Product Architects, Inc.

Product Architects Inc. is the parent company of Polar Bottle brand insulated sport water bottles and Half Twist lifestyle bottles. The company is based out of Boulder, Colorado where it assembles and ships all of its products.

Robert Heiberger and Judy Amabile founded Product Architects Inc. in 1994. The pair, along with their five employees, ran the company from the garage of their home for a year before moving operations to an industrial park. The business acquired its first national buyer in the form of The Container Store in April 1995 and entered the sporting goods market when they were picked up by Dick’s Sporting Goods later that year. Since then, the company has enjoyed steady growth and was nominated as one of Colorado’s top small businesses in 2010 by ColoradoBiz Magazine. Today, Product Architects Inc. sells its products in over 50 countries across six continents and employs 38 workers.

The Polar Bottle was invented by Robert Heiberger, with prototypes being made as early as 1989. Heiberger, a mechanical engineer working with heat loss in the medical technology design field, realized that the systems he employed to warm blood samples to body temperature could be used in reverse to keep liquid cool in a bottle. The bottle features a dual-wall construction which creates a layer of insulating air between the liquid inside the bottle and the outside environment. Between the two bottle layers is a thin foil liner that reflects solar energy away from the bottle. The bottle is – and has always been – made from BPA- and Phthalate-free Low-density polyethylene. It is produced in 24-ounce (710 ml) and 20-ounce (590 ml) sizes. The bottles are blow-molded in Denver, CO. Since the Polar Bottle’s introduction, it has undergone continual improvements to both form and function. The first of these changes occurred in 1998 when a removable valve system was added to the cap to facilitate cleaning. In 2006, the bottle’s entire aesthetic was updated with a sleeker body design, the addition of a carrying strap, and the introduction of a variety of colored liners. In 2010, the company added 8 new graphic designs to their existing array of colored liners and, in response to consumer feedback, reduced the thickness of the bottle walls to make squeezing the bottle easier.