Alberta-based Vitality Air, and their founders Moses Lam and Troy Paquette, have built a business around taking air and bottling it for sale overseas. It's proving to be quite a good business.
Initially starting as a joke eBay ad selling a bag of air for $0.99, they eventually found a niche and built a business.
The guys use something called ‘clean compression’ to put the air into large canisters from the locations. They then take those canisters to their facility and bottle it in aluminium cans for retail consumption. They also bottle pure oxygen.
According to their website, you can either spray the air around you, or use a special breathing mask to inhale it. Most cans are good for 150 -200 breaths.
Originally marketing to Canadian athletes, as well as to some smog-prone Canadian cities such as Calgary and Toronto, they’ve taken to twitter to build up a little buzz.
Starting with a post just referencing the environmental issues in Asia, their business started booming and they’ve lately been cashing in on Beijing’s worsening air problems, selling aluminum cans of their fresh mountain air and oxygen for around $10-20.
They’re also not shy about capitalizing on the crisis on Twitter.
They’ve even got a Chinese specific representative who sells in-country and at the moment, the website is sold out. Thus far they’ve shipped an initial 500 bottles, with another 700 on their way.
They’re also not the first to try to sell bottled/canned air in Canada.
It may seem like a joke, but once upon a time, bottled water was considered a joke, now it’s a billion dollar industry. It seems that people will pay premium dollars for a premium product, and air is just the next frontier.
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