Touchin' Me, Touchin' You.

Tomorrow we launch the brilliance of Cuppow, which transform mason-jars into sippy-cups! Tonight we celebrate! What are you celebrating though? Who is it that you are supporting? Who touched it and who are you touching (sexually, of course.)

Things these days have become so streamlined, so efficient.

Machines spit products into boxes and ship them off without so much as a kiss goodbye. Gone are the days of human contact. Remember that warm feeling you got when the lunch lady would grab your sloppy joe, hand ungloved, and plop it on your plate. Someone cared about that sandwich. Someone touched it.

Who touched the Cuppows that are about to revolutionize your drinking habits? We sat down (AKA: we typed up) with Cuppow co-founder Aaron Panone to figure out his touching habits! SCANDALOUS!

How many things have you touched today?

It's 9:36am and I have touched about 20 things.

Are you touching anything right now, other than (presumably) your computer?

Table, chair, I'm rocking out to some jams pretty hard, so I guess that you could say that I am currently being touched by music.

We love Cuppows. Where are they made?

All aspects of our supply chain are in located in Massachusetts, within an hour of our home base in Somerville, MA. This means, everything: packaging is printed and cut, ink is mixed, tooling is manufactured, parts are molded, labels are printed, fulfillment and processing occur, etcetera... we even use local courier and trucking companies to bring our things to the places where they need to go.

I understand that every detail of Cuppows are made in the same community, yeah?

We do all of our product development and design out of one 8,000-square-foot collaborative workspace called Fringe, in Somerville, MA. Industrial/plastics, graphic, packaging, and web design, as well as all of our media (photo and video) originate from Fringe. All of our packaging is also manufactured here by a one man print shop, Repeat Press.

Do either of you know karate?

Josh might. I could see Josh being into karate as a child, but now he is into yoga, which is like sleepy karate.

Okay! Do you like karate movies? Do you ever say CUPPOW like a Karate Master would in your free time?

Yeah, when we first named the product we used to say it like that all of the time. Now that we say "Cuppow" literally hundreds of times a day, it is easy to forget the name's Karate and/or Batman roots. Maybe we should all plan a trip to Japan to get back in touch with our company name. Sounds like a business expense to me.

These are the hands at Fringe, who touch things. Often.

Fringe from Paper Fortress on Vimeo.