Vodka, With a Twist

Glass bottles have been used by human beings to hold liquids of all sorts for millennia. Today, they are ubiquitous to the point of being mundane.

At least, they used to be.

Now imagine a bottle that interacts with your smart phone and literally sets its liquid contents swirling into a mesmerizing vortex of color and light.

That’s what Tremark Development is creating with the help of the team at Rose-Hulman Ventures.

“It’s very promising,” says Mark McLaurine, owner of Tremark Industries, a company currently in the restaurant business but branching out into the highly specialized field of luxury bottles.

The Tremark Development project is certainly not the first entrepreneurial enterprise Rose-Hulman Ventures has helped launch, but it’s one of few projects that would introduce a product with virtually no previously existing examples on the market to use as a point of reference. The vortex-in-a-bottle idea is unique to the mind of McLaurine, a point he expects will play in Tremark’s favor when his idea hits the market – hopefully – in 2021.

“The technology didn’t exist. We’re really developing something from the ground up,” McLaurine says.

Basically, Tremark is working with Ventures to develop a colorful, immersive experience with swirling vortex inside a 13-inch tall, 750ml bottle of vodka. The experience should turn opening a bottle of vodka from a run-of-the-mill activity into a miniature celebration, perfect for parties or other special occasions.

At first, McLaurine believed only companies based in Canada or Japan had the resources to turn his idea into a working prototype. Imagine his shock when he discovered Ventures had everything he needed right in his home state of Indiana.

“It was a dream come true, honestly,” he said. “No one in the U.S. had the capabilities we needed at a reasonable cost, except Ventures.”
An engineer himself, McLaurine was impressed with the response he got from the team at Rose-Hulman Ventures when he brought his idea and some ideas for making it happen.

“They were able to think outside the box,” he said. “I think this is going to be a very long-term relationship.”

Before launching Tremark Development, McLaurine worked as an engineer for Amazon and currently operates an Amazon logistics company out of Chicago. He has also opened four Wingstop restaurants in three Indiana cities. He enjoys engineering, but can’t resist the urge to pursue entrepreneurial dreams.

“I love engineering, but not as much as I love being an entrepreneur,” he said.