63. Fuel more fun with Bivo co-founder Carina Hamel
In this episode, Gemma talks with Carina Hamel, a lifelong athlete, mother, and co-founder of Bivo drink bottles.
Carina shares the story behind Bivo and how she and her husband identified a gap in the market for non-plastic hydration solutions for athletes and everyday use. She discusses her journey from a career in footwear product development to starting her own business, the challenges of balancing motherhood with entrepreneurship, and the importance of creating products that address real-world issues like minimizing microplastic exposure.
The conversation also touches on the personal joys and challenges of parenting, finding balance, and the importance of having fun and staying active with family.
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Welcome back everyone. Today, I have a new guest with me. Her name is Carina Hamill. She is been a lifelong female athlete.
She's a mother of two young kids and she's the co founder of Bivo drink bottles. They're still they're stainless steel, I believe. Stainless steel drink bottles, which. I've been using them here in Mallorca. It's currently summer of 30 plus degrees and I'm super impressed with them because they keep the water cold and even keep ice for hours.
So I'm really excited to have her on board and have a bit of a chat together today.
Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.
So yeah, I'd love to hear a bit more about how Bivo came about and how you decided and got involved and created these bottles.
Yeah. I had a background in footwear product development.
That was my first job out of college was a footwear product developer for the parent company Keen Footwear. So I had been really interested in product growing up, just worked at an outdoor store and being an athlete myself. I think it was always interested in how product interacted with your body.
And so being able to get into product development was a really cool opportunity for me, post college. I was a cross country ski racer. And always was just like really interested in sport products. So when I left keen, I was there for five years and I left and I started my own footwear design and development agency where I help brands anywhere from creative direction through to production.
And I ran that for 10 years. And through that time, I worked with running shoe companies and high heel companies and all across the board and spent a lot of time traveling overseas and then had our first daughter. in 2018. And when she was born, I honestly was having a little bit of a hard time going back to work.
I was trying to figure out like what would make me want to leave her and go back and spend time working away from her. And so, I went working with my husband for about eight years at that point. And so we set aside some time to work with the business consultant and we're like, all right, how do we, you know, what are we going to do with something has to change.
And so, we decided that we wanted to start our own brand. And a lot of the work that we had done was creative direction and like what we were calling strategic intelligence, which was analyzing What products were needed in the world, what products were needed for specific brands. And so that was something that we really loved doing for other people.
And we're like, well, why aren't we doing that for ourselves too? So we set aside this time and like exactly at that time, we were transitioning our daughter from me breastfeeding to her drinking out of bottles. And she was really having a hard time with that. She like, I, they, the daycare jokes that she was the second hardest baby in 40 years.
So it's a bit brutal and I really always never wanted to feed her out of plastic bottles because I, you know, there wasn't a lot of research at that time saying how much leaching was happening from plastic into milk. And now we know a lot more and unfortunately we see a lot of plastics even in placenta and babies.
But. So we didn't want to feed her out of that. And then we were talking about it while we were cross country skiing up on Mount hood in Oregon. And we realized every time we were exercising, we were drinking out of plastic. And so, and it was the only time of our lives where we were letting ourselves drink out of plastic.
So we quickly came home where we were, you know, Portland, Oregon, we were living there at the time. It was a huge cycling city. A lot of our friends are cyclists and we're cyclists ourselves. And so we started looking at the bike market and we're like, There's no solution other than plastic to drink out of while riding a bike.
And so really quickly we started diving into design and development and it was like a no brainer for us. We were kind of shocked that this was like a huge hole we had found in the market. And so we just went for it like really quickly. We just started developing. It took us 18 months to develop it. And we launched in late 2020.
Okay. That's interesting. I mean, I think that's it's great hearing people see problems and then actually come up with solutions and or testing solutions. And I mean, I've got so many different questions because I mean, I've got friends that were using these bottles, probably for a couple of years in Lanzarote and I heard of them.
And you automatically assume or think that because it's metal, then it's going to be like really heavy or that it's or that it'd be really difficult to drink out of because yeah, typically with a plastic bottle, you, you have to squeeze it and it's so fascinating now that like, I've got what I have one metal bottle or one plastic bottle and I'm finding myself actually gravitating to the beaver bottle instead, because it's so easy to drink out of.
