Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Some ideas:
Water.
Wine (https://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/80days/2008/05/green-wine.html)
Jewelry Kits (https://thenewnew.blogspot.com/2008/04/from-aluminum-cans-to-jewelry.html)
Lanterns (https://zenstoves.net/CandleLantern.htm)
Survival Kits (https://www.campingsurvival.com/surkit.html)

Coin bank
Tennis balls canister
Kleenex tissue holder
Cleaning wipes holder

Ultralight Alcohol Camp Stove

https://www.csun.edu/~mjurey/penny.html

Also consider that the 355 ML can is perfectly shaped to fit in most automobile beverage holders. Which means if you can fill it with something else, it can be taken on-the-go.

Best of luck.

Dear John

This is certainly standing the world of product design on its head – function following form and effect preceding cause!

The 355ml can is the shape and size that it is by a process of evolution and patented design. Rig-pull’s, scored tops, ridged sides, separate metallic bottoms, concave or convex domes all had, at some point in their history a purpose for which they were designed. Even the size, is a convenient single drink measure which appeals to imperial and metric users.

To find further uses for an existing design, the sales of which have plateaued is noble but probably ill conceived. If there was another market utilising 7,500 Billion 355ml Aluminium cans a year, I’m sure that someone would have done it. That’s the funny thing about markets – they work in a mysterious way and are constituted of all shapes and forms of intelligence. That no one has found an alternative use doesn’t mean that no one will, just that it is going to be unlikely and that the numbers won’t stack up.

I had a pal who built portable temperature data-loggers, so small that he could put them in the plastic container you get a 35mm film in, to act as a weatherproof housing. 35mm film cans were nearly free in instrumentation volumes – he could buy up 1000 a month as end of run cast off’s.

“I’d design your own”, I said, because that design isn’t yours and it could change” One digital camera revolution later and it now costs him more to source empty 35mm film cans than it does to make the data logger! He wrote to Kodak to ask to buy 1million of them to last him for the next 10 years. They offered him shipments starting at 1 Billion (A year)

If you find another application for a drinks can, great. Use it. But if it gets remotely serious, design a form to fit the application and protect your most valuable asset – your good idea.

Steve Alker
Xspirt