Creating our new Stainless Steel Bottle

Here at RAAD, we're redefining what reusable luxury looks like with the launch of our innovative Stainless Steel Refillable Bottle. Designed in collaboration with leading NZ industrial designer Tim Rundle, this high-performance vessel seamlessly blends design, durability and sustainability.

From its minimalist form to its user-friendly functionality, the new RAAD bottle is more than a dispenser - it’s an interior accessory that embodies the brand’s ethos of elevated essentials and conscious consumption.

The Inspiration Behind the Design

This latest development stems from an immersive research project focused on meeting the needs of both design-savvy homeowners and the growing number of luxury lodges, hotels and fine dining establishments integrating RAAD products into their spaces.

“We knew we needed to think outside the box when it came to material selection. The bottle had to be highly durable, functional, and effortlessly elegant.” — Matt Saunders, RAAD Co-founder

The RAAD team spent time with back-of-house services of many of our hotels and restaurants and spoke to our RAAD community about what they couldn’t live without, and where the opportunities lay.

The result is a premium stainless steel vessel engineered for longevity, easy refilling and an elevated aesthetic - ensuring it looks just as good on a luxury hotel vanity as it does in a curated home interior. This is not just a hand wash.

The RAAD x Tim Rundle Collaboration

When it came to designing with new materials, the RAAD® team wanted to work with the best. 

We spoke with Tim about the details behind the design...

1. Can you tell us about your design career & any stand-out highlights?

My design career is fast approaching the two decade mark now, and has covered a wide range of categories, from agricultural products to transport and furniture, lighting and other architecturally related products. The earliest highlight was probably being on the team who came up with the Air New Zealand skycouch shortly after graduating. After that I moved to London, where I was based for 14 years, and where the shift to furniture and lighting was triggered by a job at Tom Dixon. Later on I went out on my own and formed my studio, where I an early highlight was having a lighting collection picked up by the Danish brand Audo (formerly known as Menu) which led to work with a number of other Scandinavian brands. In 2023, with a family in tow, I moved back to Aotearoa, where my studio continues to work with brands in Europe alongside working more and more with companies here and in Australia.

2. What excited you to work with RAAD?

This project was exciting for a couple of reasons, firstly it was a great product with brand ethos I could believe in and get behind. Secondly, while a bottle seems like a simple thing to design it's actually very difficult to make something unique but also beautiful. Due to the way they are produced, these bottles are always circular in form, which means they are basically a single silhouette line revolving around a central axis. You only have this single profile line with which to lend the bottle its complete form; tiny shifts in angles and curvature can make significant differences to the silhouette and how light reflects and renders the shape to the eye. In a way it's the most pure aesthetic design challenge, verging on sculpture for mass production.

3. What makes the new RAAD bottle design special?

The new RAAD bottle is very different from most of the bottles of this kind on the market, which has mainly been driven by aping the look of a certain ubiquitous brown glass bottle. It has a sharper attitude, and the way the neck is flush with the pump lid makes it feel like more of an interior accessory than an item of packaging. It's produced in tinted or powder coated, stainless steel, which sits well in contemporary bathrooms and kitchen. It also makes it tough, so it should last a long time, age beautifully, and won't break like glass (parents; if you know you know).

“While a bottle seems simple, designing something both unique and highly functional is a real challenge. The RAAD bottle’s sharp attitude, flush neck, and refined silhouette elevate it beyond packaging - it becomes part of the space.” says Tim.

The result: sustainable luxury like no other.

Check out the new bottles here.