HN user
Say hi: me [@] bryanmgreen . com
Founder of www.FontaineGlass.com - handblown titanium crystal stemware for wine and spirits.
Available as a e-com/business/product/marketing consultant
I make my Caesar with kale and arugula, shave broccoli with a peeler then roast them, and add pine nuts plus roasted garlic lemon chickpeas in addition to croutons for even more and healthier crunch. It’s also delicious with just oil.
So many campaigns for recycle… but not enough on the two more important pieces - Reduce and Reuse.
Over the years I have refurbed some furniture which is a fun hobby in addition to being environmentally helpful.
I think it’s also worthwhile to pay for higher quality items that are made well and last. A nice pair of leather boots can get repaired for minimal cost and mine have lasted over a decade of very hard wear.
New adoption perk is ability to avoid DNA based shadow profiling (given no voluntary self sharing of DNA and current ID, of course)
A good chunk of inflation is just price gouging, in today's modern world.
There are more tools to understand data and squeeze every penny from customers.
It's admirable when a company isn't trying to bleed customers dry.
Step 1: Blame people who don't look like you
Step 2: Become dictator/king
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit
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History repeats itself.
Very cool. Makes me think of this wonderful scene from Sports Night where William Macy talks about Philo Farnsworth and Cliff Gardner inventing TV.
One thing I have to really congratulate you on is your product video.
I honestly think it's one of the best I've seen for any software. It showcases the functionality, displays the actual UI, doesn't rely on narration, is visually interesting, and succinct.
Was it made internally or with an agency?
How did paid channels like HBO and Showtime make their ad-free model work in the regular TV era?
Can someone explain how "Da Bomb" consistently inflicts worse pain than higher Scoville hot sauces?
If you're interested in Egyptology, highly recommend "Empress of the Nile", about Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt who led many of the most notable archeology projects in the 1900's.
"The results suggest removing vegetarian and vegan labels from menus could help guide US consumers towards reduced consumption of animal products."
In Europe it is very common to see menus with iconography for fish, plants, grains, and cheese to quickly identify diet friendly items. To me, as a meat eater with a pescatarian girlfriend, it makes the menu seem much more friendly and inclusive. And from my anecdotal experience as a US citizen in Los Angeles who spends a lot of time in Europe, they are much more vegetarian friendly over there.
Maybe removing labels isn't the answer, maybe adding more is.
Lets say the same asteroid hit the same place in Australia today....
How many people would both directly from impact/shockwave and indirectly die (infrastructure collapse, tsunamis on beach towns, climate change, etc) from this, do we think?
I think there's an inflection point at around 40 employees where terminal velocity starts to slow down due to a combination of sheer headcount and founder exhaustion.
It's something I've personally seen and have read about so many times. Some make it through this stage but it's extremely difficult because it requires a very different set of skills and experiences. It becomes less about grinding, which in theory is very simple to explain and encourage.
Some stuff I'm particularly proud of:
- Most of the furniture and art [1] that I've made. I'm a very analytical person and physical creative outlets where I just create things that "feel good" really help me unwind... Even if those projects are pretty difficult for my often times rudimentary skills. There's a small gallery on my personal website.
- My own company [2] that makes titanium hand-blown glassware for whisky and spirits. They're made in Europe, so I don't personally craft them, but the glasses are my design and I learned how to 3D print prototypes - so "made" might vary based on your definition. Tangible things are just really cool and grounding.
On the flip side, as the business owner of a what I'd call an "affordable luxury" product (about $45 for a hand-blown whisky and spirits glass), its also easy to overprice the product.
The most difficult thing is finding the balance and compromise in pricing because some customers will happily pay double the cost, but many won't.
My product is very expensive to make and my margins are not great, but this price gets me the most market saturation in a very important growth stage (business is only 2 years old) while still keeping the business profitable
A menagerie of animal-part patchwork humans sounds like a great time!
The only things in life that are hard are the things you don’t want to do.
This is a very Partridge-esque look at its history.
