Last week, we wrote about SIGG's careful management of information in the years leading up to its announcement that the products many consumers had turned to to avoid the endocrine disrupting chemical bisphenol-A actually contained it. Their announcement marked the beginning of what now appears to be a public relations freefall, as the company grapples with a massive and overwhelmingly negative consumer reaction to what it had pitched as positive news.

Shifting from secrecy to transparency on any topic is always difficult, but the damage to SIGG's ability to connect with customers is downright corrosive. Like an unfaithful partner expecting praise for ending a secret affair, SIGG's attempt to come clean depends on consumers' belief in their deep-down goodness, which in turn requires SIGG to continue to defend actions which suggest, outside of the culture of secrecy and its desperate internal logic, the hardened cynicism of a serial philanderer.

We interviewed SIGG CEO Steve Wasik on Friday afternoon, and talked with him again on Saturday to follow up on some of his statements. Topics ranged from details about SIGG's transition to a BPA-free liner in 2008 to how they have attempted to handle it publicly, as well as an admission of initial production problems that affect some bottles currently on the market. We'll publish an extensive transcript tomorrow.

Today, though, I'd like to draw from that interview and from other sources that have come our way to address what has become a working assumption about this case: That SIGG claimed only that its bottles did not leach bisphenol-A, and never claimed its water bottles were "BPA-free."

Below is the evidence we have collected from readers, from our research and interviews, and from some excellent bloggers over the past week.

Paving the way for consumer confusion

One problem companies face when maintaining a fiction - even if this does not involve lying - is that everyone has to stay on script, all the time. Our sense at this point is that SIGG was very concerned about being on script when it came to the highest official channels of their organization, but ultimately either failed to control communication at all levels of their company, or used a different script altogether.

"I also double checked with our PR agency last week and Meredith Maldonado, who has been working on the SIGG account for the last 3+ years, confirmed that she has 'never ever told a journalist that SIGGs are BPA Free,'" Wasik told ZRecs in an email. "She always tells them that SIGGs are tested to ensure no leaching of anything including BPA." Wasik also mentioned attempting to control the claims stores made about their bottles, and shared an anecdote about dropping a Canadian distributor because they were making BPA-free claims.

Whether this razor-thin distinction was made throughout SIGG is a different story. Megan Kress, a former sales representative for Laken aluminum water bottles who now represents Innate Gear, summed it up in a comment on SNEWS, an outdoor and fitness website that published one of the first reports of BPA in aluminum water bottles, days after SIGG posted their own announcement. Kress is a seasoned veteran of the outdoor industry, and she believes reps were provided with false information about BPA from both companies:

We may be debating the consequences of BPA for years to come. Heck, tomorrow we may find scientific evidence it could cure cancer. But one thing is clear: Too many retailers were misled about what was and was not in the liners of aluminum bottles - frequently by sales teams that were fed a line of hooey who in turn fed that same hooey to accounts.

If retailers were making false claims on SIGG's behalf and appending them to SIGG-provided displays, it is easy to understand why consumers would become confused by the layers of messaging. But looked at another way, if consumers were confused by SIGG's roundabout and often evasive way of "telling the truth" about their products, maybe those retailers were, too.

After publishing our article last week, we found a full transcript of the March 2007 press release Wasik issued after forcing the Environmental Working Group to remove statements about SIGG bottles containing BPA from a report. (In SIGG's defense, EWG had included SIGG in their list without testing any SIGG bottles for BPA.) After examining the full release, we noticed something even more questionable than the careful wording and overarching intent we highlighted in our previous discussion. Wasik went on to cite the retraction made by the Organic Consumers Association, who had picked up EWG's statements and then overreached with their apology. By citing it, he allowed them to make a claim that thus received SIGG's implicit endorsement, without anyone at SIGG having to say it:

Unfortunately, in the meantime this message was picked up by a few other websites, one of those being The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and their newsletter Organic Bytes. When we questioned the OCA on their mention of SIGG, this is the emailed response we received:

“We made a mistake. Sigg bottles do not contain BPAs… it was read wrong and there was confusion. Apologies about this.” - Member Services, OCA

Wasik then goes on to describe the safety of SIGG bottles in his own words - of course, never calling them BPA-free himself.

