Bottled water remains hot in the U.S., with Americans guzzling nearly 11 billion gallons — a record high — in 2014.
The sizzle is drawing investors eager to share Rocky Mountain water with the masses.
But instead of competing with heavyweights like Nestle, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola on grocery shelves, these upstarts are taking their fight to the West’s resorts, aiming to topple the top-shelf brands such as Perrier, San Pellegrino, Fiji, Evian and Voss.
“Water is something we could do better in this country,” said Philipe Lajaunie, the New York restaurateur who spent five years scouring the West before settling on a spring in Wyoming’s Beartooth Mountains for his upscale, glass-bottled American Summits water.
“Right now we are importing by the shipload this water from Fiji and France and Italy and Norway,” he said. “It’s insane. It makes no sense. Why should we buy this water from the other side of the planet?”
Actually only about 1 percent of bottled water in the U.S. is imported. But that still is many shiploads — enough to fill several hundred million bottles. High-end bottled water is a billion-dollar market ripe for American investment, said Steven Miller.
Miller is heading an investment team that owns a lake and spring and about 500 acres of land up Sweetwater Canyon, north of Dotsero and abutting the Flat Tops Wilderness. Analysis of the water from that spring, Miller said, shows uncommon purity, natural alkalinity and a host of beneficial electrolytes, such as calcium and magnesium.
His plan to bottle the water at the site of the spring isn’t necessarily about taking on the premium, imported water market — which is growing faster than everyday bottled water — but, he said, “it’s where this water belongs.”
Vaspen bottled water — a catchy name is a big part of the game in bottled water, where store shelf space is acquired by billion-dollar companies — is expected to launch this year.
Miller, Vaspen’s CEO, has owned the land for 10 years. The water rights are adjudicated for bottling. The brand and bottle are ready. The engineering is in place for a bottling plant at the source of the spring, which would keep the water from ever seeing daylight.
Response from investors “has been excellent,” he said.
“Startups are always harder to do than an expansion of an existing profitable business,” Miller said. “One nice thing about the bottled water business is that the difficulty of entering the business is not the same as, say, an automobile or oil and gas business with a heavy upfront cost of entry. In the bottled water industry, approximately 29 percent of the companies are emerging brands.”
Like Lajaunie, Miller plans to introduce Vaspen not at gas stations and chain groceries but on white-tablecloth restaurants and spas in resort towns.
Lajaunie recently visited his spring and bottling plant in Clark, Wyo., and drove through resorts like Jackson Hole, Crested Butte and Aspen, peddling American Summits water at natural groceries and high-end restaurants.
For a few miles, he followed a Walmart truck. The slogan “Save money, live better,” stuck in his craw.
“No. Save money to buy more crap, but you don’t live better,” he said with lilting French inflection. “I think people start having the feeling now that they can start making choices and go less for quantity and more for quality. They are understanding sourcing and paying a little more for better health and better living.”
Americans spent $12.3 billion on bottled water in 2013, up from $8.5 billion in 2003 and a 4 percent increase over 2012.
Aside from two down years in 2008 and 2009, U.S. consumption and spending on bottled water has steadily increased every year since 2003, . Last year, each American drank 32 gallons of bottled water, and bottled water is projected to surpass soda as
Colorado has a few bottled water brands, like the venerable Deep Rock in Denver and the from Eldorado Springs. Many more companies deliver bulk bottled water to homes and offices.
has been bottling water from an aquifer beneath the San Luis Valley in Alamosa for 12 years. The company’s 15 Alamosa employees also bottle for private labels, which make up the largest segment of the bottled water market.
Aspen Pure, which is owned by New Age Beverage, has logged 30 percent annual growth for the past five years, vice president of sales Rob Curtis said.
The key to battling Nestle’s Pure Life and Arrowhead, PepsiCo’s Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani is to find a niche, Curtis said. Aspen Pure’s bottle is larger — 24 ounces — and fits in a bike’s water bottle cage and car cupholders. Aspen Pure water is sold at Denver International Airport and at Whole Foods stores in Colorado and neighboring states.
“It’s always a struggle to work against those guys with the deep, deep pockets. We try to keep a local appeal,” Curtis said. “It’s a growing, competitive market. It seems like these days, everyone wants to start a bottled water company. You see people pop up, and they are gone in a year.”
It can be a challenge even for heavyweights like Nestle, one of the world’s largest companies. The Swiss conglomerate with several large water brands that stir billions in U.S. sales to draw 65 million gallons of spring water from the valley, pipe it 5 miles and truck it another 100 miles to Denver.
Since local leaders approved the plan in 2009, a steady stream of tanker trucks has delivered the spring water to Denver for bottling under the Arrowhead brand.
Not every water entrepreneur is successful.
David Zutler spent a decade establishing his BIOTA water brand in Ouray. With the first-ever biodegradable bottle made from corn starch and a fun name — Blame It On The Altitude — the Telluride investor was sparking the economy in the tourist-dependent town and harvesting accolades as a sustainable business. After a few years of operation, the company was growing and planning national distribution.
and the company ran afoul of lenders. In 2007, UPS Capital foreclosed and liquidated the company. Zutler argues UPS Capital reneged on a forbearance agreement that gave BIOTA wiggle room on loan payments during the contamination. , but BIOTA never recovered.
Now the UPS-hating Zutler, whose pioneering corn-based biodegradable plastic is commonplace, is pondering a book: “What Can Brown Do To You.”
“People call me all the time and ask how they can get involved in the bottled water business,” Zutler said. “I tell them not to do it. It’s corporate-controlled. Unless you have a very specialized type of product and a very specialized container, it’s very hard to differentiate yourself in the marketplace. If you have $100 million to get into the business, maybe you can do it.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasonblevins
11 billion gallons
The amount of bottled water consumed by Americans in 2014 — a record high
