What makes the luxury water bottle Okapa worth almost $300?
It’s the use of medical-grade materials to maintain the best hygiene, which is backed by 70-plus utility and design patents that founder Hardy Steinmann has won over the past decade while making Okapa.
“At the end, I want you to have a perfectly functional, hygienic piece and art form with great craftsmanship,” Steinmann told the Business Journal.
Okapa quietly began selling products online in February to let the product “marinate.” While he declined to say how many have been sold to date, he said they are “selling well.”
Steinmann has a retail background spanning over 40 years that includes joining Swiss watch manufacturer Hublot in 1984 in New York. This led him to start his own timepiece company called WatchOut, where he says he collaborated with artist Andy Warhol and sold the brand three years later.
Steinmann then went to work for Swiss trading conglomerate DKSH in Thailand, charged with introducing and building brands like Levi’s and Ocean Pacific in new international markets. Afterwards, he joined Swatch Group USA to turn around the Hamilton watch company as global CEO.
“I’m running from one corner to another and fixing these companies, which I really love to do,” he said.
This is what brought him to OC. When he was tasked with revamping a Swiss kitchenware brand based in Foothill Ranch, Steinmann moved his family here and meant to only stay for a year.
Status Symbols
His idea came when witnessing the potential of water bottles as “status symbols” in consumer culture—seen recently in the rise of Stanley Cup, Hydro Flask and Owala. He saw a way to break through the category by creating the highest quality version.
“I saw some of the plastics and some of the materials, which were just not right. I said, ‘If I ever do this, it’s going to be at the highest level,’” he said.
Steinmann went full-time with Okapa in 2015 and ended up making thousands of versions of the water bottle during an eight-year period. He compares the water bottle’s engineering to an Apple device.
He named the company after the city of his first job in Papua New Guinea, Okapa. The final product is a glass bottle that snaps into an aluminum shell with a silicone interior, which keeps the container from falling out—a design he says was inspired by a Japanese perfume bottle.
Okapa works with several international manufacturers for the individual pieces, with materials chosen from medical and aerospace fields, “all in service of hygiene and durability.”
The borosilicate glass made in Germany is typically used for laboratory vials.
The cap is made of surgical-grade stainless steel, and each part of the spout can be disassembled and washed.
“The way the materials come together with all these parts are so extremely tight, down to the microns,” he said. “If they’re not 100% correct, the bottle doesn’t work.”
Craftsmanship in a Bottle
He’s now focused on building brand awareness, and his water bottle has even been featured in the Fast Company publication. Okapa this year collaborated with designer Mila Sullivan at her fashion show in New York. The company will also launch campaigns on social media platforms YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
Steinmann, born in Switzerland and a Laguna Niguel resident, has worked around the world for multiple high-end retail brands.
“Craftsmanship, for me, it’s what you can recognize always across the board,” Steinmann said.
