“Erick, If I were part of Eleiko’s board, I would vote to fire you,” begins one of over 700 comments on an apologetic Instagram post by Erik Blomberg, the Chief Executive Officer of Eleiko Sport. One would forgive the commenter for spelling Mr. Blomberg’s name incorrectly. They were, presumably, flush with rage.
Sweden-based Eleiko has produced high-end weight-lifting equipment for over half a century, with a prestigious reputation to match. In the spring of 2023, Eleiko’s product development team had a fun little idea for April Fool’s Day. As they pitched it on their website, their 18-ish-pound (or 8.5-kilogram) Heavy Mug would be a way for gymgoers to “make everyday life heavier.”
Six months after unveiling the coffee mug on social media, Eleiko’s operations crumbled under the weight of thousands of zealous gym rats piling over one another trying to purchase one. Their website crashed. Orders went unfulfilled. Some lifelong customers swore off Eleiko forever. Others went full Joffrey Baratheon, calling for heads on spikes.
And a lucky few recipients watched from the sidelines as Eleiko battled one of its biggest-ever public relations debacles, sipping hot coffee out of a mug that weighs more than most household pets.
A Brewing Storm
Beginning in 1957, Eleiko Sport evolved from producing simple home appliances to furnishing everything from your local 24 Hour Fitness to the Olympic Games. It’s positioned itself as a provisioner of high-end strength training equipment (barbells, power racks, weight plates, and so on), like Apple, BMW, or Dyson, but for gymfolk.
Despite their tidy public image, Eleiko isn’t above a bit of silliness. Before the Heavy Mug, other April Fool’s joke products included a set of weight plates with proprietary “Anti-Roll” technology (they were square), a portable (disassembled) barbell, and gas-powered (read: inflatable) rubberized bumper plates.
Eleiko has never actually produced any of these novelty items. But in 2023 they forged a pair of weighted coffee mugs to further legitimize their annual ruse.
“We had no intention of producing or offering [the Heavy Mug] as a real product. However, from the minute we introduced the mug, the community pushed strongly for us to make them available,” says Surya Cox, Eleiko Sport’s Head of Marketing.
Strength sports aren’t something you get into by accident. Weightlifting is held at the Olympic Games, but you’d struggle to get someone off the street to distinguish Olympic-style lifting from powerlifting, which tests entirely different movements.
As such, a large portion of Eleiko’s consumer audience consists of folks deeply passionate about a sport they’re more likely to discuss with anonymous like-minded individuals on the internet than their friends or family.
Strength-focused gym culture may be insulated, but getting swept up is easy. You start seeing someone lift a world-record weight on Instagram or YouTube, so you decide to give the snatch exercise a go. Before you know it, you’ve furnished a home gym top-to-bottom with thousands of dollars of Eleiko steel and chrome, or you’re frothing at the mouth for a $90 coffee mug.
Generating Buzz
Eleiko received plenty of praise for their idea. After unveiling the Heavy Mug, the company manufactured two batches intended for sale — about 300 in total. They were reasonably confident that their loudest and most loyal customers would snatch them up, and that would be that.
But on August 23, the first round of Heavy Mugs were made available to purchase via email notification and sold out within minutes. (Cox remarks that, in retrospect, the email announcement was unwise since customers in different time zones weren’t given a fair shot at nabbing a mug.)
I wanted to see if I really could make my ‘everyday life heavier.’
– Henk Kramer, Heavy Mug Owner
Among the lucky few to get a first-round Heavy Mug was Mr. Henk Kramer. Kramer is a retired track athlete turned hobbyist weightlifter who, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, turned to Eleiko to outfit his home gym.
“I wanted to see if I could make it my go-to daily mug and indeed ‘make life heavier,’” Kramer says, referencing the cheeky slogan Eleiko attached to the mug. He ordered two mugs in August but didn’t receive them until early October.
Cox notes that the mugs were deceptively costly and time-consuming to produce, which bogged down the company’s operational efficiency. Since Eleiko intended to connect with the weightlifting community, they put together and sold the Heavy Mugs at roughly the same price it cost to make them.
