There’s something about small companies. They move fast. They innovate. They provide god-tier customer service. Okay, maybe that’s not true for all small companies. But it is for Purr Glass.
Started as a college side hustle, the high-quality glass producer has become a reliable crucible of new ideas and innovative products. But more impressive than its functionally engineered pieces is the company’s ability to crystal ball its way to the front of competition again and again.
“We’ve been at this a long time. We’ve seen a lot of companies come and go,” says owner Linda Zindroski. “Our ability to stay in the market really comes down to our ability to change, a lot of hard work, a willingness to be thoughtful and insightful, and listening to our community.”
Purr has been at the forefront of some of the greatest changes in glassware in the last two decades. Many of the concepts that are now industry standards—scientific hammer bongs, Sherlock double bubblers—were first offered by Purr.
“We were doing glass tips before glass tips were even a thing,” Zindroski says. “I remember going to trade shows and thinking, ‘Why is no one doing this? It’s such a great idea! They improve the smoking experience so much.”
Starting Small
In the modern economy, it’s Desire—not Necessity—who serves as the Mother of Invention. So when an art student trained in glass blowing realizes they can build a better functioning, better-looking bong, well…
“It was really just humble beginnings,” says Zindroski. “Just someone blowing glass who needed to make money and liked to smoke weed. We wanted something better than what was offered, wanted a little more ingenuity and innovation—and boom! That’s how it all started.”
Purr’s initial innovation was the perforated down stem. It’s a simple idea: add slits at the bottom of the percolator to allow for cleaner, tastier, and smoother pulls. The perforations filter out more of the non-THC material, ultimately delivering a better experience. (Today, this idea is more often known as “diffused” down stems, but the principle remains the same.)
We are a small team. We used to be just a mom-and-pop shop. Some people think we’re this huge behemoth with investors, but no. We’re a very tiny operation, but we've managed to do a lot of things by being very thoughtful and thinking ahead.
Inspired by German craftsmanship, the company that would become Purr Glass started to create water pipes that combined elegant engineering with a sleek aesthetic. Finding success in their creation, Purr sold its first creations to head shops around Northern California.
“In the beginning, it was a completely wholesale, door-to-door only operation. We could only sell it as far we could drive,” Zindroski says. “It was all about catching a smoke shop owner who would be willing to talk at all and then trying to see if they would sell our stuff.”
Slowly, the quality caught on. Shop owners called and asked for more glass; things got serious. From 2003 onward, Purr began to grow in earnest. Seemingly overnight, they went from art students selling glass to a recognizable name brand.
“It’s not like I came from some sort of massive business background or anybody gave us money to start this business. It was 100 percent bootstrapped and has been to this day,” Zindroski says. “We’ve learned everything from the ground up. We came from an era where social media wasn’t something we grew up with. None of us had used it in our personal lives before having to learn it for the business. So, like everything we’ve ever done, it was completely new to us, and we had to sort of figure it out.”
Selling Big Without Selling Out
Becoming a real business came with challenges. An artist’s job is to reflect the state of the world back to the people; a business’s job is to predict the future. Becoming a business wasn’t what Purr had expected. But they used that to their advantage.
Beause their goal was always to create high-quality glass, they weren’t concerned with how it happened. They didn’t fall in love with any one way of doing business. That was fortunate because just as Purr entered the market, the cannabis world began changing—and fast.
“Not long after we started selling more, we decided to go to trade shows—and that was really scary because that opened us up to a lot of risk and vulnerability because that was the era of Operation Pipe Dreams,” Zindroski recalls. “But the shows introduced us to a much larger national and international market. Then, as legalization was starting to happen, the import market from overseas really started to impact wholesale trends. We quickly saw that we needed to pivot. We couldn’t just rely on wholesale because it wasn’t going to cut it. So we decided to start connecting directly with our end users.”
And so Purr made the leap that doomed so many other brands: they successfully added a B2C component. The company was among the first to provide a modern e-commerce experience, building a sophisticated online store and informative website while most competitors were still betting on in-store sales.
“I truly feel like that always set us apart. Even today, I feel that our website experience and our customer service are second to none,” Zindroski says. “We are a small team. We used to be just a mom-and-pop shop. Some people think we’re this huge behemoth with investors, but no. We’re a very tiny operation, but we’ve managed to do a lot of things by being very thoughtful and thinking ahead. I think we also make very intuitive products and I think that’s why our products have become such mainstream staples in the industry.”