Yes.
Yeah, no, totally. So that was, you, like, nailed our two number one, number, yeah, our number two concerns that basically like, you know, how do you drink out of it? And then the fact that it is heavier, those were like our two things that we're most concerned about with when we were starting designing and, We decided to do some focus groups and customer surveys in the beginning.
And we were actually surprised to hear that weight wasn't as important as we anticipated. But the other thing that was really surprising was that most people said they didn't drink out of plastic. We were interviewing all cyclists and most of them are saying, Oh, we never drink out of plastic. We only use either glass or metal bottles.
And so then like when we started digging, they realized as we were having these conversations with them, like the same thing that hit us for like, Oh, every time we exercise, we're drinking out of plastic. So yeah, but the whole idea of the drinking mechanism, we wanted it to be really simple to drink out of like a lot of Metal bottles have like, you know, like you have to click something and then like twist it or whatever.
And this one was like, we need to open and close just like a normal sport bottle and then pour. And so that's we worked with a third party engineer who used to work at NASA. So we did a lot of like dynamics testing and we were trying to just figure out how to get water out of a metal bottle easily.
But it turns out we created a system that honestly is like, it's really fast. It's really easy to drink out of in a more pleasant experience than squeezing plastic.
No, I know. I can certainly vouch for that. I mean, like I've got, I've actually got water in this bottle because I wanted to like, I'll have this as a video to sort of demonstrate it because that was my, one of my hesitations.
I'm like, really? It just sounds super weird. And I think it takes a bit of getting used to Compared to like with a plastic bottle, you've got to squeeze and there's effort required to get the liquid out where with the the Bivo bottle, like essentially once it's open and I don't have too much water in here, it's it pours out so fast.
So like you can empty it. I think something is like eight seconds or something sugar that it can, you can empty the whole bottle in, which is that's this 21 ounces. I think 620 mils in eight seconds is crazy. And so for me, Yeah, it's that art of learning to kind of use your tongue as like a stop gap or to sort of slow delay the speeds you don't end up like
drinking too much water in one go.
Yeah, no, it does. A lot of people say, well, we get the comment a lot that you drink more water while drinking cannabibbo just because it is so easy. To drink out of. And I think, and the thing, I mean, I haven't tried it in cold weather because I've had it while it's been summer over here, but yeah, I've been really impressed with just how, for like in hot environments, because that's a problem for what to, for, in order to drink enough, if the water is hot and, or you drink so hot, then it like, you don't really want to drink.
And at the moment here in New Yorker, it's the mid thirties, like humidity of like 80, 90 percent and you're drinking. Large volumes of fluids. And I, what I've been doing is just packing, like putting like four big cubes of ice in it, filling the rest of the water. And then you get, you feel, you finish the water and you're like, Oh, there's still ice in it and you refill it.
And there's still ice in it. And you're like, this is crazy, but it's cold. Whereas everything else is melted and warm and tepid. So I think from a. Making with, from me for as a dietitian, from a nutrition sort of perspective, making things easier to drink more pleasant to sort of drink is really helpful, but I'd be curious, like, is it, does it work for warm drinks as well?
Is it better for cool?
It does work really well for warm too. So the only thing is that because our nozzle has such a high flow system, we recommend not putting boiling hot because you can burn yourself. But yeah, I, so I live in Vermont and in the winter here, I Nordic ski a lot or backcountry skiing. ski and it's crazy.
Even actually are non insulated bottles. They don't freeze the way other bottles do. Cause the water flow is so straight and there's like not the small nooks and crannies for water to get into and freeze. But I take a lot of, we have two little kids and warm apple cider on a good Nordic ski day is like a really big treat.
