KeepCup co-founder and managing director Abigail Forsyth has watched for 10 years as hundreds of thousands of disposable cups are thrown into the trash and sent to rot in landfills. Since its official launch in 2009, KeepCup has sold over 10 million units in over 65 countries and averted the plight of literally billions of plastic cups.

How did this story begin? How did KeepCup achieve such global success?

Prior to KeepCup's launch, Abigail and her brother, co-founder Jamie Forsyth, owned the cafe. After opening their first cafe together in 1998, for the next 12 years, the siblings worked together selling coffee in paper cups.

Contrary to popular belief, disposable coffee cups are not recyclable. Despite being papery on the outside, most disposable coffee cups are actually lined with a thin layer of polyethylene on the inside, making them difficult to recycle. Numerous reports claim that it can take 30 to 50 years for a disposable cup to completely collapse.

Not wanting to get involved in the pollution, Abigail and Jamie began looking for a solution.

”I started looking for reusable coffee cups to sell in our stores, but found that there was nothing suitable on the market, ”says Abigail.

Finding a free niche in the market, the Forsytes set to work on creating a reusable cup that would be comfortable for both the barista and the client.

Convenience was the guiding principle behind the design of the KeepCup.

After spending countless hours at the espresso machine and talking to customers, Abigail found that while most people want to do the right thing, it is often too uncomfortable: “The biggest obstacle we found was that people said, 'I want to do right, but I don’t want to bother anyone. I don’t want to annoy the barista. I don’t want to annoy the café customers. I don’t want to embarrass someone standing in line behind me. So how can I be? "

It doesn't matter if you have the best product in the world - if the experience the product provides is difficult or inconvenient for the customer, they won't respond to your offer.

The next step was to make sure that KeepCup can be easily integrated into the client's daily life. To this end, Abigail has made sure that it's made of materials that make it easy to clean and remain dishwasher and microwave safe.

This kind of over-concentration and obsession with developing a product that is ready for immediate use has been one of the key reasons behind the explosive growth in KeepCup's popularity.

While in retrospect it might seem obvious that KeepCup was destined to be a huge success by being the right product, presented at the right time - right when people started drinking more coffee and the public became particularly concerned about preserving the environment. However, Abigail recalls a moment when she met with a certain manufacturer who told her that she was crazy trying to implement her idea.

Perhaps one of the most impressive things about KeepCup is that the brand managed to keep growing despite offering only one product, and that was just "just a plastic cup."

Over the past ten years, Abigail has transformed KeepCup into a truly global brand, all the while demonstrating that you don’t have to compromise your values ​​and integrity to achieve that result.

Today, KeepCup is a clear testament to how listening to customers, honesty in approach and messaging, and the drive for profit can be the keys to achieving explosive and sustainable business growth.