If anyone is a Coogan fan, I highly recommend seeking out The Trip. And not the terrible movie version, but the actual full series. Season 1 is such a brilliant piece of television.
Hello! 1) Full volume is about 6oz 2) Noted! 3) Correct, the tumbler skips the titanium because it's our more affordable product and it's less needed because the product does not have a stem.
Over the last several years I've made a habit of downloading PDF manuals for many things I own and saving them in a Google Drive folder for safe-keeping.
You never know when you need one until you do and it's a nightmare if you lost it!
Definitely saving this comic for future reference!
Was chatting about "marketing gimmicks" earlier with a colleague but saying so what if the gimmicks are actually objectively good? Things like product made by humans, sustainable packaging, etc.
For sure! Obviously it's good if some things are made by machines (like things that requirement super-fine tolerances), but the movement towards "Made by Humans" is trending away from "hipster" or "nerd" into general appreciation and that's very cool. Even if it's just for "for the marketing", the end result is that someone is getting paid for job with tangible results.
I particularly like it with the glassware because machines literally can't make this glass at its current quality; it HAS to be done by hand to have this level of refinement.
Love it! Thank you!
Usability was very important in development. The crystal is dishwasher friendly and as is the design itself (I wanted them to be able to fit in the top-racks of consumer dishwashers as most wine glasses are too tall.)
Ah, should have been more clear. The code is just for the stems.
The new tumblers are 33% off (automatically) though since they're on a pre-order special right now!
In bars with decent brown spirits programs they probably use them, but no they're not anywhere near as common as they are in Europe.
I've also never seen them in Michelin-level restaurants here because the quality of the glass isn't up to that standard.
Crystal consists of many raw materials with silicon dioxide making up the majority of the mix (70+%). Titanium dioxide is melted in with everything in a brand-new solar powdered furnace that runs up 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit iirc.
Titanium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal which is why it's used in the most demanding applications like rockets.
Each glass manufacturer uses their own recipe and pretty much all of them use aluminum, rather than titanium, as their strengthening additive simply because it's exponentially cheaper.
Crystal is stronger than standard glass which is why it can be so thin.
Modern production of lead-free crystal is generally pretty good now. Old leaded crystal is extremely brittle and prone to chipping and fractures which definitely soured people's perception of its durability. Our glassware uses titanium as a strengthening additive which really helps durability as well as sparkle.
Most of our hospitality partners use them in service every day in commercial dishwashers with very little breakage. Having a shorter stem also greatly reduces both tipping and twisting scenarios which are the most common sources of breakage.
It's something I battle against every day.
I'm constantly told that whisky shouldn't be served in a stemmed glass. Honestly, I think half of my job is education.
The masculinity of the marketing message towards spirits is deeply embedded in American culture, which is why big tumblers are commonplace even though they don't do spirits justice. You don't see those stigmas in wine. The community is definitely way more gender friendly now though which is great. If my glassware can play even the tiniest part in making spirits more accessible, I'd consider this business a success.
Thanks! I like seeing how many folks know about the Teku beer glass. Very different use case, but the shape philosophy is similar.
With Bennuaine it was really about fine-tuning the dimensions through a ton of research and prototyping to reduce ethanol burn while at the same time highlighting finer notes.
Hand-blown titanium crystal glassware for whisk(e)y and spirits.
Produced in Europe by a glass factory that has been operating since the late 1700's.
PG's mantra "do things that don't scale" has been a great inspiration.
I wanted something comparable to high-end wine stemware and it shockingly did not exist, so I designed it during COVID. This is my first physical goods venture and my goodness, it comes with a lot of challenges (as an American I've intimately learned the difficulties of Brexit, for example) but I wouldn't change anything for the world. It's so satisfying to see people use a shining piece of glassware made by real human craftsmen.
The speed at which the glassware been welcomed in the community is overwhelming (both emotionally and from a pure business logistics perspective) and I couldn't be more grateful. Now, just 18 months post-launch, it's used in distilleries ranging from Scotland to Jamaica and Michelin starred restaurants.
For the HN friends, use the code HACKER for 10% off glassware :)