And so, yeah, it's definitely a nice thing to have for the cold temps too. Yeah, I mean, I look forward to like testing it out once it's winter back in, in Europe later in the year, although I usually try and skip winter because I've done that in the past with like the insulated plastic bottles where I put, it wasn't never like fully hot, but I'd put either like warm mix in there or like some sort of drink or juice and that, which can make it more pleasant and easier again, easier to drink and more likely to stay hydrated or fuel if needed.
your food is frozen in your pocket. So I think that's, yeah, that's really cool to sort of learn, to learn about that. And also I think about the fact that seeing that people are not as bothered about the weight as much as well, because I've weighed it and I've seen like, okay, there is a difference, but it's not very, it's not noticeable.
And what, especially when it means It's so much easier to drink and more pleasant to drink for me, personally, that takes away any sort of barrier because it is so much easier to drink out of versus like you get your drink mix in your other one. You're like, Oh, it's hard to squeeze in.
Yeah, totally. Yeah,
that's really cool.
We were talking about the plastics or the microplastics and nanoplastics about being a topic of conversation. And it was really funny because when we started chatting a couple of weeks ago, I literally that day or the day before had a friend a comment from a friend and he's like, something about, yeah, microplastics being present in in our bodies and in generals.
And I was like, oh, I've not actually really looked into it. So, and it was just very coincidental that you were talking about it and the paper that had come up, actually exploring and seeing what is in. The food, the fluids that we're having and what we can do about it. So, yeah, I'd love to hear more about that from your perspective.
Yeah, when we so when we came up with the idea of the bow, we actually started doing a lot of research, because we were curious, what does plastic do to our bodies, and there actually is very little information, there's a lot of information, or there was very little information, there's a lot of information about microplastics in seawater and hurting wildlife.
And then back in, you know, over the last few years, I actually would say even within the last six months, there's been a pretty big shift because there's been a, there's been a few studies that have come out. One came out in January from Columbia university where they were actually testing for the first time, nanoplastics in water.
And when they were testing bottled water, so just reuse or like disposable. Plastic bottles, the amount of nanoplastics in the, in that water was way higher than anyone had realized previously because there was no way to test for nanoplastics. So, nanoplastics versus microplastics, microplastics testing has been done for quite some time.
But being able to find those super small particles and being able to test for them, it was okay. pretty big eye opener. The other thing is we've been finding microplastics and nanoplastics in blood, feces, fetus brains. So unfortunately, we're finding that it really is in our bodies everywhere.
It's in the blood. They're linking, there's no like, The hard part is that there's still a lot of information needing to be discovered about like, how does this impact humans? Because there's no patient zero. So like we've been exposed to plastics from the time that it really became popular in the, I guess what 50s, 60s.
And now like, so it's hard to know exactly what it's doing to our bodies, but there are links. To heart disease and there's links to Parkinson's disease as well as some memory issues. And they're seeing some of this brain damage in fish. And so they're able to look into human brains now and they're starting to see that.
So there's no definitive information out there yet, but there's likely links to like microplastics and some of these diseases. So I think we're going to be learning more and more. Unfortunately, microplastics are everywhere. It's in the air we breathe. But I, my, my view is like, as much as we can avoid microplastics, the better.
Yeah, exactly. Sort of minimizing intentional exposure. There's situations where it'd be like, This is unavoidable. You, like you've had, you're severely dehydrated or you drink this bottle of water, but wherever possible, it's like, I mean, having reusable bottles that you can fill from the tap. Cause I think what, when I was reading, it was saying that like tap water with the incidents in tap water is typically much, much lower than in the bottled water.
Do any of the sort of filters help filter anything like that out?
Yeah, I think yes, it does. Some filters work. You still are going to get microplastics in water again, just even from the air. I think like being able to have it in a metal container compared to plastic is always better.
Oh, super interesting.
I think it's great to hear also that you you're talking before about taking your, like going skiing with your kids and getting, being active with your kids. Like, how has that been transition wise for you as an athlete going from obviously being single with married to your husband, obviously, but then going from also being involved in sports and having children on board.
I'd love to hear more about that because that's certainly an experience of many women that I've met and I know.
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. Honestly. It's really hard. But the thing is that so when I, before we had kids, I always, I wondered how I would sacrifice. And like spend more time with them and be away from the sports I love.
