White Papers
The economics of an icon.
What a famous product actually earns — and what the object it is sold in is really worth.
A short series on how single products — a $23 cocktail, a seasonal latte, a silver cup — became businesses in their own right. Each paper is three pages: the numbers, the mechanism that produces them, and what the whole thing means for anyone who manufactures. They open in the browser — nothing to download, nothing to request.
Published — read now
Five papers are live. All open as full-screen books in the browser.
The Honey Deuce
A $23 cocktail, and the cup that outsold it
In 2025 the US Open sold 738,459 Honey Deuces in three weeks — roughly $17 million, more than the tournament paid its 128 first-round singles losers combined. The paper follows the money to the object that actually goes home: a dated, printed souvenir cup with a champions list down the side.
The Pumpkin Spice Latte
A product that sells because it is about to disappear
One hundred test stores in 2003 became a $1.1 billion flavor economy — creamers, cereal, dog treats. The drink is estimated to earn over $500 million a year in North America while being on sale roughly a quarter of the year. The paper treats the calendar itself as the pricing mechanism.
The Starbucks City Mug
A souvenir sold beside the coffee, retired on purpose
City mugs have been on sale since 1994, and every series — Skyline, You Are Here, Been There, Discovery — retires the one before it. Retirement is the mechanic: when a series ends, hundreds of designs become finite at once. The paper reads a $12.95 ceramic as a thirty-year collector program.
The Tiffany Blue Box
A package that has never been for sale
A color chosen in 1845, trademarked in 1998, and issued as a Pantone shade made for one client. Tiffany has never sold the box on its own — and empty ones resell for $50 to $75 anyway. The paper is about what a proprietary color and a closed supply chain are actually worth.
The Hermès Orange Box
A wartime constraint, kept for eighty years
In 1942 Paris was under rationing and the house could not get its cream-and-gold boxes. The supplier had one stock left, in the orange nobody wanted. Hermès took it and never went back — and the paper measures what that refusal is now worth, from unbranded color recall to the resale premium on a full set.
Also in the series — publishing shortly
Written and designed, queued for release. Any one of them can be sent ahead of publication on request.
The Derby Julep Cup
How a stolen water glass became a 700,000-unit-a-year collectible — and a $5,000 cup with a drink inside it.
Girl Scout Cookies
Roughly 200 million boxes and $800 million a year, sold in an eight-week window by a volunteer salesforce under someone else’s factory contract.
How the papers are built
The series is short because the standard is narrow: no unsourced numbers, no borrowed conclusions.
Every number is sourced and dated
Each figure traces to a named publication with its publication date, printed at the foot of the paper. Where a company does not disclose, we say so and cite the third-party estimate instead.
Our estimates show their math
Unit cost and margin lines are City Global estimates, labeled as estimates, with the arithmetic on the page. We never present a modeled cost as a disclosed one.
It ends on manufacturing
Each paper closes on what the story means for anyone who makes things — vessel and packaging, dated limited runs, production calendars quoted backward from an on-shelf date.