Meet the Canadian entrepreneurs whose canned air is a hit in polluted Beijing
The founders of Vitality Air explain how their business was born, and that India is next.
A business that's fun. Disruptive. Helps people. Not quite how you might describe a start-up that decided to sell bottled air from the Rocky Mountains in north America to people around the world.
The question, of course, is why anyone would want to buy what they can get free, and in abundance. Moses Lam and Troy Paquette, the founders of Vitality Air of Edmonton, Canada, admit in the video above that they hadn't thought of the inhabitants of China's polluted capital Beijing being major customers.
But once they heard, they tried to market their product to people in Beijing, some of whom actually bought the bottles. Next on their radar screen: India.
That's not surprising, for despite two successive red alerts in Beijing over air pollution – just over a week apart from each other – Delhi now tops the world's pollution charts. In fact, Vitality Air's products are already available in India and West Asia, though China remains the biggest market.
A report in The Telegraph quotes the company's China representative, Harrison Wang as saying that "customers are mainly affluent Chinese women who buy for their families or give away as gifts." He added that "senior homes and even high-end night clubs have also stocked up on their product."
The product started selling in China two months ago. The Telegraph report quotes founder Lam as saying, "Our first shipment of 500 bottles of fresh air were sold in four days.” It adds: "A crate containing 4,000 more bottles is making its way to China, but he says most of that shipment has been bought."
The mountain air doesn't come cheap. The founders say each bottle is filled by hand. A 7.7-litre can of clean air sells for roughly 100 yuan (about $15.50).
This isn't the first time bottled or canned air is being sold in China, though. In 2015, Beijing-based artist Liang Kegang got $860 for a jar of air taken from southern France. And in 2013 Chinese multimillionaire Chen Guangbiao "sold pop-sized cans of air purportedly taken from less industrialised regions of China for 5 yuan (about ¢77) each", The Telegraph reported.
