, it's like a sports car, like it does better the warmer it gets. And so we can scale down, you know, when we, you know, first open a plant and we can be fine with doing hundreds of thousands or the low millions. But that same plant can ramp up to, you know, 100 million. It's just a question of sort of getting the flow right depending on what the delivery schedule is for the customer.

Is it mostly automated as well? Because I see you can order from the website. Like, is it ordering on the website and then boom, the machine starts?

Well, so if you, you know, we will— if you order like a direct-to-consumer cup on our website, that cup's already been made. So we have that in inventory and we'll just ship that out to you, you know, the next day. If you want it custom printed, that's another process that, you know, a human being needs to, you know, gin up into the machine and the cups get loaded, put into a box by hand, and then that gets sent to you.

Okay, interesting. Hmm, how do you get your clients? What's your— I mean, you have a great brand, but you have like a go-to-market motion to get to your ideal customer persona? And who's that ideal customer persona most of the time?

Yeah, I mean, we do best with large-scale food and beverage operations. So sports stadiums, entertainment venues, resort hotels that have, you know, big poolside operations or beach, you know, beach operations, but also restaurants, universities. It's really anybody who's just going through a lot of cups. And wants to create a special experience for their, for their user. So, you know, there's, there's literally hundreds of trade shows that go on around the world every year that bring these buyers and sellers together. We attend a lot of those. There's also a lot of massively scaled distribution companies that get hired by the arenas and the stadiums and the hotel groups to do their procurement. So it's sort of a combination of making yourself known to, you know, to that user, and then also make, you know, having an arrangement, you know, a vendor contract with those distributors so that when they agree they want to use your product, you're frictionless on that deal.

It's about $1 a cup if you order like 50 of them. Is that the economics? How much, how does that compare to A plastic cup, or you're just not competing in plastic cups?

Yeah, I mean, so the, the, the DTC price is a little bit higher than our B2B price just because there is that human element, um, and because we do often have to kind of go back and forth with the customer on their design. And, you know, there's a bunch of, a bunch of, um, sort of white glove service that goes along with it. Our B2B pricing, our distributor pricing is substantially lower than that, you know, in the— I would say in the high 20 cents or low 30 cents per cup, depending on the size of your order and the, the size of the cup that you need. Um, and all of these things are sort of negotiable with our sales team and, you know, whoever's shopping us. But the, um, the benefits that you get from using this cup are actually, um, can generate additional revenue for the user. So for instance, the fact that it's recyclable and there's a bounty on recycling it is a few cents back to you if you have an arrangement, which we can help with creating that matchup between a pickup company and the customer. The fact that people enjoy their drinks so much more. I mean, it's— if you think about when you've been at a game somewhere and you spend so much money for your beer, and then after 20 minutes it's kind of warm already, it doesn't make you want to go get another one. But if you've been able to finish your drink and it's been cold and enjoyable the whole time, well, now you kind of want a second one. So you go get back in line and buy one more. And because our cup doesn't cause a lot of foam when you pour the drink in like other cups do, there's not as much waste for the servers and the cup fills faster, which means the line moves faster. Which means that person who came back for their second drink didn't miss 10 minutes, you know, of the game while they were waiting for their, you know, their turn. All of these things speed up the operation and generate a lot more revenue. And that's all sort of embedded and kind of hidden in the cup. But we generally, for these large operations, it works out to be almost zero cost if you consider all these, these revenue enhancements.

Yeah, I mean, great, uh, great pitch, great argument. I love it. Um, how big can, uh, an order get, right? Like, your largest customer, do they order like 50 grand of aluminum cups a month? Like, what, what, uh, does that look like?

Yeah, I mean, they could. I think what, um, you know, what we're ready for, um, you know, we get our orders into the millions. I mean, I think about like a sports stadium would be sort of about as big as you would get, right? Or maybe a cruise ship. But thinking about a sports stadium, you know, they've got this season, they've got anywhere from, you know, 20 to 80 or 90 games they're going to play. They're going to have concerts in between to use the space. They're expecting 50,000 to 60,000 people, you know, in the stands each time. It's multiple millions. They don't necessarily want them all arriving at the same time because they don't have a place to put them. But, you know, you arrange that sort of weekly or biweekly delivery schedule and it just starts flowing. It's actually, you know, it's pretty basic.

And what about the cost on the aluminum? Is that expensive? I guess that's a big part of your business is monitoring the price of aluminum. Does that fluctuate a lot? Does that stress you out?

Yes, um, yes and yes. It does fluctuate a bit. It has fluctuated more recently because of the tariff wars that are going on around the world. And, you know, that was a— that was an issue that we had to really pivot around. Um, I think the, you know, ultimately the model that, that Lumi will settle on is production, you know, within each market where it's selling. So we'll have our factory in Europe selling into the EU and UK. We'll have factories in the US that are selling into those markets. Something in, in the Middle East perhaps, and the, you know, the long-term future. But it's, um, the, the cost of setting up a facility is, is not that much. And as long as once the demand is there, we can localize the whole operation.

I love it. What are your main goals for this year? What do you want to achieve?

I, I feel like— I think so, for this year, I guess we're talking about 2027. I mean, I feel like this is going to be our breakout year for Lume because we have our full suite of sizes. We have, um, you know, all of our social media and paid marketing programs have started kicking in this summer. We're getting, um, great organic growth online. People are finding us. People, you know, visits to the website are really skyrocketing. And, you know, the, the thing that, the thing that benefits us the most is when people actually get to try the cup. We always say know, people who use a Lumi Cup love a Lumi Cup. So as, as people are moving into these, um, into these venues and discovering us rather than what they've had in the past, it behooves them to go online and check us out. So it's all a very sort of like virtuous cycle where I think, um, major customers see that their competitor is using it and now they want to try it out for themselves and see what it could do for their their guest experience. So I think our goal is just more of that, more of that discovery process.

I love it. Where can people find out more about you and Lumi Cup, Paul?

You should definitely come to the website at lumicup.com, but you can also find us on Instagram and TikTok @lumicups. And I would say, you know, come by our LinkedIn as well. We try to keep some interesting information about us there if you're— if you just want some background on how this all happened. But We're trying to be everywhere, so just type in LumiCup into Google and we'll look forward to seeing you soon.

With Paul and Charles.