The Idea [aka: “How Hard Can Ice Be?”]

Hi, I’m Marc. This story starts back in college, where my friend and I were studying product design and convincing ourselves that we were definitely going to “design things that matter.” Most of our time was actually spent sketching, critiquing, and drinking very average drinks with very bad ice.

One of our closest friends went on to become a bartender. Not a hobby bartender - a real one. The kind who notices things like dilution rates and ice clarity. When his birthday came around, we wanted to make something thoughtful, something designed, and ideally something that didn’t involve buying glassware again.

So we asked him a simple question: What’s the most annoying part of your job?
His answer was immediate: ice.

Cloudy ice. Weird shapes. Ice that melts too fast and quietly ruins a great drink. That was all we needed to hear. Somewhere between confidence and poor judgment, we decided to design a tool that makes perfect, round, cocktail-ready ice balls.

We opened Blender, started sketching, and quickly fell in love with our first concept. It looked clean. Elegant. Suspiciously easy. We sent it to each other with messages like “I think this could actually work.”

It wouldn’t. But at the time, we didn’t know that yet.

 yours, Marc 🧊