Case Study: Memobottle scales global ecommerce and meets surging demand with Shopify Plus

How Memobottle Reimagined the Water Bottle & Sparked a Movement That Crashed the Oscars

Memobottle, founded by friends Jonathan Byrt and Jesse Leeworthy, reinvented the water bottle as a slim, reusable alternative to single-use plastics and raised over $260,000 on Kickstarter. Faced with complex manufacturing challenges, customer delays, and limited funds, the founders moved to Taiwan to work on the production line, retool processes, and get the product right — all while needing to rapidly scale a global business with no in-house coding expertise.

To grow quickly they migrated to Shopify Plus and integrated cloud tools (Shipwire, Xero, Stitch Labs, Zendesk) to automate fulfillment, inventory, accounting, and customer support. The platform enabled remote operations and real-time insights, fueling 400% year-over-year growth, expansion from 30 to 300 retail locations, high-profile publicity (including Oscars gift bags), and the launch of social initiatives like a per-sale donation to Water.org as they scale new products.

Memobottle

Jesse Leeworthy

Director & Co-founder Director & Co-founder