And the crazy thing for me is that, so my daughter is six, my son is almost three and the joy that I have of being outdoors with them, like overtakes anything about, like, obviously I need time for myself and need to exercise for myself too. It's a lot less than it used to be just because of the amount of time, like running a business and having two young kids, like.
Yeah. It's a lot in general. And so I've had to make a very conscious effort of me saying like, it's okay that I cannot be in the physical shape that I was in the past. And I mean, you know, like, I think because I've given myself that permission, I feel okay about it. And, you know, like we just went on this vacation, I just got back last night and we we're on an Island.
So we mostly biked everywhere. And. We were able to bike with all the kids, my niece and nephew were there. And my son was on the little shotgun seat on my husband's bike. And my daughter biked, you know, she's six, she biked one day, 13 miles. And it's like, so cool to be able to see her do those things and like her being proud of it.
So honestly, just being able to share the outdoors and you know, love of sport with our kids has been something that I. Didn't anticipate loving as much as I do. So that's been a really unique experience for us.
That's really cool. And I think I just say that everybody's got different experiences or situations and scenarios where some women might be able to compete with their partners.
They're able to support them with that. And others, it's a case of like, This is not the stage of life for that. Like I might be able to go and go back into racing or competing later, but right now it's more about mental health, physical health and being active and just shifting. I think so many times I'll see people like, Oh, I'm missing out on my training session when they're on holidays, although with family, but being able to view movement, can be going for a walk down the beach or can be going for a bike ride at a different pace for the enjoyment factor and you can be just as healthy and active doing something completely different that isn't your traditional sport training.
Yeah, no, absolutely. Like this vacation, I, you know, I didn't exercise as much for myself as I normally would have in the past on a vacation. And I'm so tired. Like I, because I was just moving all the time. And like, even though we were biking slow and like, I wasn't breathing hard or anything, it's just, you're still moving and you're rushing up and into the waves and like, you know, so.
So it is, it's just a different, it's a different mindset for sure. And for me, I like when I quit, so I raced through one year after college and when I quit ski racing, I took a pretty big break from anything competitive in sport. And so I did a couple of running races here and there, but and now like I did my first ski race this past winter and I think but I feel like I've been able to transition my competitive nature.
I'm like, I am a super competitive person. Like it just like competition. And, but for me, I've been able to shift. My athletic pursuits to running Bivo, honestly, and that is a competition with myself to just like keep going. And it's like, it requires so much persistence and perseverance and endurance. And so it's just a different, again, it's just a, it's a bit of a shift and what my focus is on, but yeah, I think it's it's been fun for me.
Yeah, I mean, I can definitely relate to that myself. Cause I've been, I've had my own bit from my own business. So I think about eight years now, it's probably seven or eight years since I quit my last job. And really I'm in a lot of us, I think I would be unemployable because I'm so used to having this dynamic job and being able to focus on different things.
But I've certainly seen that. Since shifting from being employed to being, I guess, the employer is that it's changed my priorities and my time and availability to, to train and to compete. And so that's sort of gone on the back burner so that I don't care about it, but it's the, there's other priorities that are higher, that take require more time space.
And I think, I mean, I don't know about you, but like I found for me getting really clear on my goals and my values of my why's has really helped me in that. Would you say the same thing?
Yeah, you know, I think like for me, I see again back to being outdoors with our kids. Like if we spend a weekend where we both exercise in the morning, it takes so much time to, to do that.
And then we have less time for adventures with our kids. So it is like, For us, it's like what do we value more our own time out exercising or do we like to spend time as a family outside and like most of the time of course we have days on like we don't always have an adventure every weekend every day of every weekend but like we tend to pick both my husband and I.
We pick the time with our family, which is interesting that we both are okay with that. Like it's just, and we do talk about it, like, okay, this is something we really value. And this is something that we had when we were growing up, like our parents took the time with us. And so to be able to do that with our kids is so special that, yeah, it's definitely like a value thing that we've had to like consciously talk about.
We're okay with it. It's like, this is a short period of time. We'll get back to that. What are we going to do when we're older and we don't have them in our lives every hour of every day. So, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I suppose that's that whole evolution of life is that there's always new stages and there's always new changes and growing.
