Simple Modern's Brett Bone on the Limits of Raising Prices

Drinkware is one of the few categories where a shopper sees every rival’s price in a single scroll. That openness sets the terms for everyone selling water bottles. It leaves almost no room to hide a price increase. Brett Bone, Chief Strategy Officer at Simple Modern, found that out the hard way. Tariffs forced the brand to raise prices last year, and customers pushed back fast. He spoke to ClickZ at The Lead Summit 2026 about protecting margin in a volatile market. He also spoke about the year that taught his team to treat price as their most fragile lever.

The early bet was selling where rivals would not

Simple Modern’s growth started with timing. It also started with a willingness to sell where bigger names were not looking. Bone puts the turning point around 2016 and 2017. Water bottles were taking off then. Brands like Yeti, Swell, and Hydro Flask were growing, but they did not treat Amazon as a priority. Simple Modern came in early, he said, “selling in a place where other brands weren’t willing to sell.”

That instinct is now a habit. Shopping is shifting toward AI and agentic discovery. Bone wants the brand wherever customers move next. Chasing that movement drove the early growth. He believes it may drive the next wave too.

In drinkware, the customer sees every price at once

Margin pressure comes from both sides of the business. Bone reached back to a framework he studied in business school, Porter’s Five Forces. Suppliers squeeze from one end. Customers and competitors squeeze from the other. Strong rivals like Yeti, Stanley, Owala, and Hydro Flask push prices down. Roughly 30 to 40 percent of demand sits with big-box retailers like Target and Walmart. That hands those buyers real pricing power. “You get pinched kind of from both ends, with suppliers and with customers,” he said.

Price transparency on Amazon makes every move louder. A shopper can compare the same black water bottle across listings in seconds, and the lowest price usually wins. So the tariff response stung. The brand raised prices to protect margin, and “we learned that the customer did not like it,” Bone said. Demand dropped far more sharply than the team expected.

The recovery ran through a deeper factory relationship

The lesson took about three months to land. The increase hit during peak summer demand. The damage only showed once back-to-school season arrived in September and October. Bone frames the real choice as a recurring question. Looking back, the brand “probably should have leaned more towards the market share at that point,” he said.

Many rivals reacted by moving production out of China. Simple Modern did some of that. Its bigger move was different. The team doubled down on its main factory partner, and together they attacked the cost problem. Simple Modern cut its catalog from 5,000 SKUs to 2,000. It also shared longer forecasts with the factory. That let the supplier buy raw materials more tightly and run the lines more efficiently. Those savings flowed back to Simple Modern. Prices returned to near pre-tariff levels, and margins recovered most of the way too.

Recognition now depends on a language customers read at a glance

When price is this exposed, a standout product matters more than margin. Bone splits his catalog in two. Plain bottles compete on price alone. A licensed Disney partnership or a custom pattern carries less pressure. Those products let the brand charge more and still do well.

The brand backs that with what the team calls a visual brand language. Simple Modern lacked one in its early, bootstrapped days. Back then it sourced a bottle from a factory and listed it on Amazon. The stakes are concrete now. About 15 million people search the brand on Amazon each year. Bone wants instant recognition, so a shopper can “see our product from 15 feet away” and know the brand at once.

Wholesale and branded search carry growth most strategists overlook

A rapid-fire round drew out his sharpest reads. Amazon now creates margin pressure for the brand. It used to be the growth engine. Today it is saturated, though still unavoidable. The metric Bone watches most is the branded search on Amazon. It shows how many shoppers look for Simple Modern by name.

His current growth engine is wholesale. Walmart and Target move real volume. They also build awareness at the same time. “It’s free marketing, being on the shelf in a Target or a Walmart,” he said.

The 10 percent pledge is a story the brand keeps selling

Simple Modern gives 10 percent of profits to nonprofit partners. Bone says the pledge has been part of the company from the start. He is candid that it pulls against growth. Carrying that cost off the bottom line makes scaling harder. His fix is storytelling. The brand sells partners on the mission rather than hiding it. Bone says even Walmart bought in once the team told the story clearly.

The category will stay price-transparent. Tariff exposure is not going away. So Simple Modern’s strategy now rests on one hard lesson. Price is the lever customers punish fastest. The durable gains have to come from cost, recognition, and the channels where shoppers already look.