With new business, Colby grads urge companies to ditch the water jug
Photo/Courtesy Blue Reserve
Brandon Pollock, left, and Nick Friedman, founders of Blue Reserve, stand near their bottle-free water cooler system
From the day they first met as freshmen at Colby College in Waterville, Nick Friedman and Brandon Pollock knew they wanted to put their economics degrees to good use.
"Fairly quickly, we realized we had this mutual interest for entrepreneurship," Friedman says.
By the time they graduated from college this past June, these 22-year-old entrepreneurs had already formulated the basis of a new environmentally friendly water cooler business, Blue Reserve. Already, they say it is changing the way companies provide clean water for their employees. Little by little, Friedman says businesses across Maine and out of state are leasing the company's water purification systems that treat incoming cold water and make it taste as good as bottled spring water.
"The five-gallon water jug you see in an office is exactly the thing that we are trying to replace," Friedman says.
Pollock says their marketing strategy includes 14-hour days crisscrossing Maine to sell their product as well as educating prospective customers that the switch to their system can save 20% to 70% of the money they pay a bottled water company. Companies are also intrigued with the prospect of reducing their carbon footprint by cutting truck traffic needed to transport bottled water and taking more plastic water bottles out of the waste stream. Friedman says they also make companies aware their system yields safer drinking water because there is no risk of contamination from the chemical BPA, or Bisphenol A, in the plastic bottles -- a chemical that the state's Board of Environmental Protection is considering banning.
Blue Reserve officially launched in December 2009 after Pollock and Friedman secured a $5,000 grant from the Libra Foundation's Libra Futures Fund that allowed them to purchase their starter inventory. Pollock says the Portland-based nonprofit shared Blue Reserve's view that it had a good product to sell.
"It actually gave us a lot of confidence we had a good business model," he says.
They have leased about a dozen units so far to businesses in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and sold about a dozen units out of state. Pollock says each lease includes expert installation by a certified plumber and maintenance.
"In the next week, we have six to seven installations scheduled," Friedman says, at companies located in Boothbay Harbor, Rockland, in and around Portland, Manchester and Portsmouth, N.H.
Friedman explains that Blue Reserve leases and/or sells three products that are manufactured in Taiwan and are LG certified. The units are shipped to the company's warehouse space at Read Street Storage in Portland. Friedman and Pollock, the company's only full-time employees, conduct sales from their office at 444 Fore St., where they also share an apartment. Friedman says all of the units come with a five-year warranty and are leased from $24.95 to $49.95 per month depending on a company's needs. They also sell units to customers in other states, he adds.
"Our target right now is to do two new installations per week" until the business reaches its first anniversary this December, Pollock says. Friedman adds the company would like to have 50 water purification system leases per month, which would generate about $2,000 per month in revenue.
Friedman and Pollock acknowledge they have a lot of 60- to 80-hour work weeks ahead of them and they will probably put more miles on their cars than they care to, but they remain passionate about their business.
"We started on a track that is aligned with our values," Friedman says. "We're working 12- to 14-hour days, but we're enjoying every minute of it."
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