We know, Steve. You never said it.

Telling customers what they wanted to hear

Under normal circumstances, we would probably not consider a single email exchange with customer service at any company to be worthy of publication. We receive questionable information from major corporations about the BPA status of their products on a regular basis, and it's why we work our way into organizations to get the product chemical listings we publish in the ZRecs Guide. In this case, however, we sat up in our chairs when a reader emailed us to say that a SIGG representative had told her point blank back in 2007 that there was no BPA in SIGG bottles. As it turned out, she had the emails to prove it.

We have the full German transcript of the email exchange between Christina and the Product Manager with whom she corresponded, and were able to verify the employee's presence at the company by examining additional emails he sent to another blogger in 2008. We have attempted to protect the identities of both the employee and the customer by using only Christina's first name and redacting the SIGG employee's entirely.

It's August 2007. Christina sends an inquiry to SIGG that is brief and to the point.

Subject: Questions

1) Is it true that Sigg bottles contain Bisphenol-A?
2) Are there Sigg bottles that can survive a crash better than anyone else (other lacquer?)?
3) If the active bottle top suitable for children?

Thank you.
Christina *****

The Product Manager responds according to SIGG's BPA playbook:

Dear Mrs. *****,

Thank you for your inquiry. We are happy to answer your questions:

1. All test trials have been no bisphenol-A found in our bottles
2. The typical aluminum bottles from SIGG we also carry a stainless steel collection (Hot & Cool), which is very robust - also applies to our oval-bottle made of aluminum.
3. Generally NO, the ABT is designed for adolescents and adults.

Sincerely,

********* ****
Product Manager

This is where most consumer inquiries end, and although we could criticize the manager for their slippery wording in that first answer, there may be something lost in translation as well. But Christina followed up, more persistently, on the question of BPA. And that's when the Product Manager appears to go off script - or at least, to stop following the one we're familiar with.

Christina:

Mr. ****, thanks for your answer. Frankly it does not reassure me, your answer to question No. 1 is not particularly .... This could be interpreted either way ...

I would ask again: Is bisphenol-A used in the manufacture of SIGG bottles?

Please excuse my persistence but I'm about to renounce the Sigg bottle and switch to Kleen Kanteen .... I will not take risks for my children if I am not 100% sure that the bottle is okay.

Thank you,

Christina *****

Five hours later, the manager responds.

Hello Mrs. *****,

No, SIGG does not use Bispenol-A. Our aluminum bottles are completely okay.

Sincerely,

********* ****
Product Manager

We have heard similar stories from others who have no record of conversations they believe they had with SIGG. We have seen similar claims online that we had no way of verifying. On close questioning, it can be hard for someone to be certain they remember exactly what was said, or simply what SIGG invited them to infer.

But this above exchange is strong evidence that such incidents did occur. How often this occurred is and will likely remain a mystery.

You can read a full transcript of this email exchange, in German as well as our English translation (performed by Christina and replicated in Google Translate) here.

Transparency is a value, not a strategy

SIGG is a company of around 100 employees. For the past three years, SIGG's secret has been their own. It has been a secret kept through the cynical urgency of preserving and expanding market share at the expense of other companies whose secret world had been exposed.

Secrets can be as corrosive to companies as they can be to individuals. One reason for this is that they allow a company culture to develop assumptions and beliefs that are never challenged by outside views or information. These views may naturally arise from the perspectives of those involved in the deceit, or they may be self-justifications for it, but either way, they don't get properly ventilated and informed and shaped by opposing viewpoints. This is one of the plausible ways we can explain how SIGG could be genuinely surprised by the tremendous backlash it has faced in the wake of its announcement.

But this also means that transparency, when employed as a new tack in an evolving public relations strategy rather than a deeply felt value, is a mixed blessing. Being transparent from the outset tends naturally to make an individual or a group make choices that will look appropriate in hindsight. But being transparent after being vague, misleading, or obscure means that you get all of the risks of transparency - including the instant exposure of your company's insular, incubated views on issues your customers are passionate about - with few of the benefits.

This is the problem SIGG faces now.

Two brief illustrations of this will close out this post, likely our last about a company we once had high hopes for but now find depressing and sad, with the exception of our full interview with SIGG's Steve Wasik, who was very generous with his time and with the information we were looking for.

