A Message From Whit Corp
Welcome. You have arrived at this page because you own a snake, or know someone who owns a snake, or have at some point been in proximity to a snake. In any of these cases, Whit Corp is grateful for your interest.
The story of the Rat Bucket™ is, like all great stories, a story of human ingenuity, corporate determination, and a truly staggering amount of money spent on focus groups.
The Founding Vision (1987)
In the spring of 1987, Whit Corp’s newly restructured Board of Directors identified what they called “The Snake Problem.”
No one at Whit Corp owned a snake. No one at Whit Corp had ever owned a snake. The Board’s exposure to snakes was limited to a single laminated infographic posted in the Whit Corp Grand Rapids breakroom — “SNAKES: FRIEND OR FOE?” — which had been there since 1974 and did not take a definitive position.
Nevertheless, market research conducted by Whit Corp’s Strategic Intelligence Unit (SIU) indicated that approximately 1.2 million Americans owned pet snakes, and that many of these Americans fed their snakes rats, and that — crucially — no Fortune 500 company had yet developed a proprietary rat containment solution targeted at this demographic.
“The opportunity,” read the resulting 400-page SIU report, “is significant. Probably.”
The report cost $1.4 million to produce. The Board approved the project unanimously.
The Alternative Protein Containment Division (1987–1991)
Whit Corp established the Alternative Protein Containment Division (APCD) in September 1987, staffed initially by fourteen employees transferred from the now-defunct Marmalade Futures Department, which had been shuttered after a market downturn in marmalade futures that Whit Corp had not predicted and arguably had caused.
The APCD was led by its first Director, Gerald Norris, who had previously overseen Whit Corp’s pivot into “premium grain storage solutions” — a venture that ended when it was discovered that the silos were simply being used to store grain, which was, apparently, acceptable, and did not require a premium solution.
Gerald convened the first APCD meeting on October 3rd, 1987. The minutes of this meeting, preserved in Whit Corp’s corporate archive, contain only the following:
“What is a rat? Where do they go? How many fit? What is the ideal container for rats? Should it have a lid? These are questions we must answer.”
— APCD Meeting Minutes, October 3, 1987
The meeting adjourned after forty minutes. No conclusions were reached. This was to be expected. The APCD met weekly for four years and reached very few conclusions of any kind.
The Bucket Years (1991–1995)
In 1991, an APCD junior analyst named Patricia Cho — hired from a competing conglomerate specifically to provide “fresh thinking” — submitted a one-page memo with the subject line: “Could We Just Use A Bucket?”
The memo read, in its entirety:
“Snakes eat rats. Snake owners need to put the rats somewhere. A bucket is a container with a lid and a handle. It could hold rats. It costs approximately $3.50 to manufacture. We could sell it for more than that. Possibly significantly more.”
— P. Cho, APCD Junior Analyst, Internal Memo, March 1991
Patricia was promoted to Senior Analyst. Her memo was sent to a committee for review.
The committee spent sixteen months reviewing it.
Their conclusion: “The bucket concept merits further exploration.”
Patricia was not invited to the committee’s presentation.
The Innovation Phase (1995–1998)
Whit Corp’s Innovation Acceleration Lab (IAL) took over the bucket concept in 1995 and immediately began the process of making it significantly more expensive to produce.
Over the next three years, the IAL:
- Hired seven external consultants to assess “bucket viability in the reptile owner vertical” ($680,000)
- Commissioned two independent market research studies which both concluded, independently, that snake owners would probably put rats in a bucket if one were offered to them ($340,000 total)
- Convened seventeen focus groups in nine cities, whose collective finding was: “People find buckets acceptable” ($220,000)
- Retained a branding firm to develop the name “Rat Bucket™,” rejecting 43 alternatives including “RatVault,” “The RodentCell,” “HerpHold,” and “Just A Bucket, But Ours” ($95,000)
- Applied for and received patents on:
- The specific shade of orange used on the exterior (Patent Pending, 1998)
- The curvature of the handle (Patent No. WC-1997-HND-004: “Arched Lateral Conveyance Implement”)
- The auditory event produced when the lid is affixed (Patent No. WC-1997-SND-002: “Satisfactory Closure Confirmation Event, Snap Variant”)
- The air holes in the lid, both individually and as a collective arrangement, trademarked as BreathEasy™ Ventilation Technology
In 1998, after eleven years and an estimated $4.7 million in development costs, Whit Corp unveiled the RAT BUCKET™.
It is a bucket. It is orange. It has a lid and a handle.
It retails for $19.99.
The Launch (1998)
The RAT BUCKET™ was launched at a press event held in Whit Corp International Headquarters’ third-floor conference room (the one with the broken projector, which was not fixed for the occasion).
The event was attended by four journalists, two of whom were from Whit Corp’s internal newsletter, The Whit Quarterly.
CEO Harrison Whitmore III delivered the keynote address, which included the line:
“Today, Whit Corp changes the game. The rat game, specifically.”
This quote appeared in The Whit Quarterly. External press did not run it.
Today
The Rat Bucket™ is now available in all 48 contiguous United States (Hawaii is complicated; we are working on it) and select Canadian provinces (not Quebec; it’s a whole thing).
Over 14,000 Rat Buckets have been sold. Each one is, functionally, a bucket. Whit Corp is very proud.
The Rat Bucket™ has an average consumer rating of 3.4 stars across all platforms. Whit Corp considers this “solidly acceptable and, frankly, more than we expected.”
Patricia Cho left Whit Corp in 1996 to start her own business. She sells buckets. She does not call them Rat Buckets™. Whit Corp’s legal team monitors this situation.
Whit Corp International Holdings LLC operates across 47 countries in 12 industry verticals including aerospace components, artisanal insurance, pharmaceutical-adjacent wellness products, premium grain storage (ongoing), and reptile accessories. Our mission: “Solutions for tomorrow’s challenges, priced accordingly.”
Whit Corp was founded in 1887 by Harold Whitmore as Harold Whitmore’s Biscuit Concern. It has not sold biscuits since 1931. We still think about it.