It's great to see such innovative products and better still, to have them featured on my site here at Examiner.com's Home
and Living Channel. ChillinJoy is clever, useful and good-looking: a tote that any wine aficionado would love.
Q.: Chris and Christin, can you each tell Home and Living Readers a little about your background?
Chris: I am an air traffic controller at Chicago Center in Aurora, IL. I started really getting into wine when my two older sisters moved out to the Pacific Northwest, which is home to more than one thousand vineyards.
Christin: I worked in the consumer PR field for five years with major clients, such as Unilever and SC Johnson. My interest in wine began when I was studying in Prague during college. I'm no connoisseur, but I do enjoy choosing bottles to bring on picnics around Chicago.
Q.: What was the impetus for you product, how did the idea come about?
We didn't set out to invent a product. ChillinJoy is the result of an actual need that we experienced. We love picnic-ing, whether it's for Chicago's Outdoor Film Festival or having dinner in the backyard. But, we were tired of lugging a cooler full of ice to keep wine cold or leaving home with a bottle of wine in an a simple insulating sleeve only to discover it was no longer cold when we were ready to drink it. We wanted a product that would conveniently chill a bottle of wine and keep it cold while we enjoyed our time outdoors. Finding no solution for sale, we experimented with our own ideas.
At the time, we were training for the Chicago Triathlon, spending many mornings swimming in chilly Lake Michigan. We considered the remarkable insulating abilities of our wet suits. One night, we took two ice packs (recently acquired after Chris's bike wreck) from the freezer and stuffed them inside a wet suit. Then, we inserted a room-temperature bottle of wine and secured it inside the wet suit with the ice packs over night. The next morning, the bottle of wine was still cold. And that was the birth of ChillinJoy.
Q.: What are some of the properties of ChillinJoy that make it a good product?
ChillinJoy is all about convenience for people who enjoy wine. Using neoprene technology and removable gel packs, ChillinJoy can chill a room-temperature bottle of wine in about 25 minutes and keep it cold for hours. That means you don't have to worry about whether your wine with be cold when you're ready to enjoy it, or if it will stay cold.
Designed for picnic-goers who likely have their hands full, ChillinJoy includes a shoulder strap, which allows for hands-free portability. Two pouches on the sides of ChillinJoy are designed to hold a wine bottle opener and stopper.
You don't have to prefer white wine to use ChillinJoy. During the warm months, you still need to chill red wine slightly to keep the bottle from getting warm.
Q.: How are your customers using ChillinJoy?
Most of our customers are using ChillinJoy to bring wine (or champagne) on picnics, whether it's for a BBQ at a friend's house or for an outdoor concert. They love ChillinJoy because it meets a need that no other portable product out there does in that it chills a bottle of wine versus just keeping an already cold bottle cold. We were surprised at the variety of ways that customers are using ChillinJoy that we didn't anticipate. Boat owners tell us they love it because it's a really convenient solution for bringing wine out on the water. Lots of people are buying ChillinJoy as a hostess gift when they are invited to a friend's lake house. We even have moms buying ChillinJoy to keep their kids' water or juice cold when spending an afternoon at the park.
Q.: Was it difficult to get your idea to a business model and then onto the mainstream public for use?
We have really enjoyed seeing ChillinJoy evolve from a "big idea" to a prototype to a final product. The hardest part of the process was finding a prototyper who had the special type of sewing machine that can work with neoprene. Christin and I have had a lot of fun working together to solve problems along the way and we love introducing consumers to ChillinJoy at wine festivals and tastings.
Q.: Where can Readers purchase ChillinJoy?
ChillinJoy is available for sale online at www.chillinjoy.com or on Amazon. If you are in the Chicago area, ChillinJoy is available at the following specialty stores:
* The Wine Discount Center in Highland Park
* Sunset Foods in Northbrook
* Vintner's Cellar Winery in Libertyville
* Kafka Wine in Chicago
* Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant in Wheeling, Orland Park, South Barrington and Burr Ridge
Q.: Are you thinking about creating another product? Have you been bitten by the invention bug?
We have a few strong ideas for a next product in the pipe-line, but our focus is on ChillinJoy at this time.
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