First, old habits die hard. The experience of former SIGG user Peggy Rowland, who emailed the company on August 22, is a case in point. She wrote to SIGG to demand a refund.

I purchased two SIGG water bottles on 2.9.08 from reusablebags.com. I feel that you didn't tell the whole truth about your bottles. In fact, you let the public believe they were BPA free instead of setting the record straight.

I don't want another one of your bottles because I don't trust you. However, I do want my money back. I paid a total of $38.90 for the bottles. I can give you my mailing address to send a check or my paypal account address. Either way, you were deceptive and you owe me my money back.

SIGG's response began:

Dear Peggy,

I understand where you are coming from. Fact is SIGG did not manufacture the old liner, it was provided to us by a third party that would not disclose the ingredient list, only testing that assured no leaching of BPA or ANYTHING else into any beverage poured into a SIGG. Several tests were conducted in Europe and the US to make sure of it. And we paid to have one too!

They went on to reject her request.

Peggy inferred from their email that SIGG was claiming it had not known there was BPA in liner it used until the summer of 2008, and we'd go further and agree that the email seems designed to make this inference seem quite logical.

• "I understand where you're coming from" = We are in the same situation, i.e. we feel betrayed as well.


• "It was provided to us by a third party that would not disclose the ingredient list, only testing that assured no leaching of BPA or ANYTHING else..." = The provider did not disclose any ingredients, including BPA.

Peggy published an excerpt from her email in a post on her blog, Light Green Stairs, with SIGG's surprising claim as her headline - "SIGG Not Taking Responsibility." A pretty fair title, if you ask us.

However, statements Wasik made to ZRecs directly contradict the claim made in the company's email to Peggy.

"When I met with suppliers back in the summer of 2006 [as General Manager of SIGG USA], I learned about BPA in the liner," Wasik told ZRecs. "I was reassured that there was no leaching, but I knew at the time that if we could remove the BPA, we should do it. And I sat down with the CEO at the time and said, 'Let’s develop a new liner.'"

Having recently read Peggy's post, we repeated Wasik's statement back to him and asked him to confirm it, which he did: He had known about BPA since mid-2006. We then confronted him with the statement made in the SIGG email.

"I think I know where that confusion may have come from," Wasik said. "We knew there was BPA in the liner, but they would never give us the formula." Italics mine.

Visiting SIGG's Facebook page is like entering Coraline's mirror world, where things are definitely off-kilter but it's hard to say why. It might be because the issue of SIGG's profiteering on the issue of safer water bottles has become so personal for so many people, but a corporate page on Facebook is disembodied and dehumanized by design. Or it may be the fact that while storms rage outside its walls, writing on the page's Wall requires you to actually label yourself a fan of SIGG, making this a quiet little hideout. SIGG's outpost on the world's most powerful social network may be the best metaphor yet for the type of culture SIGG has nourished within its own walls.

The company's erratic and often hostile statements on Facebook culminated in a feed item they published but then had the wisdom to retract - although not before Candace at Mama Saga / Mamanista got a screen capture:


She has more, with some great commentary, here.

A bit further down the list, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore.

Thank you for your support, the blogs are on fire and some [I cannot say which ones] have posted some false information. Some of them have retracted their statements and removed their posts. For info 'straight from the source' please write us directly at [liners@mysigg.com] and we will address each and every one of you personally.

"False information"? Forgive us for wondering what that phrase means, exactly, to you.

And you cannot say which blogs have published false information? How odd.

Retracted? Removed? Will we hear about this someday?

"Straight from the source." Sorry, SIGG - for you, those days are over.

We have much more to say on the predicaments companies are finding themselves in as they attempt to decouple their business and their products from a chemical they should have nothing to do with. We believe standards should be put in place that provide companies with goals to meet rather than penalizing them for failing to anticipate evolving science. But we don't have much sympathy for SIGG.

More on this story

• SIGG's BPA Confession


• Two warnings before you request a replacement SIGG bottle


• The ZRecs 2009 BPA-Free Water Bottle Showdown


• ZRecs evidence of misleading statements by SIGG representatives


• our interview with SIGG CEO Steve Wasik


• BPA researcher claims older SIGGs did leach BPA, and we can independently confirm it