What does a police officer do with too much free time? In Jay Conohan’s case, the answer was, design a bestselling beverage container.
Conohan is the founder and CEO of The LoudCup Company, which creates a hot/cold beverage tumbler that doubles as a horn. It’s a quirky product that has quickly gained popularity among sports fans, tailgaters and parents of young athletes.
“It’s really just exploded,” Conohan told OBJ on Wednesday. “We had a remarkable year in 2024 and now we’ve taken all the feedback from our original design and created a new version with a better construction, better lid and better sound. We’ve also got five new products in various stages of R&D right now.”
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Entrepreneurship is not Conohan’s full-time gig. By day, he’s a police officer with the City of Ottawa, a role he’s held since 2004. But his drive to create something of his own has always lingered.
“My father was an RCMP officer and ended up starting his own business on the side, way back in ‘97,” said Conohan. “I was young, probably 14 years old, when he started, but I was able to watch him do both. I learned from my parents and was able to see the opportunities and struggles that came with it. And I just followed in my dad’s footsteps.”
Like many great ideas, Conohan said LoudCup was born out of boredom. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and he, like most people, was spending the majority of his time locked down at home. Then, a toy he’d created for his kids caught his eye.
“I made a horn out of a piece of PVC pipe and a bicycle tube for my kids, for something kind of fun,” he said. “The way it was sitting on my desk, it looked like a cup.”
It wasn’t the first time that Conohan had tried to design and manufacture a product. When his now 13-year-old son was less than a year old, a fall in the bath led Conohan to design a tub that would allow babies to safely stand up and move around during bathtime.
But the idea, he said, was a bust.
“It was too big, too expensive to manufacture,” he said. “It would have been too expensive for retail. The e-commerce space wasn’t as built out as it is now. But I took all those pieces I learned along the way and applied it to the LoudCup.”
With LoudCup, he wanted to make a simple, clear-cut design. So he taught himself 3-D modelling with Tinkercad, a free web app mostly used by kids. Despite the simplicity of the concept, he said it took a few tries to get the design right.
“It would look like a horn or it would sound like a horn, but it wouldn’t look like a cup or function like a cup,” he said. “Then one day I had a eureka moment. I went to the basement, logged onto Tinkercad and within 12 hours I had a prototype built and actually working.”
The product was the ticket he needed to finally realize his dream of building a business of his own. Fortunately, his family was just as enthusiastic.
“It was hilarious,” said Conohan. “My wife was laughing, the kids loved it and the neighbours came over and thought it was funny. My wife was like, ‘You’re laughing, the neighbours are laughing, the kids are laughing. Why don’t you make a business out of it?’”
With the green light from his wife, Conohan said he got to work.
His failed foray into product development once again came in handy during his search for a manufacturer. A former contact had bought a plastics factory in Mexico and offered to partner with him to get LoudCup off the ground.
While he didn’t realize it at the time, he said it’s a decision that’s paying dividends now and has saved him from the tariffs currently facing many drinkware companies.
He also decided to use Amazon Business to sell his product. “Amazon represents 30 per cent of the online marketplace and you get trademark and IP protections. The LoudCup is in the final stage of the patent process now,” said Conohan.
“What’s absolutely fascinating is when you combine Amazon and Shopify and with a click of a button, you can test the market in Australia.”
Since the product officially launched, he said he’s sold hundreds of thousands of the cups in countries across the world. In Canada, LoudCup is in the top 10 bestselling tumblers, alongside brands like Stanley, Yeti and Simply Modern.
His company has also garnered support from professional sports teams, including partnerships with five CFL teams. Conohan said LoudCup was even hosted at an event by the L.A. Clippers of the NBA.
In Ottawa, LoudCup recently won an award for marketing at the annual Bootstrap Awards, which highlights founders and businesses that have demonstrated innovation and creativity in growing self-funded startups.
Now, the plan is to continue growing, with Vietnam as a potential future manufacturing hub.
“The exciting thing is we’ve ticked off all the boxes, from logistics to supply chain to marketing,” Conohan said. “It’s been an absolute rocket ship and it’s been really fun.”
