Note: Closca sent this bottle for review.
I received an email from Closca a few months ago, when they were first raising awareness for their upcoming Indiegogo campaign. The goal of the product was to create an eco-friendly elegant water bottle that you wouldn’t just carry around, but wear using their innovate clasp mechanism attached to a silicone flap.
I have to give them credit—the design is unique. The defining characteristic of the bottle is this large silicon flap, finished with a piece of fabric available in a variety of colors.
The design is simple and uniform from front to back.
I did notice some imperfections in the silicon, ranging from various bumps to uneven cut lines near the bottom. I’m not sure if this was a result of it being an early prototype, or if the production models will be the same way.
Branding is kept to a minimum on the product, as you can see with this small debossed logo on top of the lid.
Flipping the product upside down, you can see some additional messaging prompting you do download the Closca Water app, which shows you various water refill stations in your city. I downloaded the app, and while it did show quite a few locations, it’s just something that I wouldn’t use.
The fabric is a nice touch. It plays very well with the silicone on everything else.
The overall silhouette of the bottle when the flap is open is very elegant. It almost looks like a cape drawn over the bottle.
If you look at the inside of the flap, you’ll notice a message in braille embossed into the silicone. I don’t know how to read braille, so I went to Reddit to get a little bit of help translating the message.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye, the little prince.”
A few users were quick to point out that the braille is being used improperly. Words are broken up where they shouldn’t be; there are no capital letters, no commas, and punctuation appears on a line by itself. I brought it to their attention, and I’m hoping its fixed before the final production run.
I like how the bottom of the bottle can be unscrewed. That makes it so much easier to clean compared to other containers, and also allows you to add some ice that wouldn’t fit through the smaller opening.
My favorite part of the product is the clasp that holds the silicone flap to the side of the bottle. It uses a “fidlock magnet buckle” which is the first reference worldwide. To release the fold, you just stretch it slightly away from the opening, and it quickly pops out. To put it back in, you can push directly down into the opening. I want to see this kind of locking mechanism on more products because it really is a great design.
The glass is 100% BPA-free borosilicate and holds 420ml, or 14.2oz of liquid.
Overall, I think the design is attractive, especially the innovation around the fidlock magnet buckle. The problem for me was the lack of detailing that went into the production itself, including the uneven silicon material, and the botched braille on the inside of the flap. It’s one of those things that’s so easy to get double-checked and corrected, so if that slipped through the cracks, what else did?