And I mean, I love having conversations with people about how we are growing and evolving and developing and yeah, like, yeah. There's constant change in life and being able to adapt to that and evolve and process it. But I mean, you're talking about like how you're so tired coming back from holidays.
And I find that I think if you're, when you're in your usual routine, like you're familiar, I mean, sitting at your desk, like you're active, but it's, you're not as active. So you can be doing less planned exercise, but if you're constantly on your feet and you're walking around, you come back and you're like, I do 20, 000 steps today.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's cool. Do you have any like advice for people who, women in particular, who are considering starting on a new venture or making a change, like things that you've found were helpful or lessons that you learned along the way?
You mean in reference to having kids or starting a different career?
Oh, both. I mean, cause different,
very different kettles of fish. I don't know. So for me in terms of having kids, like I think setting expectations, I actually really like to talk about how hard it is to be a parent because I think a lot of people talk about the joy and like just, you know, it's all wonderful, but like it is, it's really hard, especially like I, I'm actually coming out of the really hard period.
Like when Our kids don't, they didn't sleep neither one of them. And so that was always a big challenge. Like I always had to pick sleep over again, exercise, like, okay, am I going to sleep in the morning and by sleep? And it's like, you know, until six 30 or seven, or do I or do I get up really early and exercise and make that part of my life.
And so I think it's like, Being able to talk about how hard it is to have kids is really important because I think that a lot of women enter parenthood expecting it not to be as hard it is as it is like I used to travel Asia, like nine, nine times a year, one year. And so I was jet lagged all the time from Portland.
And I remember thinking, well, if I can handle this jet lag. I'll be fine having kids. There's nothing like the lack of sleep you get when you have young kids. And so I think like, just be prepared for it. I think like, if you don't, if you don't mentally prepare yourself for that challenge, I think it's going to take you by surprise.
Like I was really fortunate to have my sister go through having kids before I did. Because I learned from her and saw how much of a challenge it was. There is so much joy in having kids. I like not trying to take away from that, but I think just like being ready for it is really important. And then I think like knowing that you're going to have to pick and it is like, You're going to find joys that you never could have anticipated.
What when having kids, like that's like I said, you know, being able to spend time outside with them and like, see the joy that they feel when they're like, I did this big hike with my daughter two months ago and she was so proud of herself and she loved it. And she, like, she really loves to rock climb.
And so there was like this one section of the trail that was like a little bit of scrambling. And we talked about her favorite part of the weekend and like that little scramble part was her favorite part. And so like those little moments where you like, don't really, you're like, I couldn't have told you I would have something like that happen before I had kids.
So, I would say just like, know that the joys change. I think that's like, that's a big one. You know, there, there won't be the outdoor adventures. Like my husband used to go on all day, outdoor adventures on the weekends, every weekend, you know, and you don't do those anymore. Like, I can't remember the last time I just went for a 12 mile run.
With a few friends for the first time in, in like three or four years. I like before that, I think, I don't know, in the last three or four years, over eight miles was probably my max. And so it's like, those days are kind of behind me. I'm sure there's more of me, but like, again, they just, yeah, the joy shift or the experience of shifts.
So that's one piece of advice. And then from a business standpoint. Standpoint. I feel like just like, go for it. I think that's like the biggest thing I tell people. My husband calls me a quick coach because when I when I left clean and started my business, he was at Icebreaker Marino yeah.
In Portland. And I had, I actually helped him quit. Like it was something I like encouraged him to quit 'cause I could see he wanted to do something different. And I've always the mindset like, if you want to do something, just do it. And like, yeah. There's going to be a solution out of it, right? Like, like you're going to be able to navigate your way out of it.
You're employable or, you know, it's going to work really well, or you'll find something else. And so that's always been my thing is like, just go for it. Don't hesitate because I think if you hesitate you'll miss out. Like you never know what's going to happen when you make a change. And yeah, change is super scary.
But I think like, just know that, yeah, there's always something to fall back on. Yeah, no I can definitely agree with that because I think it's getting clear on what you want and taking that first leap and yeah, like pushing through that fear and getting clear and okay, what's the worst that can happen?
