New Stanley President Targets a Global Audience

By Lorrie Baumann

Terence Reilly joined PMI Worldwide as its Global President for the Stanley Brand with big plans for the brand. Under his leadership, the Stanley brand will expand beyond its legacy hammertone green vacuum bottles and lunch boxes and into brighter colors and new products designed to appeal to a global marketplace. “We really have an unbelievable opportunity for a brand that has a wonderful legacy and history,” Reilly said. “We’re always going to have one of our bottles in the back of a pickup truck, but there are other vehicles out there, and we also want to go off the trail.”

As Stanley goes after new markets that include Millennial and Gen-Z consumers in the United States, consumers of all generations in Asia and Latin America and women everywhere, PMI isn’t planning to leave behind the company’s brand loyalists, Reilly said. “Loyal customers love us for a reason, and we’re going to continue that,” he said. “Our hammertone green bottle has been known for more than a century.”

“We’re looking for a little bit younger demographic – Gen-X to Gen-Z, and look for ways to not only appeal to the core consumers but globally to appeal to more feminine consumers through engaging marketing using digital and social media,” he added. “Our products will reflect an emerging audience globally.”

Stanley is keeping an eye on a glamping – luxury camping – trend that’s growing up in Asia and plans to make products that those consumers want to take along, and may do that by pursuing licensing arrangements and partnerships with other companies, Reilly said. “We’ll be poised to seize some of those opportunities,” he added. “We are a brand that has been really, really trusted for a long time. People want to associate with Stanley.”

In its drive to bring new consumers into the Stanley fold, the brand will also be focusing on a range of hydration products in a wide range of colors that are new to the brand and in a wide range of sizes to fit varying cultural expectations about how much liquid it’s appropriate to carry around all day. While Americans typically like larger quencher products at 36 to 40 ounces, smaller bottles are preferred in many other parts of the world, and consumers everywhere expect their bottles to fit into their automobile cupholders, Reilly said. “We have the products that fit, no matter where you are around the planet,” he said.

The company plans to show off those new products in a wide range of colors as well as the classic hammertone green at this fall and winter’s outdoor and hardware trade shows, Reilly said. “The silhouette of the classic bottle is the icon. We’ll be showing it in different colors, and people will recognize that,” he said. “We’re expanding the family – more colors is just a new way to buy it. Someone can get one that matches the truck.”