They're About the Beers and the Bros — Why Wine Coolers Don't Work Pt. 2

Tonight's Episode

Every product story has a stretch in the middle that nobody puts in the marketing copy, and this is Jeanine Lum's. Her first project manager had never had a drink in his life, which made explaining the value of what she was trying to protect a losing battle from the start. He took her concept, produced designs that failed, then redesigned and remolded without consulting her — and charged her for a new mold every single time. A year and several molds later, she was ready to quit.

What she says next is the part that stops you. Twenty years in law enforcement, and she had never cried as much as she did during that first year of design work.

She found a second manufacturer, and the difference was immediate: they didn't charge for redesigns, and their engineers apologized for not having reached her solutions first. Three mold revisions, billed once. Running alongside all of it was a patent process that went nearly as badly — the first attorney turned her away claiming a conflict of interest so fast she's certain he never opened her email, the second loved the product but couldn't hold to deadlines, and the third, who also doesn't drink, turned out to be the one who saw it. She now holds a design patent, a utility patent, and two registered trademarks.

Then Forrest asks the question that gets to the heart of it, and Jeanine explains the interlocking ice pack system — a modular grid that freezes flat enough to fit an RV freezer, then slides together inside the bag, with pieces you can remove and reposition to make room for food and charcuterie. She designed it that way because she and her husband have lived with small refrigerators on a boat and in an RV, and because the coolers already on the market weren't built with wine in mind at all. Most of them, as she puts it, aren't even tall enough.

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