“I found the idea hilarious from the beginning,” Kramer continues, explaining that his friends and family also found the impractically hefty container funny. Eleiko was taken aback by the zeal with which customers like Kramer went after the mugs, so they decided to mint another batch.
Spilling the Beans
The second round of Heavy Mugs was made available on the Eleiko Sport website on October 18. But after months of hype online — several posts about the mug gained traction on sites like Reddit, including Kramer’s own review — interest in the world’s heaviest coffee cup had snowballed into an avalanche of demand.
Longtime customers, first-time Eleiko buyers, and folks desperate for an at-home forearm workout flooded the website and crashed it almost instantly. “Our servers couldn’t handle the load,” Cox says. “We were unprepared for the extreme demand,” citing that the onslaught of purchase attempts had also created bugs within their processing software.
Therefore, and with a somewhat of a heavy heart, we will not make more mugs at this point. But we will continue to push our core products forward, while still keeping an eye on the next must-have things in strength.
– Erik Blomberg, CEO Eleiko
Hobbyist weight lifters and big box gyms alike regularly request massive shipments of bespoke equipment from Eleiko, which prides itself on its airtight production pipeline and warm customer service.
But due to their technical difficulties — and wildly underestimating the online lifting community’s fervor — most people who attempted to purchase a Heavy Mug never received their order. Though Eleiko took care to issue refunds for the mug and untangle the backend mess, the damage was already done.
After months of hype, most had missed out on the Heavy Mug and were left with nothing but the dreadfully dull coffee mugs in their cupboards. Mugs that were good for serving hot beverages and not much else.
Aftermath
A little over a week later, on October 27, CEO Blomberg made a personal apology post on Instagram to Eleiko’s 250,000-ish followers. He cracked a couple of jokes but took responsibility for the debacle:
“I fully understand the disappointment that many of you experienced last week … I am the first to admit we could have handled this situation better … Although we love our coffee between lifts, we have made a decision not to become a mug company.”
Some users expressed sympathy, but the feedback in the comments section was generally acidic. “Honestly? Screw yourself … I’ve listed 2 grand worth of Eleiko equipment I own for sale and wouldn’t buy another one of your products going forward,” one angry, mugless user blared.
Blomberg also made a few curious remarks about other issues Eleiko encountered along the way. “The original mug was stolen during one of our exhibitions,” he said. According to Cox, Eleiko had a booth at FIBO 2023, a fitness convention held in Cologne, Germany, from April 13 to 16.
On the second day of the event, the ancestral Heavy Mug was stolen from the booth. Its twin, the second of the original two, was raffled off. “We shipped it directly from our Sweden headquarters,” Cox says. “After arriving at the winner’s home, the box was found torn apart and empty.”
Whether the giveaway winner’s mug was hijacked in transit by someone who knew what it was or simply plundered by the world’s strongest raccoon is unclear. Eleiko shipped the winner a replacement.
The Mug Half Full
Weeks after Blomberg’s apology, Eleiko’s social media remains riddled with comments inquiring about the mug. “When mug?” “Does anyone have proof of the mug?” “Forget barbell collars; what about the Heavy Mug???” people shout, exalting an April Fool’s joke that has become much more than the sum of its stainless steel parts.
Several industrious imitators have started selling knock-off weighted mugs as well. The “XMASTER Heavy Mug” is $116 on their website. A company called JD Gym Equipped listed their own knurled mug for $320. Both are currently sold out.
The Heavy Mug gripped the community in ways we never could have imagined.
– Surya Cox, Eleiko Sport
Eleiko has made efforts to put the mug business behind them. They haven’t said much about it on social media since Blomberg made his address, but they’ve acknowledged that a few positives have come out of the whole thing.
“The Heavy Mug gripped the community in ways we never could have imagined,” Cox says. “We failed our customers while attempting to please them; it’s a bit ironic.” She notes that Eleiko hasn’t sworn off making more silly products in the future.
“If we can draw attention to the benefits of strength training and becoming stronger and help new people discover strength training through the idea of the Heavy Mug, we see an overall benefit,” she continues. When it comes to coffee, any press is good press.
Featured Image: Eleiko, Ink Drop / Shutterstock
