Please click here to see Robert and Emily on the news!

1. Send an email to sroberts@elementalinteractive.com and include the following information:

• Your name and e-mail address
• Your mailing address
• Number of children in your family and the age of each child
• Indicate that you agree to try the straw and share your feedback with us via email within one week of receiving the straws.

2. We’ll confirm receipt of your e-mail and your chance to participate. Then, we’ll mail a set of Last Straws to your home and follow up with a brief e-mail survey.

3. Try the straws with any milk or juice box/pouch product and within one week, reply to our survey with your answers and feedback.

This virtual focus group is limited to 30 participants, so hurray and let us know if you’re interested to participate. We can’t wait to get your feedback.

May 10 UPDATE: Due to popular demand, we can no longer accept Last Straw virtual focus group participant requests. We appreciate your interest in the Last Straw and look forward to making it available to you for online purchase soon!

Keep visiting! We will have more giveaways in the near future for fun stuff like naming the straw, picking our packaging design, etc. We really appreciate all your input and support for this great innovation. The response to our recent survey was overwhelming and should help us tell our story to brands and bottlers. They are paying close attention and it is just a matter of time before we can get the straws out to you, the consumers.

The survey is going great and we can’t wait to do a fun drawing for the winner of the iTouch on the 19th.  Heather and I plan to film the kids doing the drawing and post it to our YouTube link so make sure you visit on the 19th to see who the big winner is!

To everyone, thanks so much for helping us spread the word about The Last Straw.  We really appreciate all of your nice comments and emails.  Let’s keep it going and make the whole map green by year end!

Thanks again,

Robert and Heather

The real push can now begin.  Heather and I can now tell all of our wonderful friends and business associates to go ahead and spread the word.  Everyone is so enthusiastic and willing to help so this should be where the fun begins!

Canada, Austria, Germany and the USA; representatives from each were in attendance.  When I say we had some serious talent in the room it is a drastic understatement.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I started around 2004 with this project; well this is why it has taken so long.  Not only working through the concept and design, but also building a team of fantastic people and companies that can make it happen.  Making one perfect part is light years away from being able to produce millions of perfect parts.

Everyday people don’t have a clue (I didn’t) as to the manufacturing complexities of all of the high volume products they use and consume on a daily basis.  Shows like “How its Made” and “Made in America” shed a little light on these topics, however they never tell or show you the true secrets and the nuts and bolts. They always just show visuals of the production line running fast and the finished product.  The work done to produce the machinery, tooling, automation and handling systems is the real tough work and that is exactly where we are with this project. Close doesn’t count in this business, everything must be perfect and repeatable. Our partner Starlim//Sterner’s slogan “automatically perfect” captures it perfectly .

We are moving right along and should have some exciting news to share soon.

Thanks,

Robert

This is a post written by one of my close friends.  She has 3 children and this is one of her experiences of juice box messes.  Thanks Rebecca!

Oh No you didn’t!!

Those were the exact words out of my mouth when my 6 year old squeezed juice box all over our class room and his sisters too. As a homeschool mom to 3 kiddos, my time is very valuable and cleaning up unnecessary messes is not at the top of any wish list I have. However, I could see the shocked expression on his face and immediately knew why he had done it. He was spoiled! No, not spoiled rotten, but spoiled by the fact that he is friends with the Last Straw family!

Every time Brooks Austin goes over to their home, he relishes getting to have a juice box with his favorite “no mess” straw. This is a treat to him, and his sisters, because juice boxes are heavily rationed at our house because as I mentioned before, I really don’t enjoy cleaning up after the juice box mess.

After everyone got cleaned up,I could tell that he was still a little embarrassed by his mistake. I opened my arms and my little boy crawled up in my lap and said, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I really didn’t mean to make a mess, I just forgot that we didn’t have the good straw.” After I loved on him and told him that I understood that he had made a mistake, I could see a puzzled look come across his face. “Mommy,” he said, “why don’t all of our juice boxes come with the good straws? That way I wouldn’t make so many messes.”

That is when I realized the absolute brilliance of the Last Straw. Sure, I knew that it was a good idea. Sure, I knew that it would cut down on messes. But I never realized the most important aspect of this product. The Last Straw actually makes kids feel better about themselves by making them feel a little more independent and grown up. Wow! Sometimes I am amazed by what we can learn from our children.

I know that the next time we visit the Stribling’s, we are definitely coming home with our own set of the “good” straws!