And when you figure out what's the worst that can happen, you can find solutions like, okay, well, if it doesn't work, what am I going to do? I'll get another job. Like I'll find another job. Like they'll, I'm not going to, the world isn't going to end, like, but what's the best that could happen is like, we, you never know why I think about when I remember when I handed my notice in at my last job, like, oh, it took me the whole day to.
I knew I needed to do it because, like, a great company, but the job was wrong for me and it was what I needed at the time, but there was a point where I'm like, it's now or never, and I remember someone I was working with being like, like, you'll make it work, like, it's not gonna be easy. But you'll make it work and you won't regret it.
But yeah, I think there's certainly ways you can make it easier on yourself and ways you can make it harder on yourself. But yeah, taking that leap and trusting your instincts, I think is such a valuable lesson to hear and to learn from.
Yep. Yeah. You know that it's like funny. Cause I, I find myself to be quite an optimistic person, but I also rely on like the, what's the worst that can happen kind of thing.
Because like when I quit my footwear development job at Keene, I didn't know what I was going to do. I thought I was going to start my footwear development agency, but I was also kind of looking at other jobs. And when I decided to go for my agency, I literally did was like, okay, worst case. My sister just had her son was like, she needs a nanny.
I'll go home and I'll really get to know my nephew. Like that'll be cool. And so, and I find that does really work because it's always like, if you can figure out, Hey, it's like, I'm going to be a bartender for a year. Like who that's fine. That's okay. You know? And it doesn't what time of life that is either.
It's like, It's just like, find something that, you know, work, if something doesn't work out and it like pretty most, I feel like a lot of the times it just works itself out.
Yeah. And you don't know where or how it's going to work out. And I think you said about that, like, it doesn't matter what time or life stage and we, it's especially, I think perhaps as women, we can get caught up in like, Oh, it's too late or we missed something.
I went back to uni when I was 30 to do my masters in sports nutrition and you got all these little thoughts in your head of like, Oh, you're too late. You're too old. All this nonsense. And because you're then at uni studying with people that are like 10 plus years younger than you. But at the same time.
That doesn't rule you out. And there's, it's never, it's only too late if you don't start or make a change. And I would never have predicted where I am with my life and my business now, back in what year was it? 2016 that I went to start, went back to uni and yeah, there's so many things that can happen just by taking a risk, no matter what age you are.
And yeah, but I mean, for me, I found it's like listening to yourself. Getting clear on your why and getting clear on your why, even if you don't know the what just yet and taking a step because every step that you take, you get that data to an information to dictate where does the next step go?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And you might find that step that you took is the wrong, like, it's not the way you want to go, but you figured that out. So you learn something and moving in a different direction. So yeah. I mean, the thing is that our careers are so long at this point too, like, you know, we live much longer and so you have to like figure out different things throughout your life, I think, to keep yourself entertained and challenged.
I think being, for me, being challenged is super important.
And I agree. I think for me, if I'm not being challenged or growing, then I've shut down and this may be just my personality, but I like the challenge and being pushed and absolutely. And I think this is something I've had conversations with people a lot with nutrition for post COVID, I think about people recognizing this is not the life that I want to live and getting that big kick up the butt to kind of just assess, all right, how did I get here?
And then how do I get somewhere else? And I've seen a lot of people that have quit jobs or have changed their careers completely because they've recognized that like, okay, this work lifestyle isn't where I want to be and isn't, is taking me away from my family and the things that matter to me.
Yep. Yep, for sure.
Yeah. Amazing. Oh, it's been really nice chatting with you before we wrap up. Do you have any final words of wisdom that you'd love to share?
No, I honestly like, so one of our things that we say at Vivo is feel more fun. And a lot of that has to do with just like, I think the more fun you have, the better you do.
The easier things are. So that's one thing that we always like to focus on here and like switching it up and enjoying being outside. And so that's, yeah, we can end on that note.
That's a perfect note because yeah, for me of fueling food is not just about numbers. It's about like, there's so much more to it.
So I like that feel more fun. All right. Well, thanks so much for joining me today. It's great to meet you and I'll see you again soon. All right. Sounds good. Thanks so much.